The John Smith Family
The earliest member of this family that we have as yet been able to document was named John Smith. He came walking into White County, Tennessee shortly after 1800 from Virginia. As of yet we don’t know who his father, mother, or any siblings might have been. We have record of him being born in 1788, shortly after America had won its independence from England. When he was 4 years old, America elected its first president, George Washington, also of Virginia. I would imagine that growing up at that time and in that place was very exciting and now the population of America was on the move west providing a chance for new lands and new experiences. White County, Tennessee was on the frontier and most of the roads were little more than buffalo trails where the huge beasts would literally open trails through the brush and canebrakes. Woe be unto the unsuspecting rider, cornered on one of the trails and unable to avoid the herds.
John married Susan from North Carolina sometime before 1817 (one record we have says he came from North Carolina as well), and we do not know her maiden name. His oldest son, John Carroll was born in that year and when he was 23 years old, young John Carroll met and married Catherine Hyder Bradley. Catherine was the daughter of Anselam Bradley and Mary Hampton. Mary was the daughter of Colonel Andrew Hampton and Catherine Hyder of North Carolina. Colonel Andrew Hampton was the hero of the battle of King’s Mountain, North Carolina, during the Revolutionary War. Catherine evidently inherited some of her famous grandfathers tenacity, as seen from stories told of her and her life. John Carroll and Catherine (Kate) lived some of the time east of Sparta, Tennessee at the well known resort of Bon-Aire. At some point the owners gave them and there progeny full access to the resort forever. They were not allowed to sell water or firewood, but could have all they wished for their own use. The water was a mineral spring and was renowned as being health giving. In 1840 a large hotel was built there, and it was frequented by state leaders such as Andrew Jackson. From 1840 to 1856 Kate had 9 children and in 1856 John Carroll died. The family had already made plans to go to Arkansas and shortly after his death Kate and her family and her father Anselam Bradley and his family and other families left for Arkansas.
Mrs. Nancy Bradley McAllister stated in her auto-biography that the old wagons rolled for 5 long weeks to Van Buren, County, Arkansas. This was a distance of just over 500 miles - about a ten hour drive today. Remember, they had to ferry the Cumberland, Tennessee, and the Mississippi Rivers at the very least, and probably many other smaller rivers. Northeast Arkansas, at that time, was very swampy and over grown. I’m sure they had to build a few roads as they went. They definitely qualified as pioneers. Van Buren County, Arkansas was probably not the most hospitable place the family could have migrated to. It was rolling hills, somewhat rocky, and it didn’t have a thick topsoil. It was not suitable for farming but farm they did, mostly cotton and probably corn and other grains for their livestock. In 1840, a cotton gin had been erected having the capacity of separating the seed from 400 pounds of cotton per day. It was powered by 2 oxen on long shafts, probably walking a circle. I remember seeing sorghum molasses mills powered by a team of mules the same way when I was a small child. The seed were considered worthless and were kept away from the livestock as they were considered harmful to animals, only enough was kept for seed for the following years planting. This, however, must to have been enough to spur an increase in families planting enough to grow enough for a bale or two a year.
Anselam Bradley only lived a real short time after arriving in Van Buren County. But his family grew and prospered and were active in local affairs and politics for many years, as well as the Smith family. John Carroll and Kate had a son in 1849, a few years before his death, and it is this issue that this family history is about.
 Henry Smith and family, left to rightwe think William Andy, Henry (sitting), David (standing), Sarah (standing), Permilia (sitting), Bertha (child standing in front), Michael (in lap). |
Henry L. Smith was born the 6th child and the 4th son of John Carroll and Kate. At this point in time I personally know very little of his life or activities. I have been told he was a circuit rider, a traveling preacher of sorts. He was 12 years old when the Civil War broke out. So far, I have no mention of any military service (it was not unusual for 12 to 16 year olds to serve on either side). Life was hard. For years during the war and reconstruction period, first the jayhawkers (northern sympathizers) and then the bushwhackers (southern sympathizers) would raid the local public. Most of these men on both sides were mostly local thugs, and probably not particular to the outcome of the war or its cause, only to their own profits. Then after those hardships wound down, then came the carpetbaggers. They were the mostly northern supervisors, sent down to supervise the reconstruction of the South. One of the local Van Buren County Historians remarked that a log courthouse built during the reconstruction period cost many times over the cost of a stone building a few years later, because the city official (a carpetbagger) owned, with his two sons, the sawmill that the logs came from. In 1870, when he was 21, Henry married Parmelia Jane McAllister, 17 years of age. Her father was Michael McAllister, her mother, Elizabeth, whom we don’t know her last name. |
| Jane was to live until 1896, bearing 7 children - 4 boys and 3 girls. The second son is William Andy Smith, my grand father. I also remember meeting his two younger brothers Mike and Jesse on a trip to Clinton when I was young. After Jane’s death, Henry married Cora Tumbleston. My Aunt Jean remembers her as Aunt Cora. |  |
Henry lived another 14 years, dieing in Van Buren County in 1916 and is buried in the Bradley Cemetery there with Jane. He only survived his mother Catherine (Kate) by 6 years as she passed in 1910, at 90 years of age.
