INTRODUCTION

OK family.... We have a mystery that we all need to get involved in to solve! William Henry Smith is Grandpa Smith's granddad. We have some information on him, but just not enough! I've started this blog, partly for a class assignment, and partly because I am so interested in this family, and I really feel like we have to all put our heads together to figure this out! Grandpa told me that he has been trying to figure out this mystery off and on since he and Grandma joined the church. I think it's about time that we all help him and get this straight! I'm really excited about this so I'm expecting you to all get involved and help us find the things we need! :) Oh and just so you know, I decided to post this so you can read it in order from TOP down. (you know cause sometimes you have to read a blog from bottom to top to get it in order.) And also if you click on the pictures and documents they come up in a new screen bigger so you can read them.

PICTURE OF WILLIAM HENRY SMITH

BACKGROUND on BIRTH of WILLIAM HENRY SMITH

William was born in 1873, probably in Virginia. The other possibility is that he was born in Pennsylvania, but Grandpa says that William told him he was born in Virginia. We do NOT know who William's father was. That is the biggest mystery that we need to solve. We THINK his mother was Effie Craver Smith Harkins (more to come on her)... BUT we're still not even positive on that fact. We don't have a birth certificate for William, and most likely, there wasn't one ever created for him.

EFFIE V. CRAVER SMITH HARKINS PICTURE

EFFIE V. CRAVER SMITH HARKINS

Effie was born in 1855. (I got this date from a family group record, and a 1860 census in Elizabeth City, Virginia saying she was 5 years old at the time.) Her mother was Angelina Craver and her father was Fowler R. Smith. She had a brother named Fowler F. Smith and a sister, Anni S. Smith. (again I got this from the family group sheet Grandpa had). In an 1870 census, her and her mother, brother, and sister are found living with a Keen family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There is a two year old Keen named George, (he comes into the story a little later, although I'm not sure how important he is to our story.) In 1873, William was born, Effie would have been 18. Five years later, in 1878, William's brother, Clarence, is born. If Effie is indeed their mother, they would be living with her, but if she is not, we don't know if they were living with Effie by this time or not. Just a year after that Effie marries a Thomas Harkins. Thomas was a soldier in the Civil War and had his leg shot off, so there is a lot of information on him. After he died, Effie applied for a pension. I have a copy of an affidavit stating that Effie and Thomas were married on September 5, 1879 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and swearing that Thomas was the only man Effie was ever married to. Now this is where George Keen comes in again. He a signer on this document, and it says that he is Effie's BROTHER. On Clarence's death certificate his mother is listed as Effie Keen, and they were all living with them in 1860, so I think that Angelina Craver must have remarried to Mr. George Keen (Sr.). Another important person is on this document, Louisa Smith as Effie's SISTER-IN-LAW. She comes into the story in just a second with William.

AFFIDAVIT FOR PENSION

This is the affidavit signed by George Keen and Louisa Smith for a pension for Effie. It states that Effie was only married one time and she was married to Thomas Harkins. The thing I think is most interesting in this is the Louisa Smith. Remember there was another Louisa Smith on a census with William H. Smith in 1880? Is it the same one??

WILLIAM HENRY SMITH- CHILDHOOD

OK, here it goes. The first time William shows up on a census is in 1880. Not only does he show up, but he shows up TWICE, on two different census's. This is where it starts to get sticky. The second record we will discuss could be a different William H. Smith, but I'm inclined to believe that it's the same person. In June of 1880, William is shown on a census in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with Thomas (40) and Effie Harkins (the census says 28, but according to my calculations with her birth date, she would only be 25 right?), and his brother, Clarence Smith. The census says William is 8 at the time and lists him as a stepson to Harkins. Clarence is listed as a female, and a step daughter. So maybe he really is a she?? They were all living with a man named William Baker (age 60). The second census (MONTH??) a William H. Smith shows up in Frederick County, Virginia, which is less than 200 miles from Bucks County. The Census shows a William H. Smith (33) as Head, Louisa J Smith (28) as wife, and William H. Smith (7) as a son along with a couple of other children. William's son, Ernest, wrote that his father (William) told him that he was bound out on a farm in Virginia, near Richmond. (Frederick County is about 100 miles away from Richmond). So maybe this was the time he was bound out, but Ernest also says that he talked about Baron Hill farm and people named Oberly, so maybe not. Maybe the man is Effie's brother, but we do not have any record of a William as a brother to Effie. The other sticky thing is that there is a baptismal record (I'm not sure where it came from??), but it has a William Henry Smith born in December of 1872, with a William and Annie Smith as the parents. Anni Smith is the name of Effie's sister (on the 1870 census and a family group record). NOW, this probably is not the same person, but I'm not discarding it as a possibility quite yet. AND I have a paper that I think grandpa wrote about this family that states that on Clarence's wedding certificate, he lists his father as William Smith. It just seems like all these things are more than just coincidences. The 1890 census' were all burned in a fire, which is really too bad, because that would be another great piece to our puzzle, but the next census record we have of him is in 1900. By this time he is married to Florence Anna Davies.