Family Histories

Showcasing the geneaological and historical work done on C.W.’s and Marcia’s families. Marcia’s set of historical/biographical essays - The Woman in the Well — is available for sale and is recommended for anyone interested in seeing an exemplary model of writing about your family. A Geneaological Study of the Smith and Leftwich Familes was researched and written by William Leftwich Smith and was edited and produced by Holly P. Smith. C.W. researched and wrote the four volumes of biographical sketches below collectively titled Intangible Archeologies — Volume I Autobiography, Volume 2 Biographies, Volume 3 Not So Little Women, and Volume 4 Documents. The full texts are available as links below.

Read Murder in Muskogee from the book

 My father, William Leftwich Smith, spent a decade or so after his retirement researching the history of the ancestors on his mother’s and father’s sides. He didn’t know how to type. He had no access to the internet and wouldn’t have known how to use it if he had. He wrote letters to county clerks, librarians, and local historical societies and visited many cemetaries, as he notes below. Together with my daughter, Holly P. Smith, they’ve made a remarkable compendium of documents, photos, charts, maps and narratives that chart a course of wanderings from across the Atlantic to Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. In his acknowlegments he pays a special tribute to his granddaughter Holly for designing and producing the volume: “Her organizational and artistic skills plus her innovative use of family photographs breathed new life into my work.” Read the full text here.