The Smith Family - Scotland to America

Scotland was the original home of many early Bon Air Mountain families. The Bon Air Coal Company brought over about twenty or more families of men who were experienced coal miners. When the Smith family arrived in 1903, some of their friends and countrymen were already here. The Hardies were among the first to arrive. David McKay came over in 1888 and George Thom, Sr. in 1893. Some other families were Swarbrick, McIntyre, McArthur and Chittick.

Thomas Smith was born in Scotland or Ireland. According to the manifest for the Furnessia, he is listed as being 39 years of age in 1903. Thomas married Jane Hodge, thought to be from Ireland. Little is known about her family.

We know that Thomas had three brothers and two sisters. In a 1982 letter, Stella and Maria Smith of Glasgow, Scotland say that "this family lived in Kir Kentiloch, outskirts of Glasgow" and describe the family as follows: (parents unknown)- -Children: (1) John (Jock} who came to America for awhile but didn't like it here. When he left to go back to Scotland he said "Farewell to this wooden world of paper blinds and sorghum molasses". John married Joann Sweeney and they had a daughter, Jeannie and a son, William. Jane supposedly borrowed money from either the Scoggins or Thoms family to pay for John’s return trip to Scotland. Jane's brother (also named John?) came here with his two sons to work as electricians in the mine but soon left for Pennsylvania.

(2) Peter. His wife was Catherine McGee (or McKee). In 1890, this family lived on Miner's Row in Possil, a district of Glasgow. Their children are: Nellie; Katie; Mary McCambridge of Mary Hill; Jean; Maggie Smith Thomas of Broadholm St., Parkhouse Estate, Glasgow; James; Peter; Thomas of Strachur St., Lambhill-born July 1895-diedNov.1973. This Thomas is Stella’s grandfather. His children are: Peter, John, Thomas, James, Lawrence, Catherine, Mary and Maria, who is Stella's mother.  Peter is buried at St. Kentigens, Lamb Hill.

(3) Thomas - died 1935. Buried Eastland Cemetery, White County, Tennessee. Wife- Jane Hodge, born l866 and died 1936.   Children:  Mary, Nellie, John, James(Dad),  Pete, Robert, Archie, Elizabeth, Ann and Catherine.  Archie mentioned one time that he thought he had a brother named Tommy, who died as a baby and was buried in Scotland. This could have been the baby who died after Thomas and the children left for America.

(4)-Mary Smith Queen (or Qµinn)-Called Granny Queen

(5)-Margaret (Maggie) -not married

(6)-Paul   (M) Maggie Cameron- Their Children: Tommy (from the Torrance).

Thomas Smith loved the sea and is said to have made several voyages, but when his son, Archie, was born in 1897 in Lambhill, Scotland, Thomas was listed as working in Ironstone Mine.

In the early 1900's, Scottish-born George Thom, who worked at the Bon Air, Tennessee coal mine as foreman, and lived at Old Town, sent word to his friends and acquaintances in Scotland that passage money would be provided for any experienced miner who would come to work for the Bon Air Company. The money, six hundred dollars, would be paid back by a small amount being held from each paycheck.

One day as Thomas' wife, Jane, sat mending a basket full of clothes, Thomas eagerly brought up the subject of moving to America.  "No one wears patches in America," he said.   Also he had heard that in America, one family would kill a cow and everyone goes to their house to eat.  Then someone else kills a cow and everyone goes to his or her house.

Whether or not Jane was easily persuaded is not known, but soon she was bidding good-by to Thomas and eight of their children, Pete, Archie, Nellie, John, James, Robert, Annie and one-year-old Elizabeth, who were setting sail for America on the English-made ship, the Furnessia. Jane, who was expecting a child, could not make the trip at that time, and Mary, the oldest daughter, remained there with her. The baby died soon after birth.

At the time of the arrival of Thomas and the children in Bon Air, Tennessee, the train station was located down on the side of the mountain. An article in the Sparta Expositor gives this description: "The railroad ran parallel to the bluff line partially down the side of the mountain below the store, where once the Old Town of Bon Air was located.  A hoist incline ran from the store to the railroad depot, and both passengers and freight were lifted up the incline to the store by means of a cable.   An operator in the store would push the button to make the motor operable, thus towing the cable-drawn incline car up the slope." And this, according to Archie, was the method by which they and their belongings arrived in Bon Air.

