Since subscribing to Newspapers.com recently, I have found an absolutely unexpected amount of information about my Smith ancestors that surely would have been lost to time had it not been recorded in those pages so long ago.

One of the major events in my Smith history was the migration from Salt Creek Township in Jackson County, Indiana to the area known as “Little Egypt” in southern Illinois. This is where my grandpa was born. I’ll try to trace the people and places back from Carmi, IL to Salt Creek on this page.

My grandpa’s father was Vernon S. Smith. He was married three times, twice torn from wives by their premature passing. Vernon was a school teacher during The Great Depression and taught in a one room schoolhouse. He had an Associates Degree. He later went on to champion the causes of better pay for teachers and to fight waste within the school system.

Here is Vernon’s obituary. A lot had happened before this time one can be certain of.

Here is an article I found that details Vernon’s birthday gathering at his home. My dad and uncle are mentioned.

One of the defining celebrations that Vernon regularly participated in was the Isaac Smith and Alvin Wheeler Family Reunions. I will try to find articles that chronicle these gatherings. I have seen two but I am unable to find them on my computer at the moment.

Vernon was the father of 5 sons, one who died very young and two whom went on to have productive and loving lives but no children. The other two, my grandpa and his brother, would find themselves dedicated to fighting in the USMC and US Army during their formative years.

Here is a story about Vernon B. Smith, my great-grand uncle.

Vernon S. Smith’s dad died when he was very young. Daniel Robert Smith was his name and he was killed by a train in Carmi, IL around 1889. Vernon would have only been about 3 years old.

I believe that this is a photo of Daniel R. Smith. It was found among the belongings of Isaac “Ike” S. Smith of Freetown, IN and has “Smith Carmi, IL” written on the back. Dan was born in 1859 the second youngest of his 7 brothers (8 of them total). There was James, Alvin, Isaac, William, Louis, Orral, Daniel, and Hiram.

This next newspaper article shows the marriage announcement of Daniel R. Smith and Nancy J. Acton. They were affectionately referred to as “Dan and Nancy”. The “Uncle Dick” the author refers to is Richard Acton, Nancy’s father. This article was likely authored by Robert M. Smith as he refers to Richard Acton in his book The Salt Creek Colony of Little Egypt the same way.

The “Ike” the following article refers to was Isaac S. Smith, one of Daniel’s older brothers.

This clipping records (towards the bottom) Dan’s attempt to travel to southern Illinois. Looks like the waters were high that time of year. The rivers in that area were known to flood and produce very fertile farmland.

This next article records Dan and Nancy’s return from their first trip to Danville.

This is a partial re-print of the above article in a newspaper that was published 50 years after Dan’s trip.

Dan’s father was the Rev. Samuel Rice Smith, Esq., if we are to believe the credentialing afforded Sam by the newspapers. Here is his obituary.

Another shorter notice:

As I wind this page up, I’ll be sure to point you to Samuel R. Smith’s father, Isaac Smith, Sr.

This page is only about some of The Salt Creekers.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

-Chris

Looking back at the 1810 Rockcastle County, Kentucky censuses, we find my Isaac Smith, Sr. living among the Middletons and Singletons in the area that is presumably near Skaggs Creek or the Roundstone Fork of the Rockcastle River. Most interestingly, a “Colo Wm Smith” is a neighbor of my Isaac Smith. Let’s take a look at his life.

I’ve recently been able to subscribe to Newspapers.com, an amazing site brought to you by the same folks at Ancestry.com. Let’s dig into their archives and see what we can find.

The bulk of the newspaper articles I have found regarding William are from The Mount Vernon Signal. As far as I know, they still exist today.

I’ll start with what I know about General Smith and build upon that. My research trip to Kentucky yielded that he was from Glade Hollow Fort in Russell Co, VA. He was also a Sheriff of Rockcastle County, and one of his sons, a Thomas J. Smith, was a deputy sheriff. From the census records, I know that he had another son, a George W. Smith.

By most accounts, Gen. Smith is also related to the Fish family by way of a second wife, an Ann Burney Fish. I believe that many of these families were involved in the militias.

The earliest record I can find of Gen. Smith is his marriage record in Lincoln County, Kentucky to Elizabeth Singleton dated 20 Aug 1798. Later, land deeds link him to the area known as “the Roundstone Fork of the Rockcastle River” circa 1805.

The earliest newspaper article I can find on Newspapers.com is from 20 Dec 1901.

So in this article we can find that Gen. William Smith was a father-in-law to a James Terrill and also had a daughter named Annie.

The next article of material relevance is one from 25 Apr 1913.

 

Many solid statistics aside, we are presented with a rather intriguing fact: William Smith was a Rockcastle County Representative and Kentucky State Senator, as was one of his sons, Elisha Smith! Fantastic! My hopes are that we will be able to find more information about them because of their involvement in the legislature. We are also presented with some additional descendants of William’s. He was the great-grandfather of Alvah Maret and W. J. Newcomb and the 3rd great-grandfather of William H. Fish of the clothing house “Sign of the Fish”. Good stuff.

