Smith Family Letters
Four Carroll County, Virginia
Soldiers in the American Civil War, 1861-1865
Produced by CATH
Preface
The Letters and their Writers
The fifty letters in this collection cover the period from July 1861 to February 1865, spanning
almost the entire duration of the Civil War. The four writers were sons of Alexander Smith
(1807-93), a prosperous farmer living at Pine Creek in Carroll County, Virginia. The brothers
were members of the 29th, 50th, and 54th Virginia Infantry Regiments; their letters are
concerned with events on several fronts: fighting in northwest (now West) Virginia in 1861-62,
the siege of Suffolk in 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville and the retreat from Gettysburg in
1863, and skirmishing in the New River Valley in 1864. They also concern events in Carroll
County: recruiting, desertions, and an obscure family conflict between the Smiths and the
Shockleys of Hillsville that culminated in the deaths of Barton Smith and his uncle John
(“Jack”) Smith in 1863. The collection includes one miscellaneous letter by John N.
Ridgeway, a sergeant in Company D, 58th Regiment, Virginia Infantry.
Most of the letters are either to, by, or about Stephen Mitchell Smith (1832-1913), Alexander
Smith's second son who worked as a blacksmith at Pine Creek. The existing letters were part of
a much larger exchange among the family members, but Stephen's correspondence is what chiefly
survives. A running thread in the letters concerns attempts to shield him from conscription on
account of his poor health. His family was also sickly; three young children died of diphtheria
in early 1863. He did military service from December 1864 to February 1865 in a rag-tag
detachment of the 54th Regiment guarding the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad under the command
of Robert C. Trigg and William R. Hammet. The surviving letters by Stephen were written to his
wife and cover only the brief period of his service. They are laconic, but in the absence of
published records are of value as recording the closing days of the war in the New River
Valley.
The chief letter-writer is William Alexander Smith (1835-1868) who worked as a schoolteacher in
Carroll before volunteering for service in June 1861. He was quickly promoted to second
lieutenant in Company I of the 50th Infantry, a unit that consisted of Carroll County men, many
of whom seem to have been relations by blood or marriage. He has comparatively little to say
about the fighting—of which he saw much in 1863-64. The burden of his letters is
concerned with personnel matters. Lieutenant Smith was in a difficult position: as an officer
he was responsible for keeping his unit full and ready for action; as a neighbor, he was
concerned for the well-being of his social and kinship networks—which might involve
keeping young men out of the army, turning a blind eye when they went absent to assist their
families, or even covering for deserters. He made it his business to keep those at home abreast
of what was happening to their children, much of which was distinctly unpleasant. William
Alexander seems to have been a good officer: motivated, observant, and calm under pressure. He
was captured with most of his regiment in the battle at Spotsylvania Court House in 1864 and
managed to survive a year in Yankee prisons.
James R. Smith, the eldest brother (1831-1863), enlisted in the Spring of 1862, probably in
Giles County in May, serving with William Alexander in Company I. In the letters he figures as
the happy warrior, uncomplaining, optimistic, and finding beauty in the war-shattered
landscapes about him. His health was broken in the retreat from Gettysburg—as he tells
the story, wading back across the swollen waters of the Potomac. Suffering from exposure and
rheumatism, and unable to keep up with the column, he would stagger ahead while the other
marchers rested. In the end he was sent back to Carroll County on disability and died at home
few months later.
The liveliest and most high-spirited of the brothers was the youngest, Barton Pierce Smith
(1838-1863). Known as “Doc,” he was a medical apprentice before he enlisted in
1863, one step ahead of the draft. This permitted him some choice over his placement; William
Alexander's Company I being full, he joined a company of Carroll men in the 29th Infantry,
working as a medical steward. His regiment was sent to the tidewater swamps—utterly
unappealing to Carroll County mountaineers—where they raided for provisions and laid
siege to the town of Suffolk. The tone of Barton's letters changed dramatically soon
afterwards: he was appalled to see his former patients abandoned when the 29th moved north,
knowing that they would likely die in Union prisons. Several months later Barton deserted;
neither William Alexander nor James knew his whereabouts, though presumably Stephen did since
Barton had gone home to Carroll.
The Killing of Barton and Jack Smith
The circumstances of Barton's subsequent death are mysterious but here are three accounts. The
first is from John Perry Alderman's 29th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg:
Howard, 1989):
When he came to the 29th, he was detailed as a steward to assist Dr. White, the
regimental surgeon. From his letters home it can be seen that he was a reluctant soldier, but
nevertheless reconciled to his lot in military service. The family tradition is that he went
home in the summer of 1863 when he learned that his wife was sick. The wife, who was a bride of
one year, died. Shortly after the funeral the Home Guard came to arrest the new widower. The
records do not indicate whether he had come home without leave or had overstayed leave.
Whatever his status, he and an uncle hid in an old pigsty when the Home Guard came to the
house, probably on September 24, 1863, and there both nephew and uncle were shot and killed.
(p. 30)
The second account is taken from the finding aid that accompanies the Smith Papers in Newman
Library, Virginia Tech:
Barton Pierce married Mary P. Uttley in 1862. They had one daughter. He enlisted
in Company D, 29th Regiment, Virginia Infantry, in February of 1863. He is often referred to as
“Doc(k)” in his brothers' letters. He may have had medical training prior to the
Civil War, as he was assigned as a steward to the regimental surgeon. He was shot and killed by
the Home Guard while on furlough, September 14, 1863.
