Joseph Reed Smart was born May 14th, 1799 at Eddyville, Kentucky. No birth record has been found yet. Public records were not kept there during that time.

His parents, James and Nancy (Scott) Smart, had moved to the area from Rutherford Co., North Carolina sometime after they married in 1794. They probably "bounced" around western Kentucky before settling in the Eddyville area, which wasn't settled until around 1798.

Livingston County has changed names several times. It's now Lyon County. The town of Eddyville was named after the eddies in the nearby Cumberland River.

Growing up, Joseph was living in a sort of paradise in this lush part of western Kentucky. He probably had farm chores so it wasn't all fishing and hunting-but how could a healthy boy say no?

The Eddyville area abounds with large rivers. The confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers is only fifty or sixty miles west. The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers run parallel to each other for about fifty miles north-northwest through the region-until emptying into the Ohio several miles northwest of Eddyville. Not too far away were ports on the Ohio and Mississippi, busy in those days with armies and supplies going up the rivers in support of battles to determine the outcome of the War of 1812. Supplies from New Orleans as well as the surrounding farms would have been moving through there in great quantities.

They had a front seat to the introduction of steam boats-a thing of wonder to a boy like Joseph. This technology was to vastly change the role of the river system in that region and the war was to expedite this change as well as the opening of new farmland.

Joseph may have gone to school in the area (Princeton?).

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