I was beginning to find the results for a query of “William Smith” in the Mt. Vernon Signal grow sparse and decided to look for the Thomas J. Smith whose name I have observed on the old land deeds. I found a great article written by a W. H. Williams, a late President of Citizens Bank. He too was interested in General Smith.

From 15 Apr 1921:

We are fortunate to have such an account from Mr. Williams. We see that Gen. Smith had a son William M. Smith who went off to Texas during The Civil War. Migration information like this can be a clue to someone’s brick wall. Nice.

There are additional articles on Newspapers.com pertaining to the family of Gen. Smith, but I will not record them here as they can quickly become numerous and time consuming to parse and digest. I believe I will create an additional page as I find new articles and source info for the General’s life and family.

Finally, I will include the contents of the archives of Rockcastle County Library. These words have been salvaged from what appears to be a malfunctioning URL linking to a blank PDF. I have used Google’s cache of the page.

From http://www.rockcastlelibrary.org/libraryarchives/mvsignal/1976/MVS19761230A07.pdf

Rockcastle Recollections
By John Lair
GENERAL WILLIAM SMITH

William Smilh was born March 21, 1778, in Russell County, Virginia. He was too young to take part in The Revolutionary War but after it’s close, when the Indians were still troublesome, he served as a spy along both the Clinch and the Kentucky rivers, settling in 1795 in what was later to be Rockcastle County. His grandson, Col. James Maret, Rockcastle County’s most active early historian, believed that in that year he built the substantial two-story log house in which he lived until his death in 1849. Since he would have been only 22 years of age in 1795 it hardly seems likely that he would have put up a house which would have been a mansion at that time.

Soon after coming to this location he married a daughter of Col. Richard Singleton who served as a major with American forces at the battle of King’s Mountain. They had two children, a son Col. Elisha Smith, and a daughter who married Col. James Terrill, one of the very early settlers in the area. Upon the death of his first wife. General Smith married Ann Fish, daughter of Thomas and Winaford Burney Fish, she having been born in Guilford County, North Carolina, in 1784, later being brought to Kentucky by her parents, in 1791.

There were born to William Smith and his second wife, 5 sons and 3 daughters; George W., Alfred, Elisha, James, Pendleton, Eliza, Glatha and Mary. George W. went to Columbus, Texas, became a lawyer and was a member of the Superior Court under Confederate occupancy. He died of-yellow fever in 1873. At the time of his death he owned 20,000 acres of range land, 10,000 cattle and property in several Texas cities. Alfred became a major during the Civil War and is buried beside his parents in Mt. Vernon’s Elmwood Cemetery. Elisha became a large landowner in the county and was a man of affairs. Nothing is now known concerning James. Pendleton, youngest son of William and Ann Fish Smith, is buried beside his parents. Eliza married George Maret and became the mother of James Maret, frequently mentioned throughout this book. Glatha married Mitchell Maret, brother of George Maret. Information on Mary, the third daughter, is not now available. Some confusion also exists concerning Elisha Smith. Some sources indicate that William Smith had two sons named Elisha, one by each of his two wives, while others show that there was only one Elisha and he was the son of William’s first wife, the Singleton. William Smith was commissioned captain of the first company raised in Rockcastle County for service in the War of 1812 and was the first to leave for the scene of action. This company was part of the Kentucky Battalion of Mounted Volunteers and took up their march on September 18, 1812. Serving under him were two of his brothers-in-law, Thomas and William Fish. Thomas Fish served as a sergeant of the company, while Wllliam Fish enlisted as a private bu tlater became a colonel. Smith, himself,was promoted to General, the first Rockcastle County native to attain that rank.

As a supplement to this most thorough biographical summaries, here is another article taken from the 25 Mar 1921 edition of The Mount Vernon Signal.

I hope you enjoyed this trip through time back to the early 20th century Rockcastle County. Maybe one day I’ll find a descendant of Gen. Smith for yDNA testing. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for reading!

Chris

Back on August 7th, 2017, FamilyTreeDNA notified my Smith matches and me of a new 67/67 yDNA match! I never expected to find another unknown (to me) Smith line that matched this closely. We are all very excited about this discovery and I will attempt to provide the details and their significance here.

The match descends from a Thaddeous Smith. This “Thad” Smith is a descendant of Jeptha Vinen Smith [online genealogy info] who married Nancy Dickson. They were wed in 1824 in Fayette Co, GA. Nancy Dickson was a daughter of militia General David Dickson or Dixon (Captain in The Revolutionary War).