The third is an eyewitness account from Uncle “Jack” Smith's son, John Henry Smith (1855-1942),
an itinerant preacher. It derives from an interview published in an unidentified North Carolina
newspaper from 1950, as transcribed on internet genealogy sites. It goes as follows:
One of the most familiar and fascinating Characters of North West North Carolina
is a traveling Preacher, John Henry Smith, now in his eightie-sixth year. He make his home at
Reidsville, Rockingham County and in spite his advanced years finds traveling helps his living.
He is a member of the Primitive Baptist Little Vine Church near Hillsville, Va., and has been
traveling over the Eastern part of the United States as a Preacher for the past 46 years. Above
all his adventures and travels he talks freely of the day during the Civil War when his Father,
a Union sympathizer, was shot and killed by his neighbors. The Smith Family lived on a 600-acre
plantation in Virginia. It was there that Jack Smith the traveling preacher's Father, fed
deserters from the army. He didn't believe in slavery and as the Civil War neared it's close
his activities became known to members of the Virginia Home Guard. Then the fateful day came.
The Home Guard, All Neighbors of the Smith Family, advanced on the plantation. They fired and
the preacher's Father slumped to the ground, dying an hour later. The Union Sympathizer's
cousin Dr. Bart Smith, was shot and instantly killed. Joe, a brother of the traveling preacher
was shot through the knee but recovered. Smith recalled that seen as his mother was on her
knees in the field over her husband who passed away only an hour later. The hatreds of the
Civil War have longed disappeared. The 85 year old man recalls, but he still remembers vividly
that day in 1864. He now travels “Preaching where ever God sends him” As he puts it. He has
recently taken a trip to Florida. Smith had another unusual experience in his youth. He was
just 13 years old when he made a chance visit to the house of a friend named White. There he
saw a 2 week old baby girl in her cradle. The baby he later made his Wife-Mrs. Rhoda White
Smith. He was ordained in Traveling Primative Baptist Preacher.. Post Civil War: Noah Shockley,
who shot John's father, called him to his death bed to ask forgiveness. When John was ask, Did
you forgive him? John replied, That's between Me, Him and the Lord. [“Ancestors of
Herbert Theodore Justice,” Website of Jeffery and Kaytrina Justice, 4 September 2010]
Noah Shockley would be John Manoah Shockley (1823-1917) of Hillsville in Carroll County, a
member of the Home Guard and brother of Col. Legrand Shockley, killed in action at Saltville in
1864. There was certainly bad blood between the Smiths and the Shockleys. In a letter of 3
March 1863 Barton says, speaking of attempts to draft his brother the blacksmith, “I
heard [Legrand] Shockley say that he was going to watch the mechanics and if he could get any
hold he would send them off to the army.” On 22 September the mild-spoken William
Alexander wrote to Stephen, “If those Hillsvillians or Shocklyvillians take or destroy
your property, prosecute them for stealing. If they interrupt any thing of mine I will attend
to them if I am fortunate enough to get through the war. I can’t find language to express my
hatred for such men.” The Home Guard was within its rights to shoot deserters but this
was not the usual practice; the killing of Barton and Jack Smith looks suspiciously like
judicial murder.
While nothing is said explicitly, William Alexander's desire to run for county magistrate (23
March 1864) may have been motivated for a desire to get the whip-hand over those who had been
harassing his family. The letters say nothing about the origins of the quarrel between the
Shockleys of Hillsville and Smiths of Pine Creek.
This Edition
The Smith letters, deposited in Special Collection at Newman Library, Virginia Tech
[Ms1996-018] were transcribed, edited, encoded in TEI markup, and annotated by Masters-level
graduate students at Virginia Tech in a sequence of introductory research and digital
humanities classes, 2009-11. The letters may be accessed in diplomatic and normalized editions,
with accompanying facsimiles. Most of the editorial work has gone into punctuation and
paragraphing. The Smiths are relatively accomplished writers; as the eldest son, James would
have had the best education available in Carroll; Barton Smith (“Doc”) was
receiving professional training as a physician; William was a schoolteacher. Stephen Smith, the
blacksmith, writes a less eloquent letter in a more elegant hand. Sergeant Ridgeway’s
prose is the most markedly nonstandard and closer to the norm for non-officers.
In the regularized form of the letters original spelling and grammar has been retained except
in the case of obvious pen-slips. Where the sense is not imperiled it seems worthwhile to
retain the nuances of dialect and to let the letters reflect the sometimes hasty or anguished
conditions in which they were written. It was not then the custom to punctuate private
correspondence; adding punctuation and regularizing capitalization renders the letters much
more accessible to modern readers, though at the risk of disambiguating the sense in places.
The textual editors on this project were Lindsay Ehrlich and Gracemarie Mike; the text was
subsequently revised by David Radcliffe to restore original spellings. Radcliffe also revised
and added annotations and made the style sheets. Professor Daniel Mosser supervised
transcriptions and Professor Radcliffe the TEI markup.
To illustrate the letters the site includes a prosopography or “face-book”
containing demographic information about persons mentioned in the letters drawn from Carroll
County census records and the military records for Carroll soldiers. That the Civil War was a
family affair is a truism which the Smith letters confirm in considerable detail. While
information contained in these documents is often fragmentary and incomplete the prosopography
enables one to see the demographic profile of the Carroll County soldiers and how the Smiths
and their neighbors in Pine Creek were integrated into a larger social network.
We are grateful to Aaron Purcell and Mark Brodsky of Special Collections at Virginia Tech's
Newman Library for making the Smith Letters available to us and for giving advice and
instruction in conducting the research. For census information we are indebted to the web pages
published by the Carroll Co VA GenWeb, and for military information primarily to the regimental
histories of the 50th Virginia written by John D. Chapla (1997), the 29th Virginia written by
John Perry Alderman (1989), and the 54th Virginia written by George L. Sherwood and Jeffrey C.
Weaver (1993).