Pvt. Samuel Smothers

Private Samuel H. Smothers was born around 1830 in Franklin County, Virginia. He was probably related to the family of Keziah Smothers or Smithers (both spellings are used to indicate the same person) who was the family matriarch and one of seven free Black persons who owned land in Franklin County, according to the 1860 census. Keziah may have been Samuel’s grandmother.

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Samuel’s mother was Jane Smithers. An 1837 handwritten list of “Free Negroes and Mulattos in the District of Early” (Franklin County) names Samuel as a child of Jane Smithers (a cake baker) along with siblings, two boys and a girl: Erasmus Monroe, William Crump and Mary Ann.

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Jane eventually had eight children, and while she remained in Rocky Mount until her death in 1884, many of her family, including Samuel, made their way to Randolph and Wayne Counties in Indiana in the 1840s. In Indiana, Smothers received an education and became a schoolteacher. He married Eunice Crane in 1857. The 1860 Census lists him as a free man, a schoolteacher, living in New Garden, Indiana.

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Remaining in Franklin County, Samuel’s sister Mary Ann was the unmarried partner of Rocky Mount, Virginia, attorney William Tell Taliaferro, who left his entire estate to her when he passed. Anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia prevented him from marrying her. William Tell Taliaferro’s law partner was Jubal A. Early, who became the renowned Confederate General.

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Many in the Smothers family were light skinned. Some later passed for white, but Samuel identified as Black throughout his life. Samuel’s brother William Crump Smithers/Smothers remained in Franklin County, passing for white. William, and his sons after him, became successful businessmen, having purchased a flagstone quarry in Rocky Mount from the widow of John S. Hale, in 1872.

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Making his way west, Samuel’s brother Erasmus Monroe Smithers/Smothers was in Iowa at age 19 in 1852. There Erasmus signed on as an aide to a gentleman journeying west on the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Territory, including the state of Washington, did prohibit slavery (1843) but also prohibited free Black people from entering the territory (1844). Passing as white, Erasmus arrived in November 1852 and eventually secured a land donation claim of 160 acres next to Henry Tobin’s claim of approximately 320 acres. Tobin died in 1856, and in 1857 Smithers married his widow, Diane Gilman Tobin, giving them a claim of approximately 480 acres of land with access to two rivers near Seattle, Washington. After a coal seam was discovered on his property, Smithers sold his interest in the newly formed coal mining company and, in 1875, used the proceeds to develop part of his land as the town of Renton.

 

Samuel H. Smothers never concealed his identity as a Black man. In 1861, he became the principal and sole teacher at the Union Literary Institute, a historic school founded in 1846 by abolitionist Quakers and free men of color located in rural Randolph County, Indiana. A private school, it was one of the first in the United States that admitted both black and white students, and both boys and girls. In most places, only white students were allowed to attend the public schools. In Virginia and throughout the South, there was little public education available to children of any color. Private education and libraries were reserved for families with means before the Civil War.

 

The students at the Union Literary Institute published a magazine from 1863-1864, which included articles by adults. The magazine, The Students' Repository: A Quarterly Periodical, Devoted to Education, Morality & General Improvement, received national recognition, being mentioned in Harper's Weekly and in the North American Review. One of Smothers’ many articles titled “What Shall Be Done with the Negro?” (The Students’ Repository 1.1 July 1863) discussed the 1850 Indiana Supreme Court decision that state law confined public school attendance to white children only and African American children were not allowed to attend. In 1853 and 1855, the state of Indiana had adopted two laws that prohibited black children from receiving any public education benefits. Smothers emphasized that these laws were “the worst and most deplorable laws” in the state.

 

The school closed temporarily in 1864 during the Civil War, when Smothers enlisted to serve for one year in the United States Colored Troops on August 31, 1864, in Troy, Ohio. He was 31 years old and was described as 6’ 1 ½” tall and having a black complexion with dark hair and black eyes. He was listed on U.S. Civil War Draft Registrations for Randolph County, Indiana, in 1863. He left behind his wife Eunice, likely pregnant with the couple’s second child, and his 4-year-old son Henry.

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Smothers served in the 45th United States Colored Infantry, Co. C. Organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the regiment later moved to Washington, D.C. in July of 1864. His regiment participated in a demonstration on the north side of the James River and the battle of Chaffin’s Farm from September 28 – 30, 1864. Sixteen men were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions in this battle, fourteen were USCT soldiers. Shortly after, the regiment was engaged in the battle of Darbytown Road on October 13,1864 and in the battle of Fair Oaks from October 27 – 28, 1864.

