Samuel Richard Smith

b. 1813, d. 1900
  • Samuel Richard Smith was born in 1813 in Tennessee.
  • James Carroll Smith and Mary Ann Cotton appeared in the US federal census of 1 June 1850 in Walker County, Texas. Other members of the household included Samuel Richard Smith. Also in the household were children Sam (age 9), Sarah (7), William (5), Clementine (3), Mosellah (2) and James (6 months), not yet recorded.
  • He was a merchant, according to the 1850 census.
  • The following appeared in the Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County, Texas, published in 1892:
         J. Carroll Smith, a prominent farmer of Ellis county, was born in Giles county, Tennessee, in 1815, a son of Samuel and Sarah (Long) Smith, the former a native of North Carolina, and the latter of Virginia. The father died in 1844, and the mother afterward removed with her family to Texas, and died at Mount Enterprise, this State. Mr. and Mrs. Smith had twelve children as follows: Pleasant, who married Miss Lucinda Crabb, of Tennessee; Sterling, who married Miss Capshaw, and they reside at Waco; Samuel, who was first married to Miss Sallie Jones, of Houston, and afterward to Mrs. Hawkins; Mary, deceased, was the wife of Harrison Railbolt, a farmer of Nacogdoches; J. Carroll, our subject; Nancy, the widow of Isaac Edmondson, and a resident of Mount Enterprise, Henderson county; Reed R., a physician of Limestone county, was first married to the daughter of Mr. Townsend, and afterward to the widow of Dr. Strange, of Fairfield county; William H., deceased, was married to a Miss Ware, of Mississippi, who now resides at San Antonio; Sallie, the wife of F. M. Core, of Independence, Washington county; Feraby, the wife of H. M. Roberts, Justice of the Peace and Surveyor of Mexia, Texas; Amanda, the widow of A. M. Branch, a lawyer of Hunstville; and Clinton, deceased, was married to Miss Wym [sic], of Huntsville.
         The subject of this sketch came to Texas in 1838, settling in Houston, where he was engaged in the mercantile business. He was afterward obliged to leave there on account of the yellow fever, and went to Galveston, where he engaged in the commission business, and twenty years afterward to Ellis county. He first lived one year at Ennis, and then bought his present place of 214 acres, but he is now virtually retired from active business, and resides at Huntsville. During the war he took 1,000 bales of cotton to the penitentiary to be manufactured into clothing for the soldiers.
         In 1840 Mr. Smith was married to Miss Mary Cotton, a native of Mississippi, and they have six children, viz.: Samuel Y., deceased, was a soldier in the late war, and was married to Miss Wynne; William T., also a soldier in the late war, was married to Amelia Biggs; James, deceased, was married to Eva Riggs, of Mexico; Sarah Jane, the wife of Captain Thomas H. Merrill, a retired merchant of Ennis; Clementine, now Mrs. Thomas F. Mann, of Waco; and Sue the wife of James Soley, a banker of Weatherford. Politically Mr. Smith is identified with the Democratic party, and religiously his wife is a member of the Baptist Church.
  • Samuel Richard Smith died in 1900.
  • Last Edited: 26 Dec 2016