Thanks Veterans: One American Family's Vets from 1776 to 1945

   

A Photographic
 History in Honor 
of an American 
Family’s Veterans

Evelyn Smith

The first Smith came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635.  Between then and the early part of the 19th century, the Smith family moved from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to Upstate New York, and then finally to Michigan.  After the American Civil War, however,  Union veteran D. C. Smith ended up in Central Texas. The above photo is taken in front of the home of his next to youngest son, Walstein Smith, Sr. in McGregor, Texas, around 1950.  During World War II, Walstein and Mayme Dickerson Smith's three sons served in the U.S. Army.  Marcus Dickerson Smith (1907-1978) and Walstein Smith, Jr. (1920-1998) in Europe and Truett King Smith (1915-1998) in the Pacific. During the course of the history of the United States, Smiths fought in the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, and World War II. Even when too old to fight, a Smith served with the YMCA during World War I.  

Walstein Bennett Smith, Jr.  (1920-1998), a proud but reticent US Army veteran of World War II, rose to the rank of Captain, serving as a Judge Advocate General while attached to the 8th Army Air Force outside of Cambridge, England, before he returned home to McLennan County, Texas. He taught business law and real estate at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, from 1947 to 1988 and kept an office as an attorney and real estate appraiser as well.  In 1969, he earned a  Ph. D. in finance from the University of Texas School of Business in Austin.

Walstein Smith (1878-1963) served with the YMCA in San Antonio, Texas, during World War I, although he was 40 when the United States entered the Great War.  He logged 50 years working for the Santa Fe and Cotton Belt Railroads, serving as a telegraph operator or station master in Texas and Oklahoma.

David C. Smith (1837-1882), Union veteran of the American Civil War, served as the County Judge of Hamilton County, Texas, from the 1876 to 1882.  Census records for 1880 indicate that D. C. didn’t have a left arm above the elbow.

Thomas Smith (1740-1802), veteran of the American Revolutionary War, went back to the farm in Surry, New Hampshire, after serving his country. 

The women who married into the Smith family also had patriot ancestors: 


The Reverend Benjamin Trumbull (1712-1793) served as a chaplain for Washington’s troops during the American Revolutionary War.  Trumbull, a Yale University graduate, is also most probably America’s first historian.

• William Walter Beavers (1755-1829) received 640 acres in North Carolina, awarding him for 84 months service during the American Revolutionary War.  Beavers, a native of Wales, was living in Virginia by 1769, so he came of age in time to serve in the Continental Army. Sometime between 1810 and 1820 he moved to Georgia where he died in Elbert County in 1829.

• Nathaniel Dickerson (1757-1785) served as a sergeant in the Continental Army.  He died at age 33 in Pulaski, Virginia.

• Antoine Verdel (1755-1788) came to the United Sates aboard the ship America from Brest, France, having enlisted in the Volontaires etrangers de Lauzun.  During the American Revolutionary War, Verdel was a musician in General Lafayette’s Corps of Volunteers. Discharged in 1782, Verdel stayed in the U.S., marrying an American girl, Edith Brewer.  He was murdered for reasons unknown (or at least Fold3 and Ancestry.com don't furnish any informaton) near Little River, Wilkes, Georgia.  

BTW, that's just this poster's paternal line.  The photos come from a family photo collection and are posted on Ancestry.com.