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During the harsh wintertime conditions, there were few battles in Virginia, and the regiment spent much time in the trenches before Richmond, Virginia. On March 4, 1865, the soldiers of the Forty-fifth marched in Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration parade to cheers and applause. They were the only Black troops in attendance and the first black soldiers to march at a Presidential Inauguration.

 

The Forty-fifth fought in the Battle of Hatcher’s Run from March 29 – 31, 1865. The regiment then participated in the fall of Petersburg on April 2 and the pursuit of Robert E. Lee’s army from April 3 – 9 and were present for the surrender of Confederate forces under Lee at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

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In May, Smothers and his regiment were sent to serve in Texas, first travelling by sea to New Orleans, arriving on June 16. In a letter home, Smothers wrote “we had a very pleasant voyage, the weather being fine and the sea smooth and calm.” However, conditions changed upon the regiment’s arrival on Brazos Santiago Island near the mouth of the Rio Grande. “The island is sandy and desolate. We are put to considerable inconvenience about water.” They soon traveled up the Rio Grande to a station in the Mexican border town of Edinburg, Texas, where the Forty-fifth performed garrison duty for two months. Contaminated water sources spread disease and many soldiers who survived the battles in Virginia succumbed to disease in Texas.

 

Samuel Smothers did survive, however, and was discharged on September 30, 1865, in Edinburg, reuniting with his wife Eunice and his children. After the war he began teaching in The Union School, established by the Freedmen’s Bureau in Shreveport, Louisiana. In June 1868, Smothers was one of two Black teachers and two white teachers who taught 51 enrolled pupils, all of them formerly enslaved. In 1870, he was listed in the census as Sam E. Smithers with wife Eunice Smithers, both residing in Shreveport, Louisiana. His occupation was “Teacher,” and the household included his children: Henry F, 10; Mary Ann, 5; and John O, 3. Eventually, Smothers became involved in local politics, and after the family moved across the state line to Harrison County, Texas, where Smothers was elected county tax assessor.

 

In the 1880 Census the family was living in Dallas, with the name listed as Smothers (Samuel’s preference), age 46, living with Eunice. He started a newspaper for the Black community and founded the first Black High School in Dallas. His son Henry was also listed as a teacher. Later, Smother’s son John became an educator and community leader in Jasper, Texas. Samuel Smother’s daughter Mary Ann is believed to have married John W. Reed in Dallas, Texas.

 

In 1892 Smothers married a second time to Mariah Lyles in Brazoria, Texas, and was still working as a teacher. Smothers wrote about his experiences in the Civil War and a piece titled “My Grandfather” that details the escape, eventual recapture, and murder of his grandfather, Harry Hunter. He also wrote many letters to Black publications including The Christian Recorder, The Soldier’s Journal, and the Southern Workman. Smothers was one of the few countywide elected Black officials in Texas, a federal appointee in the Grant Administration, an educator of teachers, and a creator of Black communities. He was a tireless proponent of education and land ownership as a means of improving the lives of Black Americans until his death in 1901 at the age of 69 in Brazoria, Texas.

 

Smother’s son, Henry, visited Franklin County around 1890, perhaps to meet extended family members who still resided in the county – his cousins who owned the profitable Hale-Smithers Flagstone Quarry in Rocky Mount. During this visit, he met a Black school teacher, Laura Jane Clarkson Clement, with a young son, Thomas J. Clement, and returned with them to Brazoria, Texas, where they married in 1893. Apparently, Laura and Thomas returned to Franklin County, Virginia, sometime before 1918, because Thomas registered for the World War I draft, and listed next of kin as Laura Jane Smothers residing in Hardy, Virginia. Henry Smothers died in Fresno, California, in 1935, followed in 1939, by Laura Jane Clement, who was buried near the graves of her parents at Mount Lebanon Church Cemetery in Hardy, Virginia. Her tombstone omitted the name Smothers, yet her death certificate documents her marriage to Henry Smothers.

 

Contributors: Sarah Plummer; Savannah Smith; John Wood; Cathie Cummins; Raymond Williams; and Josh Benton, journalist and historian at Harvard University, researching Samuel Smothers due to his importance in civil rights in Louisiana and Texas.