Macon County AlArchives Biographies.....Smith, Neil C.  
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Carolyn Golowka http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00012.html#0002972 April 8, 2008, 8:27 pm

Author: “Memorial Record of Alabama,” Volume 2, published by Brant & Fuller in Madison, WI (1893), pages 452-453

Neil C. Smith, deceased, was one of the most prominent business men of 
Tuskegee, for many years.  He was born and reared in Edgefield District, S. C., 
and there married Caroline H. Henesee, a native of the same state.  In 1857, 
Mr. Smith and his wife came to Alabama and settled in Tuskegee, where Mr. Smith 
engaged in carriage and wagon manufacturing, and continued so employed until 
his death.  He was an energetic, industrious, progressive and honest citizen – 
a Mason and a Methodist.  He was the eldest child born in a family of one son 
and eight daughters, whose father, a Scotchman, came to America when a young 
man, and was married in South Carolina, to Miss Boatwright.  Mr. Smith was 
prominent as a Baptist minister; a sister of his, the only other member of the 
family that came to the United States, married Rev. Mr. White, also a Baptist 
minister, who erected the first Baptist church on Savannah, Ga.  Mrs. Neil C. 
Smith was a daughter of John Henesee, a carriage dealer and general speculator 
of Columbia, S. C.  She died in 1884, aged about sixty-six years, a Methodist, 
and the mother of six sons and two daughters, viz.: John C., who died in 1892, 
a very prominent man of Tuskegee, and who, on the death of his father, took 
charge of the business, and in 1867, changed the firm name to that of John C. 
Smith & Bro., under which style the surviving brother still does business.  For 
some years past a furniture department has been carried on in connection with 
the carriage trade, and the company also run a grist mill, and a cotton-gin, 
and since 1888, have operated the Tuskegee oil-mill.  At the beginning of the 
war the estate was valued at $60,000, and consisted mostly of negroes, which 
were, of course, lost; but good management has restored the concern to its 
former prosperity.  Mr. John C. Smith was once a sheriff of Macon county, was 
always active in public affairs, and in the church;  he was also one of the 
board of managers and a member of the executive committee of the Alabama 
Conference Female college.  He left a wife and three children.  The second son 
of Neil C. Smith, was George H., deceased, who was captain of a battery 
stationed at Mobile most of the time during the war; afterward, he became a 
member of the carriage and furniture firm.  Ellen L. is the elder of the two 
sisters.  The fourth child is Campbell E., the senior member of the present 
firm, who, at the breaking out of the Civil war, was one of the first to offer 
his services to the Confederacy, by enlisting in company C, Third Alabama 
infantry, early in 1861.  His first active service was at Pensacola for about 
six weeks, when he was transferred to Virginia where, with the exception of the 
first battle of Manassas, he fought in every engagement in which the great army 
of Virginia participated, serving as corporal all through, and never absenting 
himself save once, when he had a furlough home for thirty days.  At Gettysburg, 
he was wounded in the shoulder and in the head, which disabled him for a few 
weeks, when he was again at the front, and remained there until the surrender 
at Appomattox, since when he has passed all his time with the carriage and 
wagon firm.  The fifth member of the family, Charles Alexander, now a member of 
the firm, was also a soldier in the late war, in the same command, was captured 
at Petersburg, early in 1865, and imprisoned at Point Lookout until the close.  
The sixth child, James D., deceased, was in the same corps with his brother, 
George H., from some time in 1863.  The youngest son, Dr. M. M. Smith, a 
graduate of the Kentucky Medical college, at Louisville, is a resident of 
Birmingham, Ala., where he stands at the head of his profession.  The younger 
daughter, and youngest child, Mattie, deceased, was the wife of Rev. Wiley 
Denson, a Presbyterian divine.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/macon/bios/smith766gbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/alfiles/

File size: 4.5 Kb