Six generations. One family's slow migration from the Carolina lowcountry to the Texas hill country. And a genealogist who refused to take any of it on faith.The Smith Line traces the documented descent of John Alexander Smith III, born in South Carolina in 1710, down through six generations to Minerva Ann Smith (1879-1973), following the family from the Pee Dee River country of colonial South Carolina, through the North Carolina mountains, into Mississippi, and finally to the Texas hill country north of Austin.Built to the Genealogical Proof Standard, this book treats every date, place, and claim as only as strong as the record behind it. Along the way, it: Transcribes John Alexander Smith III's original 1797 will in full, including the enslaved individuals named within itFollows a Revolutionary War pension file that rewrites a family's understanding of an ancestor's military rank, corrects a marriage and death date, and uncovers four previously unknown childrenUntangles a case of mistaken identity buried in a Find A Grave memorial that had quietly contaminated an entire generation's birth and death datesTests, and sets aside, a family tradition connecting this line to Robert Morris, financier of the American RevolutionDocuments a Texas frontier Indian raid, a Confederate prisoner-of-war transfer, and a young soldier's death on his first day of combat in NormandyWhere the record holds up, this book says so plainly. Where it doesn't, that's said just as plainly, with every open question and unresolved conflict listed for the next researcher to pick up. A companion volume to The Stapleton Line and The Whitehead Line, this is genealogy as it should be practiced: documented, dated, and honest about what is and isn't yet proven.
