Historical Sketches of Southwest Virginia
Publication No. 17 - 1973
SAMUEL ELBERT SMITH
The Man
and His Times
By
Myralin Trayer
The life of Samuel Elbert Smith
spanned most of the latter half of the 19th century and much of the
first half of the 20th. During his long life he functioned in many
different capacities: husband, father, farmer, carpenter, cabinetmaker,
blacksmith, coffin maker, school teacher, scribe and postmaster. He was
a man of strong convictions, but he was subject to the frailties that
plague all men.
Samuel was born on 10 April 1858, the
son of William Henderson Smith and Julia Ann McClellan Smith. He was
born at the family home on Copper Ridge in Scott County, Virginia (1)
Samuel was descended from Benjamin Smith who was, according to family
tradition, the first Smith to come to that part of the country. (2)
The outbreak of the Civil War when he
was only four years old and its subsequent cancerous spread over the
once- peaceful South must have been a factor in shaping the character of
the man. One must wonder if that bloody conflict, with its intense
polarity of ethical beliefs, coming as it did during those formative
years of his young life, could be the contributing factor in the
strength of his later political convictions. All of his life he was
known to be a strong Republican. (3) This was not a popular position in
the Reconstruction South where Republicans were associated with the
Union - the North. But Virginia was a border state, and there was a
significant number of families who followed those political conscience
demands. There were also many families which were divided over the
question of secession and slavery, thus producing the often-dramatized
split family.
Samuel was too young to participate in
the war, even as a childish drummer boy, but the family was not
untouched by the war around them. Their home and family were not
directly involved, but the nearness of the battles and the ever-present
fear and threat of battle was not a setting milieu for living. In
September, 1864, the county court clerk, Sylvester Patton McConnell, was
ordered to remove the court records and keep them hidden lest they be
destroyed by the enemy. Only after the end of the war were they returned
to the courthouse in Gate City. (4)
Farms in the community around them
were sacked to provide food and supplies for the opposing armies. In one
family, the Landon J. Elliotts, neighbors of the Smiths, two of the
young sons were instructed by their father to remove the livestock from
the barn, drive the animals over a hill behind the house and hide them
in a hollow between covering ridges. The boys were successful in their
efforts, and the animals were not seized by the soldiers. (5)
William Henderson Smith, Samuel's
father, was born 3 May 1824. He married Julia Ann McClellan on 23
December 1857. William was twenty-three and Julia was eighteen. Julia
was the daughter of Samuel McClellan and Rebecca Lane McClellan. William
and Julia's first child was a daughter, Rebecca, who was born about
1849. She married Joe Southern and had three children.
The second child of William and Julia
was Samuel's only brother, Logan, but he died as a child; and Samuel was
brought up as the only brother in a family of girls.
The third child was Minerva L. who was
born about 1854. She married Henderson McConnell and had five children.
Sarepta Jane was the fourth child. She
was born 5 March 1856, married Alva Elliott on 4 March 1878, and
eventually had twelve children. On the 1860 census of Scott County she
is listed as Nancy S. J., so we may assume that Nancy was a part of her
name although it does not appear as such on any other records found to
date.
The fifth child is the subject of this
report, Samuel Elbert. His marriage to Sarah McConnell and his six
children will be discussed in more detail.
The sixth, and youngest, child of
William and Julia was Victoria, who married William Strong and had ten
children. (6)
This prolific family was typical of
farm families who solved their labor problems in some small measure by
giving birth to the workers they needed. Sometimes they were girls
instead of the hoped-for sons, but the girls were expected to work just
as long and just as hard as the boys. The scope of their
responsibilities was somewhat different, but the intensity of the work
was very similar.
Samuel grew into a man of average
height and chunky build. He has a protruding chin and very dark hair.
When he was an old man and his hair had become thin and gray, he
recalled with pleasure that his hair had once been so black "that
it looked blue." (7)
When he was twenty years of age he
fell in love with and married a young lady who lived in the community,
seventeen-year-old Sarah Elizabeth McConnell. (8) She was a slender
young woman with large serious eyes and a sweet, vulnerable looking face
which matched an unwavering iron will. She was the youngest child of
James Thomas McConnell and his second wife, Elizabeth Elliott McConnell.
There were five children from Thomas' first marriage and seven from the
second.
Sarah inherited the family home and
about a hundred acres of farm and timber land from her family, and it
was here that the young couple began their marriage. The house was
originally a log structure with one large room downstairs and another of
the same dimensions above it. There was a wide hall running from front
to back with a broad staircase leading to the room above. Later Samuel
added another room downstairs, smaller than the first, and one of
matching size upstairs above it. There was a large stone chimney at each
end of the house, and each of the rooms was heated by a fireplace.
