Robert S. Smith, Rapides, Louisiana
Submitter: Richard Moriarty

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The grave of an unsung hero of the bayou country is found in Trinity
Church Cemetery. Ralph Smith Smith, a Connecticut Yankee, who migrated
to the bayou land of central Louisiana in the early 1830's after an early career on the pioneer Baltimore and Hudson Railroad.
Planters of the Cheneyville area, tormented with the problem of getting
their cotton and sugar cane to market by a more dependable route than
Bayou Boeuf, must have exchanged ideas with this young engineer.

Smith developed the financing of the railroad though the purchase of
one of the first newspapers of the area in order to advertise for
investors willing to buy stock in his proposed railroad. He fashioned
a marvelous dream of a transport empire: a packet of boats on the
Boeuf which could bring passengers and produce to his railroad. His
plans to extend the track from Alexandria to the town of Bunkie
(some 35 miles) never materialized. But, his railroad would bring
passengers and produce from the Boeuf country to Alexandria, where transportation was available on the big steamboats that plied the Red
and Mississippi rivers south to New Orleans, and as far north as Natchitoches, LA.
In 1836 the first section of track some sixteen miles in length was
laid from the town of Alexandria to what is known as Lamourie Bayou,
and in 1841 extended further to the Bayou Boeuf area at a place which
would later be know as Lecompte, some five miles from the town of Cheneyville.

The Ralph Smith Smith, or Red River, Railroad was the first railroad
built west of the Mississippi River.
The railroad functioned until 1864 when Union troops invaded the
area and destroyed the railroad to the extent of pulling up the track
and dumping train and track into the Red River at an area known as
Bailey's Dam in order to free a trapped Union fleet on the Red River
from an advancing Confederate Army under command of Gen. Richard Taylor.
Ralph Smith Smith was an individual whose efforts contributed greatly
to the commerce of Central Louisiana. Though never given the
recognition he rightly deserved, it was his foresight, ingenuity and
hard work which helped develop the agricultural community of the area
through his transportation system.

Ralph Smith Smith's grave is located in the rear of the cemetery to
the left of Trinity Church, and is one of the reasons the cemetery
is on the National Register of Historic Places in the U.S.