A few years ago, a cousin-in-law of mine from Freetown, Jackson Co, IN kindly sent me via postal mail a packet of really remarkable Smith material.

My cousin-in-law is the widow of a descendant of Isaac Stalker Smith, an elder brother to my 2x-great-grandfather, Daniel Robert Smith (we previously believed his middle name was Rice).

Among the fantastic items she gave me was an interesting family tree of Samuel Rice Smith and Hulda Wheeler, daughter of Alvin Wheeler and Sarah Willey.

-Begin Transcription-

(top left)

Conrad Isaac B. 1775
Nancy White Hendrix B. 1774
(written by Anabel Loper)

(center left)

South Carolina (Not right)
Isaac Smith
Nancy Hendrix
S. Carolina (Not right)

(center 1-8)

1. Polly – m. Coleman White (Ike [Isaac] White)
2. Isaac m. B. White
3. Thomas
4. Samuel Rice
   Hulda Wheeler
   James
   Alvin
   Isaac
   William
   Lewis
   Orral
   Henrietta
   Dan R
   Thomas
   Hiram
5. William
6. Vinie
7. Judy
8. Emily

(top right)

My aunt Rett gave me
these. I paid a genealogist
in S.C. to take the Smiths
from here on but she
died before she got it done
and I had to stop. I
didn’t want to lose any
more money so I
took the Wheeler line from
there.

Robert’s mother was a
Wheeler but I never did
hear him say she was
related to the Smiths.

We made the mistake
of not starting earlier to
gather information before
the older ones had passed us.

(bottom)

This info was written by Myrtle Smith Doss –
Information came from Henrietta Smith (aunt Rett)- daughter of Samuel Rice + Huldah

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Myrtle Smith Doss passed away 20 Sept 1981.

I can not help but see similarities between what my cousins describe as a female genealogist from South Carolina who, in the 1980’s, gave errant family history information about our Smith family and the work of Linda G. Cheek, a genealogist and author from South Carolina who claimed a specialty in Smiths. She has published a book that makes provably false conclusions about large Smith populations. Her book Ancestors and Descendants of Smiths was published in 1987, right around the time the information in these notes was penned. If not for the statement that the genealogist my cousins hired is said to have passed away, thus saving them from throwing money at nothing, I might assume they had contacted Cheek, but I have no evidence of this.

A second page

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(top, partially cut off)

(People called my (unknown)
Hulda but her real name
was Mary Ann someone told me Myrtle Smith Doss)

(left center)

Isaac Wheeler
VT 1754 -1833
m. 1779
Miriam Rugg

[note: this information is not correct for the parents of Alvin Wheeler]

(center)
Alvin Wheeler (10-19) 1790- (8-20) 1886
Danbury Conn
m. 1817
Sara Wille or Willey/
Mass. 1797 – 1864 (11-29-1864)
m. 1-19-1817

(in red)
Her name was Sarah Willey

(right of center)

m. 11-20-1840
Hulda
m. Ind
S. R. Smith
1841
10-(?)
Henrietta
David G. 8-1 1842
Orrel – Betsy Love
Nehemiah
Isreal

(far right)

James
Alvin -> Killed in Civil War
Isaac – [I do not know what this says]
William
Lewis
Orrel Hall
Henrietta
Dan -> Killed on Rail Road.
Thomas
Sam Hiram
My father [Myrtle Smith Doss]

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The ThruLines matching at AncestryDNA has this to say about the Isaac Smith m. Hulda Wheeler tree

These documents, or at least the research behind the information on these documents, is undoubtedly how a number of issues with my Salt Creek population have been perpetuated online.

In my immediate family’s early days of researching, much of our effort was put into looking for “Conrad Isaac Smith”. In examining the paper trail for the man whom I refer to in my research as “Isaac Smith, Sr.”, I can find no mention of him being referred to as “Conrad Isaac Smith”. I believe also, “Nancy White Hendrix” is a misnomer.

AncestryDNA ThruLines shows this:

Coonrod Hendrix married Julia Ann Rice. “Conrad” Hendrix surely has had his name intertwined with Isaac Smith, Sr.’s. Coonrod and Julia were married in Woodford Co, KY [20 Aug 1793], the same place as Nancy Hendricks and Isaac Smith, Sr. [9 Mar 1809].

Coonrod’s will can be found as the cover page of the Kentucky wills at the KY Historical Society.

Further, Nancy does not appear in records to have ever had a middle name “White”. There was a White family that was in-laws with both the Hendricks and Smith families, however.

Isabell Hendricks married a James White. They moved from Estill Co, KY (where Coonrod and Julia can be found between 1820-1830) to Brownstown, Jackson Co, IN and later to Van Buren, Brown Co, IN. Further, Coonrod transacted land with a Jesse White and Polly Smith married a Coleman White. Polly and Coleman were parents of Isaac White.

Shifting away from Coonrod and Julia for just a moment, when I was a teenager, one of our family van vacations included a stop at the Andersonville Prisoner of War camp in Georgia. My father wished to impress upon me the solemnity of the place, and to make sure I was aware that we had a relative who, at that place for nearly eight and a half months, suffered greatly. We found the name “Isaac White” inscribed on a monument and took a moment to pause. I remember seeing a crawfish in the trough of a running water feature there.

Isaac White is mentioned in the book “The Salt Creek colony of [Little] Egypt” by Robert Marshall Smith. This book includes Smith history up to and including my great-grandfather, Vernon Stanley Smith. Isaac White was 78 when he passed away 2 Mar 1924, having long survived the horrendous conditions of Andersonville Prison.

Returning to the item of correcting published identities, in the book, The Ruddick Family in America, Alvin Wheeler is stated to have been a son of Capt. Isaac Wheeler, and we can now prove this is not correct.

I attribute the likely dishonest work of whomever this “genealogist” from South Carolina was to the creation of these aforementioned errors.