In 1888 Bon Air had consisted of 11 log cabins and one log boarding house. But by 1900, 991 people were living there, surpassing Sparta by 96 people. So by the time the Smiths arrived in 1903, it was becoming a bustling, prosperous town with a company store, business office, doctor's office and a hotel with electric lights and "water works".

According to Archie, the hotel was their first home. Having come from the city, he and his brothers enjoyed the newfound freedom of country life. One day they brought a pig into the hotel. Of course the pig did not want to be penned up in a hotel room, so it promptly gained its freedom by jumping through a window. Another idea of fun for the boys was taking pot shots at the passing freight trains with a rifle, but someone soon put a stop to this, too.

When Jane arrived sometime later, having successfully made the trip from Scotland to New York and then on to Bon Air, in spite of communication difficulties, she was dismayed to find her children in tatters and rags from climbing trees and running wild through the woods and briar patches.

In 1904, the family moved from Bon Air to Eastland where a new mine was being opened. This town was named after Thomas Eastland, said to be one of the largest landowners in Tennessee at one time. Earlier Mr. Eastland had operated an Inn or way station where people traveling by coach along the old Stage Road could stop for rest and food. Andrew Jackson supposedly stopped often at this inn as he traveled to and from "Washington City". A group of scab coal miners burned the Inn in 1924 and tried to lay the blame on union men. These scab miners had signed individual "Yellow Dog" contracts, swearing never to join the union or go on strike. The place where the Inn stood is still referred to as the "Old Eastland Field". Clarence Hamby, Sr. wrote a song about the “Yellow Dogs”.

There were few settlers in the Eastland area before the mine was opened, mostly just a few sawmill houses. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lockwood lived in one of these homes and Mr. Lockwood later became electrician at the mine.

In 1904, Thomas and Jane’s young daughter, Annie, contracted pneumonia and later died. A 1950 Nashville, Tennessee magazine article gave this account:

"On a bitterly cold day in late winter, about a year after the Bon Air Coal Company brought some twenty Scottish coal miners and their families to the booming mines at Bon Air, Ravenscroft and Eastland, Annie Smith lay dying of pneumonia. The very home in which the Smith's lived was unfinished and all around them the mining village was only beginning to take shape.

Providentially, at the moment the need was greatest, Thomas and Jane found a priest for their dying daughter. He had come to Eastland to visit his brother, a construction engineer. He hurried to Annie's bedside and gave her the last rites of the church.”

And so it was that little Annie Smith became the first person to be buried in the Eastland Cemetery.

In 1910 the town of Eastland was growing, with 334 people already living there. This town, like the other mountain mining towns, had a company store, check office, Dr. office, etc. Scottish born, M.T. Stark, friend and former classmate of Archie Smith, once sent a hand-drawn map of the town as he remembered it. He said that while the family was living in Eastland "In a far-away place”, his mother received a letter from Scotland telling her that her sister had died. It had taken about three weeks for the letter to get there.

Mr. Stark left the States in 1933, but he often wrote and sent calendars with beautiful pictures of Scotland. He visited Archie in 1963 and was in the U.S. again in 1979 to visit his son in Indiana who was very ill with cancer. His youngest son, David, had two sons living in Danville, Illinois about 1967.

As the map indicates, the town was well laid out, with many people eventually living there. In 1917, the article "Eastland Echoes" said: "The Eastland School is in full swing and has the distinction of having the largest enrollment of the mountain towns. There are now 142 on roll and new ones coming in almost every day".

All of the boys worked at the mine. At age 11 or 12 Archie was already working as "chalkeye" for his father. When payday came, all five brothers laid their pay envelopes on the kitchen table for their mother. Jane was unable to read until her granddaughter, Jeannie, taught her in later years but she kept a sharp eye on the family finances.

Next door to the Smith family, as listed by the census, was the William and Sadie Reeves family. Their children were: Claude-17, Ed-16, Floy-13, Hettie-11, Robert-8, Charlie-6 and Jessie-3. Being neighbors probably led to two marriages between the families in later years.   In January 1914, Robert Smith was married to Floy Reeves, and on February 11, 1920, Archie Smith applied for a license to marry Hettie Reeves. They were married the next day at the Hundred Oaks Castle in Winchester, Tennessee.

Archie and Hettie's first child, Richard, was born November 18, 1920, Jeannie was born in ' 1921 , Mary-1923, an infant born and died in 1924, Joseph-1926 ,  Lucille-1929,  Franklin-1931, Donald-1935 and Anna Ruth in 1937. When Anna was born, they were living in Eastland in one of the railroad section houses.

