My grandfather Smith, Oswald Cole Smith, was nicknamed "Bunch". He signed his name O.C. Smith. I knew him as "Papa Smith" and I was his first grandchild. I have so many good memories of him. He died in 1956, the year our son James was born. He had a heart attack one Sunday while visiting my parents in the country. My daddy took him to Opp hospital and he was there for several weeks before he died of kidney failure. I spent some time with him in the hospital and we had long talks.My first memories of visiting Mama and Papa Smith was when they lived in a big rambling unpainted house near the Elba Cemetery. I liked to visit them and spend the night. He always read the Bible at night and everybody had to gather around him while he read. He would always pray long prayers and I would get so tired and sleepy before he finished. Nobody ever said anything during this time; just sat and listened. When he prayed he always got up from his chair and knelt down on the floor to pray. He was a very devout Christian man and later when I was researching our family history of the Smiths, I learned that his ancestors were Quakers . He had so many qualities of the Quakers, including living a simple life. He didn't have a car but traveled by mule and wagon. He was a very neat person, self taught and very intelligent. He had beautiful hand writing. When we lived in Germany, he used to write letters to us.
A cousin gave me an old Smith family history book around 1975. It contained information about my Papa Smith's ancestors who were Quakers in Rockingham County, NC area. My sister Christine and I started doing research on our family, using the old book as a beginning. It was so fascinating to read the accounts of the Smiths of long ago. Our ancestor's name was John Smith who came to NC by the way of Pennsylvania. He was awarded a tract of land in NC for his bravery in the French and Indian War. We located this tract of land and eventually found his gravesite in an old abandoned cemetery underneath Duke Power Electric lines in a field. Also buried there was his son Samuel who was a Patriot in the American Revolutionary War, guarding tories and collecting provisions (according to his Rev. War Pension application).
Chris and I applied for membership in the Daughters of the Amer. Revolution and used Samuel Smith as our patriot. Later we had a DAR grave marking to put a DAR marker on Samuel's gravesite.
I wonder if Papa Smith ever knew of his Quaker background. Probably not. This branch of the John Smith family of Rockingham County, NC, have been Methodists for generations. Other branches of John Smith's descendants did follow the Quaker religion and lived at New Garden Meeting House (Quaker), just outside Greensboro, NC.
Papa Smith's father , William Cole Smith, moved his family to Coffee County from Lee County in the late 1800s. William Cole Smith had a large family. . One of Papa Smith's brothers, Joshua Drayden, had Smith Brothers Store near the railroad depot in New Town. And he had a sister Daisie Winston who lived near Dorsey's. I knew them better than any of the other siblings.
Papa Smith loved fox hunting and always had several hounds penned up and he fed them well. He had a hunting horn (from an ox I think) that he could blow and make a lot of sounds. I could never blow that horn.
He farmed, planting corn and cotton mostly, and used a mule and plow. I remember helping my Mama Smith make the big cotton sacks for people to use to pick cotton. I always wondered why he didn't have a tractor like my dad used.
Papa Smith, in his later years, would sell Bibles and religious books. He kept them in a big suitcase and would set up a table on the sidewalk in Elba, usually outside Stokes Haire's drug store. They were good friends from church. For Christmas he always gave us religious story books. I still have the Bible he gave me when I graduated from high school in 1952. It has such thin paper and gold edging. He ordered it especially for me, with my name imprinted in gold on the cover.
Papa Smith was a very friendly person, never meeting a stranger, and always looking for good qualities in people. I don't ever remember him getting upset with anybody. He walked to the Elba Methodist church on Sunday's when he lived near the cemetery (about 2.5 - 3 miles). A few times I walked with him and it was a l-o-n-g way for a small girl. He would help me up and let me pull the big rope to ring the bell at Elba United Methodist Church, where we are now members. (We still have the bell in the tower and a big rope attached to it and it is rung every Sunday morning before church starts.)
My grandmother had arthritis so bad in her later years that she was unable to do much with her hands. Once, following a gall bladder operation, I went to spend the night with them. I was in high school by then. They heated their house with a fireplace and I remember how cold it was the night I stayed; no heat in my bedroom. Early the next morning my grandfather got up and built a fire in the kitchen stove and cooked breakfast in the cold kitchen. He woke me up and I got dressed and went to the cold kitchen. He had made delicious biscuits, and scrambled eggs with meat (I thought it was sausage). The breakfast was so good, until he asked if I wanted another helping of brains and eggs. I jumped up from the table, ran outside, and lost my breakfast in the back yard! I didn't know I was eating the hog's brains. Yuk!
The photo here is Papa Smith, Mama Smith and all of their children except my mother who was at home with my younger sister Christine. I am 4 years old here in 1938 and sitting in my Aunt Nellie Faye's lap. Also missing is his son Henry by his first wife who died when Henry was a baby.
I remember that Papa Smith came to my 6th birthday party by Greyhound bus. He had been in Opp that Saturday selling Bibles and stopped by our house on the way home and brought me a big rubber ball. A few years ago I read in the Elba Clipper, in the 50 years ago column, a write up about my 6th birthday party and he was a special guest.
Picture here, left to right front row: Nellie Faye (holding Nell, 4 years old), Ida, Joe Bill; 2nd row: O.C. and Bessie Smith and their oldest daughter Barbara. On the back row are the youngest two, Pete and Polly (Martha). Only Aunt Ida (89) and Uncle Pete (80) are still living.
