Introduction & Overview:

Scope - Historical Context - Times - Summary - Navigation - Graphics & ...

Scope

These narrative stories, faithfully rendered from known facts and accepted history, follow our family from their 16th Century Scottish Highland roots through the war years in America.

However, some information, no matter how well-founded on history and no matter how inspired by facts it may be, it can only stand as speculation.

Part I tells the story of Joseph Reed Smart and Mary Ann Stewart (Darnall) Smart.

Part II follows the lives of James Moses Smart and Margaret (Clapp) Smart and the trials of their children.

"Trails" provide what information in known on family branches.

Our family history goes back to Scotland where we descend from Pictish tribes in the Scottish Highlands.

Historical Context

This is one family's chronicle of their trials, tribulations, struggles and triumphs during an era unique in all of history. These family stories are part of the bigger history of early American settlers. Their lives were much the same as other pioneering farmers of their times. Their struggles could even be called ordinary. But it is because their lives were typical and because the times were quite extraordinary, that these stories offer a tantalizing glimpse back through history.

Their times were incredible --the likes of which we may never see again. Never has there been so much arable land to farm. And there were many farmers to farm it--farmers who's souls longed for a chance to prosper, unencumbered by the machinations of despots. An entire continent was opening up and freedom reigned!

As farming people, they had always gambled with their very existence, pitting their personal efforts against the vagaries of nature. The burden they carried in the Old World had been unbearable and land reforms had only made matters worse.

In stark contrast, America provided a completely unique opportunity for hundreds of thousands of ordinary people to own land. Their yearning for land, especially land that had never been put to the plow, brought them to New England from where they scrambled ever-westward, taking advantage of the open land.

But as open land began to get harder to find, farmers could no longer move westward. Most good farm land was under the plow by then. That golden age of open land--an age lasting over a hundred years--came to its inevitable end with the 19th Century.

Today scientific farming methods boost yields and minimize land depletion. Irrigation Districts provide water. Farmers continue to farm the same land. Bank financing, crop prices and international price fluctuations became the everyday worries of the modern American farmer.

Those free and heady days of "settling" virgin land were over. But maybe...just maybe...they won't be completely forgotten. We should remember the trials they faced amid the joy they found. It was an important and exciting time in history.

The slavery quandary seem to affected everyone deeply. Slavery, accepted by the founders of the US in order to throw off the greater yoke of Colonialism, only festered with time--an unacceptable part of our Union, flying in the face of the fine words of the Declaration of Independence, where ALL men were "created equal."

The struggle of the nation to throw off this yoke forced Americans to reconcile their noble ideas with their economic realities. As Lincoln realized, the issue was not divisible along the Mason-Dixon Line. If the South broke away, it would only change the political boundaries--mills in the North, as much a part of the slavery equation as the southern plantations, would continue to reap profits from the labor of the slaves.

This real and pressing quandary prompted a great deal of soul-searching in most circles as well as renewed metaphysical exploration. Great socio/economic and moral rifts opened between citizens/states. The social upheaval in Illinois was every bit as intense as it was anywhere. Heated discussions erupted almost everywhere people gathered. Almost within earshot, Lincoln and Douglass were examining the arguments and defining important issues as the entire World looked on. Religious zeal spawned more religious sects during this period than any other time in our history--some of them nearby.

These were the issues swirling through the time fabric upon which this history is woven.

Times

Joseph Reed Smart and Mary Ann Stewart Darnall both helped settle the Wabash River Valley of Illinois after moving from Kentucky in the 1820s, when they were young. Joseph died there in 1845. Mary moved with her son James and his family to Pilot Point, Texas where she died in 1892.

James Moses Smart married Margaret Clapp in February of 1866 and moved to Fillmore County, Minnesota the same year. They farmed there until 1879 when they traded their rich cultivated land for bad land, sight unseen, in Plainview, Texas.

After the death of James Smart in 1895, the Oklahoma Territory was opening up, the survivors moved to Oklahoma and homesteaded a quarter-section on the Washita River, just west of Clinton.

Around 1909, when the Oklahoma Panhandle area opened to settlers, Charles Chesterfield Smart, one of James sons, was with the first to settle in the Hardesty area at the center of the Panhandle. Others in the Smart/Pafford families were to have a substantial influence on the Hardesty area. Descendants still live there today.

See Chronology for a time/place breakdown.

Summary

Mary and Joseph grew up in different parts of Kentucky. By the 1820s, Kentucky and Tennessee had become "old" frontier. Farmland was showing signs of overuse. Mary and Joseph's families, like so many others, were caught up in the rush to be the first to farm the rich lands and lush river valleys of this virgin land to the west. If some couldn't grasp the significance of this era, it wasn't the farmers. They certainly appreciated the value of verdant land, fallow since the Ice Age--much of it covered with good trees, just begging to be plowed.

Land! Glorious land--opening up ahead of them as they went westward. Life suddenly offered them renewed hopes and blessed them with idyllic dreams. They saw a bright and serene future where hard work on rich land could be rewarded. This was all a farmer could ever want.