Originally, all cooking was done on these fireplaces also. They were
equipped with swinging-arm- cranes from which large pots were suspended.
Sarah also used pots called "bakers" in the fireplace. Later
Samuel covered the original logs with weather boarding and added two
porches (porticoes) to the front of the house, one upstairs and one
downstairs. He also built a kitchen and dining room at the back of the
house and connected them to the house with an open breezeway. The house
was painted white, and its decorative trim around the porticoes and the
turned-wood spindles which supported the porch rails, together with the
cedar shake roof of the house, made it a very attractive home.
The larger of the downstairs rooms was
Sarah and Samuel's bed and sitting room; the other, the "Blue
Room," was used as a company bedroom and parlor. Both of the
upstairs rooms were bedrooms. (9)
There was a small stream flowing
through the side yard on the west side of the house. Samuel and Sarah
constructed a spring house on its clear water where milk and other dairy
products could be kept cold. It became one of the children's chores
later to keep the spring house clean of leaves and mud. The stream also
provided many hours of fun for the children as a playground. There was
one place in the stream where white clay could be found. This clay,
shaped lovingly and dried in the sun, was used in making many childish
doll dishes.
Sarah maintained a small kitchen
garden in the backyard while Samuel battled daily with the hilly land to
try to carve a living from it. Much of the acreage was left in
timberland, and Samuel also had an apple orchard on the land. There was
a cellar, entered through the breezeway between the house and kitchen,
for the storage of apples, corn and potatoes throughout the year.
Outside the backyard were located the grainry and smokehouse. Further to
the east was Samuel's blacksmith shop. (10)
Sarah and Samuel's first child, a
daughter, was born 10 May 1879. She was named Julia Elizabeth for her
two grandmothers. In 1881 there was another child, Arban Jeff; and in
1883 another son, Wiley L. was born. The happiness of the year 1883 was
not to last however, and within six months both of the baby sons died,
(11) and there would never be another son for Sarah and Samuel. There
were, however, three more daughters: Bertha Alice born 18 June 1884;
Alpha L. was born in 1890; and Ida Mae was born in 1894.
Samuel was a firm believer in
education, but he was willing to send only one of his daughters, the
oldest, to college. The other daughters exhibited a fine native
intelligence, and they earnestly desired a further education; but Samuel
was not to be shaken in his position. Julia must "share" her
education with her sisters by teaching them what she had learned.
Julia later became a school teacher in
the Scott County school system and married one of her students, Edwin W.
Lane, on 9 August 1905. Bertha never received the education she wanted
so badly, but through daily self education she became skilled in home
nursing. She was quite familiar with herbs and wild plants. A cousin,
Dr. Hiram McConnell, regularly called on her to accompany him to take
care of the sick in the community. Bertha married William Leonard
McConnell on 17 June 1903, and eventually gave birth to fifteen
children. Thirteen of them lived to maturity.
Alpha married Henry M. McConnell on 9
December 1912. They settled in Florida. They had no children.
Ida Mae married John Lee Stallard on 7
May 1909. She died in childbirth in May, 1925. (12)
During his lifetime Samuel E. Smith
showed himself to be a man of many talents and abilities. He was not a
professional man, but he was an industrious man. He never made a
fortune, but he provided amply for his family, and he taught them
valuable lessons in thrift, economy and industriousness.
Samuel was a farmer. He raised
vegetables and grain on the cultivated portion of the farm. He kept
cows, pigs, chickens, and other farm animals, as well as a team of
horses for pulling the farm equipment and the wagons and carriage for
transportation. Wheat and corn were carried to the mill to be ground
into flour and meal. Cane was grown and made into molasses. Sugar maples
provided maple sugar. Molasses and maple sugar were called "long
sweetening." Granulated sugar, "short sweetening," had to
be bought, and it was a special treat. The farm provided for all the
needs of the family except coffee (parched grain was sometimes boiled
and drunk as a coffee substitute), salt, spices and sugar as mentioned
above. "Store bought" clothes were rare, although sometimes
materials were bought instead of being woven at home.
