Biography of Drury D Smart, Independence Co, AR

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SOURCE: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas. 
Chicago: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1889.
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page 715 

Drury D. Smart. Among the many eminent and enterprising agriculturists
of Independence County, Ark., worthy of mention in these pages, is Mr. Smart,
who has been identified with the farming interests of the community since 1856.
He is a son of Reuben and Margaret (Melton) Smart, natives of Rutherford
County, N. C., and he was born in the same place. He partly completed his
education in his native county, and after the death of his father, in June,
1845, he and his mother, in the fall of that year, emigrated to East Tennessee,
and here finished his schooling and grew to mature years. From 1856 to 1859 he
worked as a farm hand in Independence County, Ark., but at the latter date
removed to Little Rock, and engaged in stage driving, being employed by Messrs.
Hanger & Gaines, who were extensive mail contractors, and remained with them
about two years. In 1861 he again returned to Oil Trough Bottom, where he gave
his attention to tilling the soil until 1862, at which date he enlisted in Col.
Dobbins' Cavalry regiment of Arkansas Volunteers, and remained in the army
until 1865, participating in the battles of Helena and Marks' Mills, where
1,300 of Gen. Steele's command were captured, together with [p.715] ninety-six
wagons and teams and four pieces of artillery, this blow effectually putting an
end to the Red River expedition. In 1864 he was in the saddle forty-two days,
in pursuit of Gen Steele's command, who was attempting to form a junction with
Gen. Banks in his Red River expedition, but, as stated above, the attempt only
met with failure. June 5, 1865, he was mustered out of service and returned to
civil life, locating in Cache Township, Jackson County, Ark. He was married in
the summer of the same year to Miss Sarah Obarr, of Jackson County, a native of
Georgia, from which State her parents emigrated to Arkansas, in 1848 or 1849.
After making three crops in Jackson County, he returned to Oil Trough Bottom,
and was an extensive farmer of that region until 1871, when he moved to
Faulkner County, this State, and homesteaded eighty acres of heavily-timbered
land, and at once set energetically to work to clear and improve his land. He
cleared and put forty acres under cultivation, built a good double log house
and other buildings, and made many other valuable improvements during his
twelve years' residence in the county. In 1885 he returned to Independence
County, the hub around which he bad so long revolved, and has since been
farming on land belonging to E. L. Watson, of Newport, Ark. Mr. Smart and his
wife are the parents of six children, two of whom have attained their majority:
James D., Jesse Y., Reuben T., John M., Alice L. A., and William Asher. Mr.
Smart is a patron of education, and is giving his children good advantages. He
is a Democrat in politics, and while in Jackson County, held the office of
justice of the peace of Cache Township. He was a member of the Wheel during its
existence, and he and wife are in communion with the Missionary Baptist Church.