Ed W. Smith Sr. and Family, Smith County, TX ****************************************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm submitted by Carey L. Smith -- ccoloradomtn@cs.com 22 May 2001 ******************************************************************* ED W. SMITH SR., AND FAMILY "Biographies of Old Settlers." Historical, Personal and Reminiscent. Volume I By Sid S. Johnson, 1900: Sid S. Johnson, Publisher, Tyler, Texas Chapter XCI-- Pages 359-365 Ed W. Smith, Sr., fourth son of Aaron Stuart and Lucinda Smith, was born in Anderson district (now county), South Carolina, March 9th, 1841. When he was about two years old his family moved to Georgia and settled near the town of Marietta, Cobb county. Here he was brought up, receiving first-rate educational advantages in the town and country school nearby. In 1859, when he was eighteeen years old, the Georgia property was sold and the family moved to Texas and settled near the present site of Swan, Smith county. This closed his school advantages with the exception of a short similar session taught by his old brother, Samuel A. Smith, in the old Mt. Lebanon community, in 1860. On the 20th of January, 1861, he began the study of law in the office of Smith & Crow in Tyler, but soon caught the military spirit then dominant in the country, and went to drilling for service. The drill masters were Col. Harney Yarbrough, an old milita officer who had seen some service in the Mexican war, and Jas. Howard, a young mechanic from the state of Ohio, who afterwards made an excellent Confederate soldier in Douglas' battery. The cold pursuit of law as expounded by Blackstone, did not mix well with the military spirit in the mind of a nineteen-year-old boy of ardent temperament, and consquently not much progress was made in that pursuit. On the 10th of June, following, he, with quite a number of other young men, left Tyler for Dallas under command of Jas. P. Douglas, where a few days later, being joined by a like number of young men from that town, they were organized into the First Texas battery. He was in very frail health when he entered the service, and remained so for several months, but would not entertain the idea of a discharge. From this time on his life was merged with the life of his company, constantly on hand, cheerfully obedient to all orders, and ready for any sort of service that falls to the lot of a private soldier. He probably answered to as many roll calls, and did as much fatigue service as any man in the battery. At least, he is willing for his comrades to pass judgement on the character of his services. Just previous to the expiration of the second term of enlistment, when the country was threatened with the dissolution of our armies in the field, and the conscript measures were pending in the Confederate congress, Douglas' battery was perhaps the first military organization in the Confederacy to re-organize for the war, which she did in a series of ringing resolutions. The subject of this sketch was very active in the re-organization, and his name was mentioned in a General Order from Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, commending the example of the battery to the army. The act proved to be contagious, and other organizations rapidly followed suit throughout the army. Ed. W. Smith was in all the battles and skirmishes in which his company engaged, excepting that of Richmond, Ky., he having been left behind, sick, at Knoxville, Tenn. He, with his companions, rejoined the army near Harodsburg, Ky., on the day following the battle of Perryville. He was captured on the retreat from Nashville in the winter of 1864; was carried first to the Tennessee penitentiary at Nashville, where he had smallpox and a complication of other ailments, and was paroled, about as much dead as alive, on the 2nd of May, following. After many hardships, and experiences with negro guards, he landed in Tyler on the 20th of June, 1865, having walked in company with a fellow- prisoner, John Harmon, of Douglas' battery, from Monroe, La., a distance of two hundred and forty miles. In the fall, after recovering from a long spell of fever, he taught a three-months' school near Col. Frank Overton's. The following spring he established, with Capt. W.F. Hamilton, the "Trinity News," of Palestine, using the old "States Rights Sentinel" outfit. After something over a year of varying experiences in the conduct of a newspaper, he closed out the enterprise on account of continued bad health. On the first of November, 1866, during his stay at Palestine, he was married to Miss Johnnie Robertson, oldest daughter of Col. John C. Robertson of Tyler. After quitting the newspaper business, and concluding that he could not safely follow an indoor life, he went to farming. After several changes of location, he settled, int he last days of 1870, on a section of land ten miles southwest of Tyler on the Thomas Quevado Seven Leagues, his residence being near the present site of the village of Noonday. Here the family has since made its home. Ten children were born to himself and his wife, nine boys and one girl, in the following order: Stuart Robertson, now a lawyer in Tyler; Hope, now Mrs. Dr. A. R. Swann of Swan; Sledge Harlan, who owns a farm near the old homestead; Edward William Jr., and Robert Ewing, lawyers of Tyler; Lloyd Travis, who is in charge of the home plantation; Charles Daniel, with Olfenbuttel Dry Goods company of Tyler; Maurice Virgin, student and Swanie-Brock and Benjamin Goodman, aged respectively thirteen and eleven years. Mr. Smith had the great misfortune to lose his wife by death on the morning of the 21st of June, 1897. She was one of the noblest of women, and greatly loved and mourned by a great host of friends throughout the county. When the settlement was made on the Seven Leagues, that great body of virgin lands was an almost unbroken wilderness, having been kept off the market by litigation until about 1870. From the beginning, Mr. Smith stood for schools and churches--for social order and progress generally. He has seen grow up around him by slow degress one of the most promising country communities in East Texas, gathering about the little hamlet of Noonday, which contains three general merchandise stores, two steam gins and mills with all modern appliances; two churches, Baptist and Methodist, and a flourishing high school, domiciled in one of the finest school buildings in the county, outside of Tyler. He has been a member of Noonday Baptist church since it organization in 1876, being one of the five charter members. He has been one of the deacons in the church ever since its charter, and during the larger part of the time superintendent of the Sunday school. In all matters of public interest he has been the leader, and the physical growth and moral and intellectual advancement of the community is but a monument to his wise forethought and broad public spirit and untiring energy. At the general election in 1873, when the people in their renewed strength swept the old E. J. Davis administration out of power by the election of Robert Coke and his associates on the state ticket, Mr. Smith was elected Justice of the Peace, the county under the constitution then in force being divided into only four Justice precincts, the justice serving as county commissioner, tax assessor, notary public, etc. In that capacity, Mr. Smith, associated with Capt. Tom Smith, E.P. Jarvis, E. G. Littlejohn and John C. Allen constituted the first democratic county commissioners' court after the war, displacing the old Whitemore radical administration of our county affairs. Mr. Smith was elected floater from this district in the general election of 1892 and served through the 23rd Legislature, his chief ambition being to vote straight, "only speaking," as he once remarked, "when the alternative was to speak or bust." He has served his county as a member of six grand juries, over two of which he presided as foreman. He is very fond of the quiet domestic life of the farm, infinitely preferring it to any sort of public service. He boasts of no special skill as a farmer, but is a strong beliver in advanced farming, and thinks the time has come for the farmers of this section to move forward, not only by a wider diversity of farm interests, but in better methods of cultivation and the preservation of their souls. Mr. Smith is a man of broad intellectuality, of strong convictions, with the courage to speak them at the right time. He is familiar with the history of his own and other countries, and with all questions affecting them. He is one of the best posted men in the country, of extensive reading and learning. He is a brilliant and versatile writer, but seldom uses this talent in a public way. He has an aversion to public life, and is content to remain in his beautiful country home, where he has found his greatest happiness on rearing a bright and cultured family.