Samuel was also a carpenter and
cabinetmaker of unquestioned skill. He maintained a wood-working shop
(his "lumber shop") beside his blacksmith shop, just east of
the house, facing the road. Erecting buildings and houses, making
furniture and other items of wood, these were money making skills; and
money was in a rather short supply in that area. Another of Samuel's
skills which he practiced regularly, and for which he received no pay,
was that of a maker of coffins for those who died in the community. This
was his offering of love for his neighbors. The caskets were usually
made of walnut, shaped in the old way; wide at the shoulder, narrow at
the feet. The lid was hinged and the inside was lined with fabric,
usually black muslin. (13) Neighbors were close in their sociality then,
if not as close geographically as neighbors are today. When there was a
bereavement in the community, the neighbors closed ranks around the
sorrowing ones and took over. Women prepared food in vast amounts and
carried it in to the family. Some of them washed the body, "laid it
out," and prepared it for burial. Some of the men dug the grave.
These people knew that grief, like work, is made lighter when shared by
many.
Forty years before Samuel Smith was
born, in the General Assembly of the State of Virginia passed an act
providing for free education for indigent children, but it was not until
1870 that free public education as provided by law for all white
children. At first it was not a popular move, for people tended to
equate free education with the accepting of charity. Soon, however, it
was an accepted and successful operation, and parents became concerned
with securing the best possible teachers for their children.
Samuel had long been known for his
beautiful handwriting, and he was often called upon to act as scribe for
various persons when they needed something written out. Since he felt
qualified, Samuel applied for and was granted a teacher's license in the
Scott County schools.
The land for school buildings was
donated by landowners in their communities. Generally, they did so to
guarantee the proximity of the school to their own children. The
donation of the scant quarter or half acre of land for the school was a
very small sacrifice in many cases, because the site was unsuitable for
growing crops. There was no need, in the minds of many parents, to
provide a playground. Idle play was rather sternly looked upon. At many
of the schools the only place the children could play was in the public
road, and it was seldom kept in good repair.
The school houses were usually built
of logs, chinked with mud and moss. The periodic repair and maintenance
of the chinking was supposed to be the responsibility of the teacher and
pupils.
There were three grades of
certificates for teachers upon which their salaries were based. In the
early days the third (or lowest) level was paid $15.00 per month; the
second level teacher received $20.00 per month; a first level teacher
earned $25.00 per month; and a teacher at the professional level could
claim a grand salary of $30.00 per month. For a teacher to qualify for
his full salary there must have been an average daily attendance of at
least twenty students. For fewer than twenty (with a minimum average
daily attendance of ten) the teacher received per-capita rate, and this
could seriously affect the teacher's monthly salary. Beginning teachers
were plagued by the fear of "falling below the average." To
counteract low attendance, teachers engaged in many devices such as
prizes for attendance and special activities.
The certification of teachers seemed
to be rather loose and arbitrary affair. There was a little uniformity,
and usually there was merely an oral examination which just might be
administered while riding along on horseback in the company of the
school superintendent. The would-be teachers, as a rule, had received
their scholastic preparation (such as it was) in the local schools.
Occasionally this was supplemented by a few months' work in an Academy
or seminary. He was considered to be qualified if he demonstrated his
ability to work the arithmetic problems of the grades he was to teach.
This was an easily ascertainable check for his abilities, because
failure to solve a problem was immediately evident to both pupils and
parents. His deficiencies in other areas were less readily apparent.
Most teachers were credited with greater knowledge and abilities than
they actually possessed. The teachers were quite willing to foster this
belief.
Parents preferred teachers who
believed in corporal punishment and who had a reputation for being a
stern teacher. For this reason, many people were opposed to women
teachers, believing they were not strong enough physically to administer
the rod as they felt it should be done.
The curriculum usually consisted of
reading, spelling and arithmetic, with grammar and geography as
electives. In Scott County, most of the text books were brought in
wagons from Bristol, the nearest railway station at that time. Textbooks
were not supplied by the school system then, and parents were expected
to buy the books for their children. Because of their scarcity and high
price, they were treated with utmost respect. The most commonly used
textbooks were Webster's and Holmes' Spellers, McGuffey's Readers,
Fowler's, Davie's and Ray's Arithmetic, Harvey's Grammers and Maury's
Geographies.
Among the students, social standing
and financial advantages were shown, not by the clothing they wore, but
in the school lunch they brought from home. A lunch of cornbread bespoke
poverty and was eaten in secret, away from the eyes of the other
students. Wheat bread could be eaten openly - it stood for prosperity.