So my grandpa Will, known in later years as Uncle Will, started his life in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains. He was a religious man, and was always involved in church.
After the death of his wife Emma - 'Bell' as he called her - he traveled to different revival meetings
and brush arbor meetings all across northern Arkansas.  W.A. Smith (left) and companion on one of his many church revival crusades He was 60 years old before I had much memories of him, but that was what I remember most about him. He was, as I remember, a serious man, and was always walking somewhere. Even in his later years he walked every where. |
 Stella Hartwick, William Andy Smith and Emma Jane "Bell" Hartwick |
In 1905 at age 21 Will married the most beautiful girl in Van Buren County. The story is that on the same day that he married her, he was told that she had negro blood. Will got on a mule and rode all the way to Tennessee, where she was from, to find out the truth. When he arrived he found the story indeed was true, so he returned to Van Buren County and had the marriage annulled.
 Jean Smith, her brother Berlon Smith and his wife Louise |
On September 10th 1910, he married Emma Jane “Bell” Hartwick, the 21 year old daughter of John Leonard Hartwick and Fanny Francis Douglas. Will was 25. At age 27, his first daughter was born, Bertha Florance, and at age 32, his first son, Berlon Hermon, was born followed by Winnie Jean on Jan 21, 1920 and Billy Dean in 1927. |
In 1921 Will moved his family near Greenway, in Clay County, Arkansas. I have some remembrances of visiting my grandparents there as a small child. Sometime during the time of WWII he moved to a house just outside of Pollard, also in Clay County. The house sat on the north side of the road near the road that turns north out of Pollard and goes to Qulin, Missouri. Then shortly after that he moved to a farm about 3 miles west just off the South side US62. I believe that is where Grandma Emma became ill with breast cancer. She didn’t live too long after that and died January 1st, 1947 at our home, which was nearby. Grampa was 53, he never remarried but he continued his church work and was a good grandfather to us kids. He lived for a while in Piggott, Arkansas, which is in the same county. He died in a nursing home in Corning in 1970.
 The Hartwick siblings 1)Eve, 2)John, 3)Emma, 4)Dell, 5)Ludie, 6)Martin, 7)Stella, and a 8)brother - possibly Homer |
I wish to mention here the Hartwick family - Grandma Smith’s family. I have warm remembrances of Aunt Eve and Aunt Ludie, and of Uncle Martin, and of visits with them in Greenway. I’m sorry that I don’t have stories of them to tell, I will be happy to print any that readers of this might have to add. |
This narrative will also have links to indirect family and the material that we have on them, and we would appreciate any input on these that might come forward.
| I would like to recount some stories about my aunts and uncles, and beg your forgiveness if I mention anything that might embarrass you. I had great Uncles and Aunts as a young boy, so I will start with my Uncle Berlon. I don’t have any early remembrances of him except for the night he left for the military in WWII, and it was just the emotion and the noise and excitement mainly that I remember, but enough to make an impression. My real impressions was the first time I saw him he was still wearing part of his army uniform. I must have been 5 or 6 at the time. Sometime that afternoon, the men all walked off down the road toward the woods (back then the woods were always nearby). We had not walked very far when a rabbit jumped up and ran in front of us and quick as a wink Uncle Berlon pulled out his army sheath knife and threw it and hit the rabbit running, but not enough to bring it down. Right then he became my hero. He was always good to me and was a very loving man. He didn’t speak around me about the atrocities of war, and I never new much of what he had seen. But one story he related stuck with me, and I have always remembered it. He spoke of that last winter in Germany near the end of the struggle, the fighting was fierce and casualties on both sides were high. The winter itself was a very bad cold one. He said at one point they would take the bodies of the German soldiers, for lack of any other means of disposal, and they would stack them like cordwood in huge piles and the bodies would freeze that way and the soldiers had become so callused that they would go through their chow line and come and sit on the stacks of bodies and have their meal. It horrified me to think of it. Later on in Viet Nam I came to understand how it could be. |
 Berlon Smith, US Army |
March 29, 1946, he married my Aunt Louise - Velma Louise Mathers from Pollard. I remember thinking many times how beautiful she was, and still is. It was always a treat to go see them or when they came to visit. Oft times he would work with dad on the farm or they would pick cotton with us, or go on the family fishing trips. One time we were “hogging” fish. Uncle Berlon was feeling under the banks of the ditch for catfish, and I was about ten feet behind him up to my shoulders in water when a muskrat bit him through the thumb. He threw his arm up and back and the muskrat came loose and hit me full in the face, putting me underwater. Everyone had a good laugh at me and resumed their fishing.
