TOURS INTO KENTUCKY
AND THE NORTHWEST
TERRITORY.
Three Journals by the Rev. James Smith of
Powhatan County, Va.,
1783-1795-1797.
SKETCH OF REV. JAMES SMITH
BY JOSIAH MORROW, LEBANON, OHIO.
The writer of the following journals was
born in Powhatan
county, Virginia, September 17, 1757,
and died near Columbia,
in the Northwest Territory, July 28,
1800. He resided in his
native county nearly all his life, his
removal to the north side of
the Ohio having been made less than two
years before his death.
His paternal ancestors, it is believed,
came from England.
The first of them of whom we have any
account was his grand-
father, George Smith, of whom there is a
tradition that, when a
youth, he moved from the eastern coast
lands of the colony of
Virginia to the valley of the James
river, taking with him only
his buffalo robe, gun and tomahawk. He
was a hunter, but he
became a man of wealth and left to his
son, Thomas, a large
landed estate, situated in Powhatan and
Chesterfield counties,
a mile or two from the James river, and
about twenty miles above
Richmond.
Thomas Smith was also a wealthy man and
was able to leave
to each of his six children a good farm
and a number of slaves.
He was three times married and by each
marriage had one son
and one daughter. His third wife was
Mrs. Margaret Guerrant,
of Huguenot descent; her maiden name was
Trabue, and she
was the mother of James. Strangely as it
seems to us, the two
elder sons were each christened George,
and each had for his
middle name the maiden name of his
mother. The eldest was
George Rapin (or Rapeen); the second,
George Stovall. The
eldest, however, was familiarly known at
home as Mill-pond
George, from the mill-pond near his
birth place. In his first
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