[ An interesting bit to note about Nancy Dickson: in her marriage records, her name is written multiple times as “Discon”.  ]

After doing some preliminary digging on Ancestry.com, I was amazed to find a two page hand written letter that was written by a granddaughter of Jeptha’s in Lineville, AL in the 1960’s. To quote the Ancestry.com user’s page: “Written by Eugie Dobson, daughter of Joseph and Nancy Adalee Smith Dobson. Relayed to her by her uncle Andrew [Jackson] Smith, the son of Jeptha and Nancy Smith.”

I will present here my best attempt at transcribing the contents of these two pages. They’re a wealth of info about the early origins of our Smiths in North Carolina.

Page 1

[Page 1]
Genealogy of Jeptha V. Smith.-
Jeptha Vinen Smith, born in Hancock County
Ga., Dec 1795, died in Glendale Miss, Sept
25 1863, and is buried there. was a son of Wm Smith and
wife Mary Smith, his Bros and Sisters: Jno Browder,
born 1783, died 1868, married Caroline Kilgore,
James McDonald married Martha Bankston, settled
in Maury Co, Tenn., Elizabeth married Jos Wheeler.
Jemina married William Belcher.
Nancy [married] James Dickson.
Mary [married] Judge Jospeh Benton
Louise [married] Ransome Kitchens. Wm
Smith, a Revolutionary Soldier. [father of
Jeptha V Smith) was born about 1755, and died
at Smith Mills on red oak creek, in Merri-
weather Co, Ga. in 1830. Had one bro., Peter, and one
sister who married a Mr. Lambert, also a half
bros who went to Kentucky*, he (Wm Smith) was
a son of Nicholas Smith and his wife Polly
Smith. Nicholas Smith (father of Wm) was
born in Caswell Co, N.C. and was of English
descent. Polly Smith, mother of Wm was born in
Dublin Ireland, and her maiden name was Burke.
Mary Smith (Wife Wm and Mother of Jeptha V.) was
the daughter of Jno Powell and his wife Peggy Powell.
Mary Powell Smith’s bros., and sisters were James, Charles,
Judeth, Peggy, Nancy, and Martha. One sister married
Joseph McLane another Wm Seals. Jno Powell
(father of Mary Smith) was born in Caswell

Page 2

[Page 2]
Co. N.C. and he was a son of John Powell (of VA who
was a cousin of Geo Washington, Peggy Powell
(mother of Mary Smith) was born in Doublin
Ireland, her maiden name was Peggy Mc-
Donald. Uncle Andrews story of Peggy
Powell. Peggy Powell, the wife of Jno Powell of
Caswell Co, N.C. and the mother of Mary Smith (who
was the mother of Jeptha V Smith) was born in
Dublin Ireland. her maiden name was Peggy
McDonald. she, with other school children girls
of Dublin were [invited ?] by a Captain of a large
ship. “to a ball to or g were of the ship.” [?] When
the party was underway the ship quietly sailed
away, pirates they proved to be, and the girls
were brought to America (Virginia seaport)
and sold as slaves. Peggy was bought by one
John Powell, who beft and reared her care-
fully. His son fell in love with her and
married her, and much to their surprise their
there were no parental objections.
John Powell, the father of Mary “Smith” and her bros.,
& sisters: James, Charles, John, Judith, Nancy, Peggy.
& Martha was the son of Jno Powell of Virginia
who was first coz of Geo Washington first
Pres. of U.S.

So here we have a narrative of migration from Caswell Co, NC to Hancock Co, GA and then later to (Randolph Co, AL) and Glendale Co, MS. I wish to point out that Caswell Co, NC is very close to Orange Co, NC (if not formed from a part of it).

Orange County was formed from Granville, Johnston, and Bladen Counties in 1752. Guilford, Chatham, and Wake were all formed from a large portion of Orange County in 1770. Caswell County was formed from the north half of what remained of Orange County in 1777.

Upon further investigation, we can find David Dickson/Dixon in the 1803, 1805, and 1806 Franklin County, GA tax lists (Thanks to Blake Smith for this find. Invaluable!)

[Additional find regarding Smiths of Jackson County, Georiga and militia General David Dickson/Dixon. I do not know if all of the Smiths listed here are related to Jeptha, but I believe the population deserves a study.]

1803 Franklin Co, GA Tax List

1805 Franklin Co, GA Tax List

1806 Franklin Co, GA Tax List

I will be posting more about Jeptha V. Smith’s line as I hammer out the details. (Jeptha was related to a late Governor of Alabama and I want to thoroughly go through this info before I post anything.)

For the time being, I will retract my conclusions about Nicholas Smith (m. Polly Burke) regarding the Nathan Smith Settlement. I have looked into the paper trail and because Owen Carpenter is present in the migrations, I believe that Nathan Smith of the settlement’s namesake is not related to my group’s Nicholas Smith.

Again, please verify all of this on your own. Thanks.

Thanks for reading!

Chris Smith