A focus of recent historical archaeological research in Arkansas is the nature of 19th century occupation in smaller population centers. The plats for many villages and towns permit examination of pattern and process at the least complex stratum of settlement: individual families and discrete house lots. The “urban farmstead” concept is defined and shows that until recently, such in-town lots contained buildings and spaces that functionally paralleled those of rural farmsteads. The synchronic and diachronic dimensions of the model may be useful for examining residences in nucleated centers in other times and places. In many ways, the responsibility given to the occupants by the city for a variety of tasks, reflected in the urban farmstead, permitted nucleated settlement itself to continue.