Searching for My Roots

This week the Today show on NBC is featuring programs on finding your ancestors. Meredith Vieira traveled to the Azores to visit relatives and see the places her grandparents grew up before they came to America to live. Matt Lauer's family escaped from Romania when the Jewish people were being tortured, and came to America. The most touching story was when Ann Curry went to Japan to visit her ancestoral home and some of her mother's family. And Al Roker will visit his roots in the Bahamas where his ancestors were slaves.


This has prompted me to finish working on my "Smith Family Genealogy" which I started typing in 2003! I have an old Smith family genealogy book written in 1903 and I have retyped it on the computer so I can make copies. The old book is small and the paper is crumbling and falling apart. I typed the book on a typewriter in 1980, including more information on my mother's grandfather, William Cole Smith and his big family of 12 children. I plan to put some photos of William Cole's family at the end of the book. The book will contain over 100 single-spaced pages. Creating an index was a big part of doing the book. There is a listing of all the names in the book, and the page numbers where their name appears.

I learned that my Smith ancestors were Quakers from NC. They migrated there from PA, settling near Reidsville, NC on land that John Smith received for his bravery in the French and Indian War. I have a copy of the deed for the land which came from the NC Archives. When we lived in Winston-Salem, NC, we spent several week-ends in the Reidsville area searching for the Smith family cemetery. One day in Feb. we were looking in an area underneath some power lines, and we found the graves of John Smith, his son Samuel, and some others.


The 1903 Smith Family Genealogy was written by J. Fletcher Smith (see photo) a descendant of John and Samuel Smith and he described where the cemetery was located. Eighty years had passed when my sister Chris and I started searching for the graves and some of the landmarks described in the book were still there, which helped us pinpoint the area of the cemetery. I like the passage from the book which J. Fletcher Smith wrote in the early 1900's: "In our hurried life we scarcely realize the conditions as they existed at that time. The log cabins in the midst of vast forests, the constant fear of the Indians, the simple home life with white sanded floors, the spinning wheel, the homespun clothing all pass before our minds as something quaint and beautiful."


Chris and I joined the DAR, using Samuel Smith as our Revolutionary Soldier ancestor. Our DAR chapters helped us put a DAR marker on the graves. A few years we went back to the area for a special gathering of Smith ancestors and the cemetery was still intact. Someone had cleared the area before we came.


Genealogy is fun and you learn a lot about your ancestors. I haven't discovered any famous (or infamous) ancestors yet. Jim learned that one of his cousins, Ben Fortson, was Secretary of State in GA. He is still searching for some Gilmer and Tyner ancestors and has learned a lot about his mother's family, the Carnes. He is also working on my Grimes ancestry.


My maternal and paternal grandparents, grandparents, and great grandparents are all buried in Coffee County. Two great grandparents, William Cole Smith, and John William Grimes were in the Civil War. We are putting a CSA military marker on John William Grimes gravesite when we have the Grimes reunion on October 4th, 2008.


I have 10 American Revolutionary War soldiers as ancestors. My sister Christine researched these and shared the info with me so I could add these to my list of ancestors for the DAR: Samuel Smith, NC; Felix Frederick, NC; James Grimes, Sr., NC; Nathaniel Allen, VA; John Garrett, VA; James Spratling, VA; James Wilson, GA; John Byers, VA; William Cole, VA; Stephen Darden, VA.