Plentiful work, good relations with the company, and pride in their towns had given the people a good way of life for a number of years, but then problems began to arise with the mining industry, mainly because of outdated equipment and labor disputes. The operation of the shaft mine at Ravenscroft had become difficult because of water. Also the men had requested a pay raise that the company said it could not afford to give, and in April of 1936, the miners walked out.  In an interview with Betty Huehls, Archie Smith said: "Dr. Young, head man, made the miners a talk at Ravenscroft. 'We're giving you everything we can to keep this mine moving, to make it pay off.”  They didn't believe him.   “They just kept staying out - that's what shut it down."

After the Eastland mine closed, the train continued to run for a while to haul timber. But "In February, 1937, pursuant to I.C.C. authorization, all service beyond Rock Spur, 2.25 miles above Sparta, was abandoned and soon the rails were taken up."   The headlines in the Sparta paper one day declared: "NO MORE WILL THE IRON HORSE CLIMB THE MOUNTAIN". The houses were sold for about twenty-five dollars or so much a room.  Many were torn down and moved away and the town of Eastland was fast becoming a ghost town. Many of the unemployed miners left to try and find work in East Tennessee or in other states.

Some of the men who remained in Eastland went to work for the W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration) or the Homestead Project which paid a fairly good wage. Some of the young men joined the C.C.C's, bringing home most of their pay to their parents. One man remembered bringing home about eighteen dollars, keeping only three dollars for himself. Other men worked repairing or building roads to pay their poll taxes.

About 1933 or '34, the Smith's made their unforgettable trip to Arkansas. Word had come from some of the family already living there that good money was to be made. So Archie traded his home, two cows and some other things to Fred Dodson for an old truck and they started out for Arkansas with Bill Smith driving.  The truck was carrying a full load with family, furniture and all the jars of canned fruits and vegetables they could find room for.  Looking back, Joseph (Dude) says they resembled the movie ''The Grapes of Wrath". Numerous flat tires delayed them and it took almost a week to get to Nashville. When baby Frank started to cry, Lucille would try to calm him by saying, "Don't cry Frankie, we’re going to Arkansas!"

When they arrived in Shirley, Arkansas, things were not at all as they had expected. The place was very pretty. There were " Squirrels running everywhere, lots of muscadines and scaley bark trees." But the living conditions were very bad.  Several people were living in one small house and others lived in small campers, etc. There was no cook stove in the house and they were cooking over an open fireplace, so the stove Hettie had brought was soon set up for cooking. The many jars of food she had brought were soon gone. Hettie wrote a letter to her sister, Floy, telling her not to come down there. The seam of coal that had looked so promising and from which they had expected to make much money was soon worked out and there was little work to be had. But in spite of the warning, Robert and Floy and family soon arrived, having been driven there by Mr. Ben Meadows.  When they saw the miserable conditions, they stayed only two or three days before returning to Eastland, and it probably wasn't long before Archie and family returned also.

As a young boy, Archie had worked as chalkeye for his father in the mine and in later years he worked as a mule driver. He related to Betty Huehls that the only near-death experience he had was when a rock fell on the second car of coal he was pulling, "mashing it flat as a biscuit". Falling rock or cave-ins were the main cause of death or injury in the area mines.

In later years Archie worked in truck mines and in timber. He had become the head of a large family, some of whom had migrated to other states. Sons Richard, Dude and Frank had served their country during World War II and the Korean War.

Archie came as a young child from the beautiful land of Scotland to a place "far away" - beautiful Tennessee to an area with names like Bon Air, Lost Creek, String Town, Dog Cove, Sally's Gap, Dumpling Knob and Buzzard Roost. When not at work, he spent many happy days fishing and hunting in Scott's Gulf and spending time with his large family.

A large number of the Smith family, as well as the Reeves side of the family, gathers each year at reunion time to visit, catch up on the news and remember the ancestors, and you can almost hear Archie’s contagious laugh as he would tell about things that happened in the old days and how things were when they first arrived from Scotland.

Thomas and Jane’s son, Archie, received his early education at “Seed Tick College", a one-room building that was originally built as a possession cabin, and was located on Seed Tick Branch between Mowbrey and Polly's Branch gulf. About twenty students attended this school with Mrs. Lillie Donelson as teacher. Archie remembered the day when classes were temporarily interrupted by a wild turkey peering inquisitively in the open door. After about three years in this building, classes were moved to the Donelson home in Mowbrey.