In years later I always found it a pleasure to go and visit him. He worked for several businesses around Corning. I believe the last time I remember seeing him was a visit to their home when they lived just south of the “German Church” north of Corning on US67.
Next is my Aunt Jean. Obviously I must have spent many hours with her that I don’t remember because of the many photos that we share together. I remember times when
we visited them and they visited us. I remember one time when she and her husband Elmon Rowlett were either leaving by train or arriving by train and he was wearing a US Navy uniform. In later years we visited them at their home in St. Ann, Missouri, where
she still lives as I am writing this narrative. It was always exciting to go there. St. Ann and St. Louis was a big city and there was lots to see. In 1957 I turned 18 and I went to stay with them. I gained employment at McDonnell Aircraft and I lived with them from July to October that year. And I was treated wonderfully. 
Elmon, Jean and Gary Rowlett, circa 1948
She and Uncle Elmon were far better hosts than I probably ever was a boarder. As the years have gone by, I have come to appreciate her giving spirit over and over again. When my sister Carol developed cancer and eventually passed away from it Aunt Jean was always there. Then not to much later, when dad became ill and passed, she was always there. And as mom became increasingly ill and feeble this last year Aunt Jean went far beyond her strength and was always there for her sister. I will never be able to express my gratitude to her and her family for their efforts. Aunt Jean, I love you.
As I have said, Uncle Bill was my favorite Uncle. He was the youngest and closest to my age and I always wanted to be just like him. My earliest memories of him had to be
A young Larry Murley and his Uncle Billy Smith
during WWII at some family or neighborhood gathering. He was “hangin” with some
friends, there was music playing, probably from a radio, and the song was “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me” and I couldn’t understand it because there was no apple tree. Uncle Bill looked so cool, he was wearing blue jean overalls and a round straw hat with the front brim penned up tight to the crown. He stayed with us I seemed to remember a couple of times. In 1946 he married Imogene Brawner. The marriage was short lived, and I remember being sad for him. He later on went to St. Louis and vicinity for work, but would come back for visits. On one of these visits he took me to a “musical” - basically a jam session at some neighbors house - and one of the musicians played “spoons” - two table spoons with tape on the backs - but I thought
it was awesome. I was about 12 or 13 when he met and married Aunt Joan. Some where
on this website is a picture of Aunt Joan picking cotton, the first time she had ever seen the stuff. I am glad he married for more than one reason. Some time in my 18th or 20th year we went for a visit and went swimming in the creek behind their house and I almost
drowned my skinny teenage butt. Fortunately, Aunt Joan was there. She jumped in and saved my life. I had already gone down for the 3rd time, but after all the water drained out
of me I was all right. Thanks, Aunt Joan, thanks Uncle Bill.
So you see, my heroes are my Aunts and Uncles, my parents, my grandparents, my great-grand parents, my great-great-grand parents, and so on up the line, because with out them there would not be me, nor thee. Without them, our present way of life would not be. They all contributed, in their on way. It was necessary that they lived, and they should be remembered. This was just a very minute portion of my remembrances of them. There are as many hundreds of stories of them as there were those that knew them. Wouldn’t be great if we could all experience those as well. I would have liked to have been able to relate every moment in history as it happened during their lives, but that might have been some tedious reading. Better you go look it up. My great-grand father went off to fight the Civil War at nineteen years old. I was just slightly older when I went to Viet Nam. I personally believe that knowing the past gives one a more positive approach to the future. So, at the end of this narrative, let me salute the beginning, Thanks Smiths, Bradleys, McAllisters, Hartwicks, McCowans, Douglas, their own tree and trees, and all the families that I have failed to mention, thank you, for your blood, your talents, your DNA, all that we have inherited from all of you. You continue to live in our memory.
Return to Surname Index