Solomon Smith

 Great-Grandparents, Solomon and Martha Smith, and Grandfather Solomon Smith, 

by Ivah Smith Winegarner

It has been said that "distance lends enchantment" and upon looking back through the years, I believe that this is quite possible. Hamlin Garland wrote of his boyhood in Iowa, Boy Life on the Prairie, in a most fascinating way, and Hal Borland wrote of his childhood experiences in eastern Colorado in a manner equally interesting. Miss Louise Erdman has related the story of her life as a little girl in Life Was Simpler Then.

I'm going back a little further and shall try to record in a limited fashion something of the lives of my grandparents who, I believe, experienced the ups and down of pioneer men and women of their day. (If our grandparents were, as Thoreau says, "rich in the things they could do without," they were rich indeed. Or did we all enjoy "Genteel Poverty'?)

Solomon Smith, my grandfather, was born on November 25, 1817, in Spartanburg District of South Caroline. His father, also Solomon Smith, was said to have come from Virginia, but this is as far back as we have been able to trace the Smith family. Great-grandmother Martha Smith is a relative of whom we know very little. Grandfather Solomon was the 8th child in a family of 9 children. His mother was quite ill when he was very young, and he nursed a Negro "mammy" until his mother could care for him again. When he was two or three years of age, his parents crossed the Smokey Mountains and moved almost directly west into Tennessee, into Lincoln County, near what is now Flintville, or possibly a few miles east of Fayetteville. There they lived on a farm for ten years. Their Post Office at that time was "George's Store" but it is now a thing of the past.

Two or three of the older children married in Tennessee and stayed on in that state, but the rest of the family, in 1829, migrated to Illinois, settling about six miles northeast of Salem, where they lived for a number of years. 

It was here, so the story goes, that Great-grandmother Martha used to have attacks of the "hippe," or, according to Webster's Dictionary, was "hipped," or depressed. In my daughter's world, it would be said that she had "cabin fever." The depression was caused by loneliness, too large a concentration of domesticity, and probably little or no association with distant neighbors. Her lot was probably "just hard work."

It is said that at such times, Great-grandfather would hitch up the oxen and take her for a little ride. Great-grandmother also made ginger bread to sell when a buyer could be found. All of the above moves were made in covered wagons, as there were few railroads at that time. One record says that the Smith Family came to Illinois in four-horse wagons. Another tells of their driving oxen. Probably both horses and oxen were used. My great-grandparents never left Illinois, but lived out their lives in Marion County. Both are buried in a small, now-abandoned cemetery, about a half-mile south of U.S. route 50, at the edge of a woods, southeast of the old Stringtown School house.

Grandfather grew up on the home farm in Marion County and at the age of sixteen began driving a stage on one section of the route between Vincennes, Indiana and St. Louis, Missouri. This he continued to do for three years, through rain and mud (sometimes so deep that four horses were often used to draw the stage). 

Once, while driving through a lonely and wooded stretch of the route, with the trees close in on every side, he saw in the road in front of him a tall, black silk hat directly in the path of the stage. He was quite sure that this was a ruse to stop the stage, so, instead of stopping to pick up the hat, he urged the horses to greater speed. If there were robbers nearby who planned to hold up the stage, no one ever knew.

On this stage route, my grandmother, Elizabeth Ann Holstlaw, lived with her family, seven miles east of Salem. Grandfather, while driving the stage, often stopped at the house, supposedly for a drink of water. I suspect the real reason was for a chat with Elizabeth Ann. Be that as it may, they were married in 1837, when Grandfather was twenty years of age and Grandmother was sixteen. Grandfather quit the stage driving job and went to farming. In 1837 farming in Illinois was rough and most difficult. There were no markets and poor equipment.

At the age of forty-four, Grandfather and two of his sons marched off to war--the Civil War--where they served for three years in the Union Army. Grandfather served a First Lieutenant in Company G, 22nd Illinois Infantry, under Colonel Daugherty. He was a charter member of the J.D. Moody Masonic Lodge in Iuka, Illinois. This may have saved his life. At one time, while on a southern battlefield, Grandfather had stopped to help a wounded comrade when a Confederate soldier rode up and demanded his surrender at the point of a gun. Grandfather indicted by some sign that he was a Mason, and the Confederate quickly rode away.

At one time, he was captured, but after learning that he had had experience in nursing the sick, he was released and sent to the home of a southern officer who was ill or wounded. There he was treated as one of the family. Grandfather was said to have been an excellent nurse, and he ministered to many in his home neighborhood. He was at one time or another Post Master, merchant, and farmer. He was a charter member and elder in the old Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Iuka. 

I never knew my grandfather, but his family and friends surely held him in high esteem. Father said, "I never knew a better man." At the age of 64, in 1881, his life work was ended, and he was laid to rest in the Old Bethel Cemetery, southwest of Iuka. A rather tall stone just back of the church building marks the graves of my grandparents.