It was in these times that families found prime land to settle in the newly-opened Wabash River Valley. Illinois provided the answer to their prayers. Their dreams of a new life were amply fulfilled by the rich affordable farmland and the civilized community they found here in this beautiful valley. They settled down to have children--content to grow old on the farm surrounded by family and friends.

The Smarts, Darnalls, and Clapps teamed up with other families to raise barns and clear fields, realizing the benefits of sharing backs, ideas and information. By working together, they also benefited in other ways. Harvest dances, country fairs, as well as political and religions get-togethers provided plenty of stimulating social diversions.

Over the years, the farmers of the Wabash Valley grew very close. Held together by their network of friends and family, the Smarts survived the death of their patriarch, Joseph, at the young age of 46. Mary and the children fell safely into the bosom of her mother, sisters, brothers uncles, aunts and cousins who lived and farmed in the area.

But the world around them was convulsing with ever-increasing spasms that would eventually destroy the peace. Mary's family (Darnall/Stewart) were caught up on both sides of the Civil War and its social and economical conflicts. Their large American family was of English origin with branches in both southern-leaning Kentucky and in Maryland--which was put under the strong arm of Lincoln due to its strategic location. The District of Columbia--seat of Government--is surrounded on the north by Maryland--cutting Washington off from its northern industrial and economic base.

If Mary could not convince them otherwise, her sons would be fighting with the Illinois Regiment of the Union Army against their Darnall and Stewart cousins. Mary persuaded James to avoid the fighting. He married Margaret Clapp, a local farm girl. He met her at one of the harvest dances or a wedding of a friend. Her father was a farmer who's family immigrated from Germany. When war broke out, James and Margaret moved to Minnesota to farm and raise a family.

However, James's younger brother, Moses Jackson Smart was youthful, plucky and all-too-anxious to serve. He was almost immediately wounded early in the war and lived the rest of his life on a disability pension.

After the War and its subsequent aftermath, the West still beckoned. James traded his cultivated Minnesota land for land in Plainview, Texas. Hr left with his family on an incredible journey of many years, living in covered wagons. Along the way, they took what farm work they could get, developing skills they would need to dry farm in the West.

Years later, while still farming for others in Texas--still working their way towards Plainview--James died. Margaret, with eleven children (five older girls, four young boys, and a young set of boy-girl twins), realized better land could be found in Oklahoma--men and women of means could homestead on newly-opened land with water to irrigate with.

Although still greenhorns, Margaret sent the older boys off through the Badlands of Northwest Texas on a thousand-mile journey to trade their land--the land they failed to reach--for horses. After the boys returned, this 51 year old widow, together with the entire family, loaded up the wagons and drove the livestock to land just west of Clinton, Oklahoma, where they filed a patient on a quarter-section right on the Washita River.

They survived on the open plains by digging in, building shelters using the red sod under their feet and whatever else they could obtain. Life was hard for them at times. Over the years, they would face crop failures, infestations, tornadoes, falling crop prices, inflation, epidemics, and dust storms. Some managed to hold onto their land to try yet another year. For others, it was West, always West.

As good land became scarce, their lives changed. The Great Depression, the Dust Bowl , and two World Wars were to scatter the family to almost every corner of the Western States. That glorious time when verdant sections of affordable land were available for stout, enterprising people from all around the globe, had eventually come to an inevitable end.

Long gone were those glorious days spent farming in the warm company of family and friends. Gone were all those many wonderful years shared with family and close friends in the Wabash Valley.

Navigation

Read through this history (two parts) in order by clicking on NEXT (PREV to back up). Embedded links will open additional browser widows filled with relevant information. Or click on links at the top of the page to open each chapter.

• Part 1 - The Settlers (Mary/Joseph)
• Part 2 - The Homesteaders (James/Margaret)

Graphics &......

FAMILY GRAPHICS - The best family pictures, are reflected herein. If you have access to or know of the existence of other pictures or memorabilia that might be shared, please contact me by e-mail. Hi-resolution pictures files are available, suitable for printing. E-mail your request, including the filename if possible, to: pictures@ancestor-rescue.com.

MAPS - Maps can add another level of understanding and texture to your history experience. Maps come up in separate windows so you can toggle back and forth (Alt - Tab) while reading stories. Click the Geography link anytime to access the full map menu.

THE SMART/WINN FAMILY CD - Documented family data is provided on the Smart/Winn Family CD. It is in database format which is more adaptable to genealogy. In the database, source references allow you to take specific information in its proper context. The CD also contains pictures and other family treasures. To obtain a copy of the Smart/Winn CD, contribute to this collection or, if you have questions, please e-mail me.

Hardesty History [PDF] - Excerpts and pictures from previously published document such as the Hardesty History book and other unknown resources.

Milestones [PDF] - A chronological listing of significant events in the Oklahoma Panhandle area.