(14)
Besides being a farmer, a carpenter, a
cabinet and coffin maker, a scribe, a blacksmith, and a school teacher,
Samuel Smith was also a postmaster. For many years he maintained a post
office at Mack, VA in his home. The mail was delivered to Samuel's home
in a padlocked pouch, and people would come to his house to pick up
their mail or post their letters. To accommodate the post office, Samuel
partitioned off a small area (about 4' x 6') in the large downstairs
room. In theory, the people were supposed to come to the window and ask
for their mail; in practice they were most likely to stop their horses
in the road and yell, "Hey, Sam! Any mail today?" Samuel was
loathe to bring the mail out to callers and passing the time of day with
them, but only when Sarah was not around. Sarah, with her ironclad sense
of what was right and proper, insisted that there would be no running of
mail out to the road. If a person wanted his mail, he was obliged to
come in and call for it like a civilized human being. (15)
Sarah's strong convictions provided a
basis of the family's spiritual philosophy. In religious practices the
family was Baptist, but one may wonder if they were Baptist because of
belief or because of tradition. In the western part of Virginia at that
time there was little religious choice available: one could be a
Baptist, or a Methodist, or nothing. In some places one might find a
Presbyterian church, but even they were relatively rare. Anyone
espousing such esoteric beliefs as Catholic or Jews were as rare as
travelers from another planet. But whatever their ethical and religious
beliefs and profession, their membership in the Baptist church seemed to
provide them with the spiritual guidance and association they needed.
With their neighbors and friends, they met regularly and sang their
songs, prayed their prayers, listened to sermons and praised the Lord.
Samuel and the other men in the community constructed an outdoor stadium
in the woods near Irvington school in preparation for the Baptist
Association to meet. The amphitheater had long rows of seats made of
rough planks to seat the crowd of people who would be coming from
several counties to hear the preachers and the singing groups performing
over a three-day period. The Association meeting began with preaching on
Friday afternoon. After the preaching was over for the day, friends and
family would visit until late in the night, then bed down wherever there
was room to stretch out. Neighborhood houses were opened to seldom-seen
friends, and it was not uncommon to find anywhere from five to eight
children sleeping crosswise in one bed. Sarah spent days in advance of
the Association meetings cooking and preparing for all the friends and
loved ones they would be entertaining. Many who came did not have homes
to stay in while they were there, so they slept in their wagons. On
Saturday morning there was more preaching and singing; then there was a
recess for lunch. Food was brought in baskets and spread on cloths on
the ground. Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning again found the people
in their meetings, and again on Sunday there was a "dinner on the
ground." (16)
In the spring of 1916, Sarah became
severely ill. In the manner of extended families at that time, their
daughter, Bertha, and her family moved back into her childhood home to
help take care of her parents. Bertha and Leon had seven children by
that time, and they would have six more while they lived in Samuel's
house.
Sarah was afflicted with a tumor, and
as it increased in size it caused her periods of great pain. Samuel
hired a buggy to take her to Gate City; there they boarded a train which
carried them to Abingdon, VA, where Sarah could be treated in a
hospital. Surgery relieved some of her pain, but revealed the sad fact
that her condition could not be cured. Samuel brought her home on a cot
in the baggage car of the train. She died on 23 July 1916 and was buried
two days later, on her fifty-fifth birthday.
Samuel lived more than twenty-five
years after Sarah's death, but he never remarried. For fourteen years,
Bertha and her family lived with him and took care of him and the house.
Leon farmed some with Samuel, but the two men didn't get along together
very well. After a short time, Leon took a job that kept him away from
home for a week or two at a time, coming home for a few days when he
could.
Samuel filled his free hours by
visiting with his many friends in their homes or his, at Sam Henry's
store, or at Samuel's blacksmith shop. He liked to keep up-to-the-minute
on all the latest news of the community and all its inhabitants. He
would not have thought of himself as a gossip, but in his need to be the
first to hear the news and pass it on he became irresponsible with the
truth. It was said that most of his conversations began with the words,
"They tell me..."
Samuel never owned a car, nor did he
ever drive one. He traveled on foot, on horseback or in a horse-drawn
wagon. He was unfamiliar with the specific functions of driving a car,
but by observation he had determined that going and slowing were
controlled by one or more foot pedals. Once while he was a passenger in
a car driven by one of his grandsons, Frank Lane, Samuel decided that
the young man was driving faster than safely and good sense decreed. He
reached his own foot over and pushed down with all his might - on the
accelerator. "Iffen you don't slow down," he adjured,
"you're aimin' to kill us all!"
Frank was laconic. "Well,
Grandpa, if you'd get your foot off the gas, I might get her
stopped!"
It seemed that it was not just a
different drummer that Samuel marched to; he marched to his own private
drummer. Some of his actions were amusing, some were unexplainable, and
some seemed childish and petty. But whatever his actions were, they
always seemed to reflect his feelings honestly. He was never one to
practice deception. He was, simply, just what he was.