Archie loved to tell about the day the first car came through the Eastland area, about 1910. He said it was a black Model-T with a canvas top driven by an official of the mine who had driven from Nashville and arrived in the Mowbrey community after dark. It seems that some people hid, and at least one man kept his trusty shotgun handy as the vehicle came closer along the dusty road.  The next morning the folks along the route carefully inspected the tire tracks.

He also told of the day a trial was being held in the store before the Justice of the Peace, and how the honorable gentleman was left alone and the courtroom deserted when everyone rushed outside to get a look at an airplane that was passing overhead.

A passenger train made two trips daily from Sparta to all four mining towns.  On April 16, 1909 the "White County Favorite" posted this timetable: Sparta departure times-8 A.M. and 2:25 P.M. Arrival times: 12:20 P.M. and 5:55 P.M.

The company wanted to keep order in the communities and so this notice was given: “Any employee of the company who becomes intoxicated or in any way disturbs the peace and good order of the community, is summoned to the office and in a kindly manner told that such conduct will not be tolerated by the company and that should it occur the second time, the offender will be paid his wages and discharged." Some, however, chose to disregard this warning. It's told that James (Dad) Smith, while being locked up in the calaboose, presumably for being intoxicated, decided to set fire to his cell. Luckily someone quickly rescued him.

At some point, James (Dad) left Eastland to work in another mine and this appeared in the Bon Air Hustler in 1917:  "Jim Smith has returned from the White Oak Mine near Oneida, Tennessee. "Daddy'' said he could better appreciate the meaning of "Home Sweet Home" now.

When WWI began, "Dad" and his brothers registered for the draft. The following appeared in "Eastland Echoes" on June 3, 1918: "Jim Smith left for Camp Pike, Little Rock, Arkansas last Saturday to go in training for the finish fight with the Hun.   "Daddy’’ is another one of Eastland's best big hearted and a regular good fellow, but would fight a bag of hornets.  Uncle Sam won’t get a better scrapper than "Dad".  The Hun that meets up with "dad" in no-man's land will certainly need the help of "Gott". Good luck to you, Jim."

For many years life in Eastland was good. Deer and wild turkey roamed the woods and fish abounded in the nearby Caney Fork River. Each year there were huge celebrations on the fourth of July and Labor Day, with barbecues and base ball games.  These celebrations were held in a different town each year with the train carrying people to and from these big events.  Each ball team was named after one of the mine owners.  Bon Air was named Wrigley, Ravenscroft -Bowman, Eastland-Ruppert and Clifty was Cummins. A friendly but fierce rivalry existed between the mining towns, and these rules were drawn up for the Eastland team and published in the Eastland Echo column on May 31, 1919:

"The following ten pledges will be carried out by the Ruppert Base Ball Club during the season of 1919."

1.  I will obey the orders of the Ruppert Baseball Club so long as I remain a member of said club.

2. I will go into every game with full self-confidence that my team will win, and do everything in my power to help them do so.

3. I will not dispute the decision of any umpire, even though I know him to be in error.

4. I will play the game fair even if it be the cause of my team's defeat.

5.  I will not be the cause of any argument or squabble in any game so long as I wear the Ruppert uniform.

6.  I will not use any language on the playground or on my way to and from the playground that might be embarrassing to a lady.

7.  I will steal any base that l have a chance at, and will do everything in my power to make a chance.

8.  I will pay my pro rata part of all the expenses of the Ruppert baseball club during the season of 1919.

9.  I will be on the field for practice every time I am notified to if within my power to do so.

10.  I will learn and obey the signs and signals of the Ruppert baseball team and will not reveal them to any opposing player.

*Note: The Bon Air team had already beaten Eastland on May 4 by a score of 5-4 in an eleven-inning game.  But on other days the team had more success, especially against the Clifty team.  Pete Smith is known to have played on one of the ball teams.

There was also a basketball team. December 1917: "The basketball team is getting in fine trim now. The girls have bought their suits and will soon be ready for some match games. They say they are after the championship of the mountain. They hope that if all the towns have not organized they will do so."

Both Eastland and Clifty had community gardens. The company provided huge sections of land that was divided into plots so that all families could have their own garden.

In the 1910 census, Thomas and Jane still had seven children at home: Robert-19, James-18, John-17, Pete-15, Arch-13, Elizabeth-7 and Catherine-3.   *Catherine was the only one of the children born in America.