Once he was plowing a field in which
the corn was about a foot high. The day was quite warm, and Bertha was
bringing him a drink of water. She saw the horse bend its head down as
it pulled the plow along between the rows and bite off the tender young
shoots of corn. Samuel was enraged. He dropped the lines, rushed up to
the horse's head and bit it on the nose. "Dad blame you!" he
cried, "you bite my corn, and I'll bite you!" Perhaps
Samuel was a man who bit his horse and spread gossip; maybe he
"drove" a car recklessly and found fault with his son-in-law,
but he loved his daughters without reservation. He also loved his
grandchildren, and he spoiled them outrageously. Bertha's little boys
were his perennial shadows. One of them, Miles McConnell, even begged to
sleep with his grandpa.
After several years of two families
living under one roof, and with many active children always underfoot,
there arose some problems, some lack of harmony, between them. He cooked
his own food in the fireplace in his bedroom and ate it alone. Shortly
after that, in 1930, Leonard bought a house in Kingsport, TN, and moved
his family out of the Smith house. Samuel was too advanced in age to be
left entirely alone, so Julia and her family moved in with him at that
time. (17)
In March, 1942, Samuel (a man advanced
in age, but still active) was burning off one of his fields. Somehow the
fire got out of control and was becoming a threat to a fine stand of
timber. Samuel was alone. He fought the fire with more energy than his
eighty-four year old body could endure. He fell to the ground, his heart
failing.
Samuel Elbert Smith passed from this
life on March 16, 1942, but he left behind him a large posterity and a
wealth of family tradition.
The Smith house, once so proudly white
and straight, still stands today and is inhabited. It is no longer white
and straight however. The wood has weathered a silver gray; the porches
sag, and rail supports are missing in places. The cedar shake roof has
been replaced with galvanized metal. The wood paling fence is no longer
there to define the yard. The breezeway has been enclosed, and
electricity has come to the house. The springhouse has been taken over
by the weeds and mud. Where once a gourd of icy cold, pure water could
be had, and milk and cream were kept in cool freshness, now there is
just a small stream of questionable purity flowing by the house.
As one stands before the house now,
there is a sense, a special feeling; the past is still here. One could
almost feel that, at any moment, a tall spare man with black hair and a
drooping moustache would emerge from the house to offer the mail with a
smile and a word of greeting. One can sense the presence of Sarah,
slender and straight even in her last years, wearing her long skirt and
white starched apron. They will be there forever.
Footnotes: (1) Commonwealth of
Virginia, Vital Records of Scott County, Birth Records, Gate City, VA
(2) Victoria Smith Strong, as reported by Julia Brooks, July, 1980 (3)
Interview with Anne McConnell Gillenwater, granddaughter of Samuel
Elbert Smith, Gate City, VA, March 29, 1982. (4) Robert M. Addington,
History of Scott County, Virginia, (Kingsport, TN: By the author, 1932),
p. 148 (5) Interview with Lee J. Gillenwater, Gate City, VA, Sept. 1980
(6) Commonwealth of Virginia, Vital Records of Scott Co., Marriage
Records, Bk 1, p. 95; U. S. Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census of the
United States: 1860. Population. (7) Anne McConnell Gillenwater (8)
Commonwealth of Virginia, Vital Records of Scott County, Marriage
Records, Bk 2, p. 58, 1. 19. (9) Norma McConnell Fogleman, Unpublished
MS, Blountville, TN, 1980 (10) Interview with Ralph Emerson McConnell,
grandson of Samuel Elbert Smith, Kingsport, TN, March 29, 1982 (11)
Commonwealth of Virginia, Vital Records of Scott County, Birth Records,
Gate City, VA (12) Anne McConnell Gillenwater (13) ibid (14) Addington,
pp. 157-188 (15) Anne McConnell Gillenwater (16) Norma McConnell
Fogleman (17) Anne McConnell Gillenwater.
Bibliography: Commonwealth of Virginia, Vital Records
of Scott County; U. S. Bureau of the Census: Eighth Census of the United
States, 1860. Population; U. S. Bureau of the Census. Tenth Census of
the United States, 1880, Population; Addington, Robert Mr., History of
Scott County, Virginia, Kingsport, TN: Privately printed, 1932; Fogleman,
Norma McConnell. Unpublished MS. Blountville, TN, 1980; Gillenwater,
Anne McConnell, Interview, Gate City, VA, March 29, 1982; Gillenwater,
Lee I. Interview, Gate City, VA, Sept. 1980; McConnell, Ralph Emerson.
Interview. Kingsport, TN. March 29, 1982.
|