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View Tree for Archibald SmeathersArchibald Smeathers (d. date unknown)

Archibald Smeathers (son of William Smithers and Mary Winters)105 died date unknown. He married Unknown Goodman on June 1816 in Booneville, Indiana106.

 Includes NotesNotes for Archibald Smeathers:

John Smothers (I) received a league of land in the DeWitt Colony west of current Hallettsville near current St. Marys community. He is listed as arriving in Sep 1828 with family of 4 and a widower when the title was passed on 8 May 1832. John Smothers (I) was a voter in the Precinct of Upper Lavaca on 1 Feb 1836 to elect a delegate to the Mar 1 Texas Independence Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Soon after John and Mary Smothers were forced to flee east in the Runaway Scrape after the Alamo defeat in early Mar 1836, they stayed at Groces Retreat in current Waller Co for a period, then Hempstead and Columbus where son John Smothers (II) was born on 8 Nov 1836. In 1839 they returned to the Smothers homestead where John Smothers (I) died in 1846. John and Mary had four children, John (II), Charles, Tobin and Martha Ann (m. Jefferson Butler). John and Charles became freighters based in Halletsville and making runs to Austin, the Gulf coast and LaGrange. They hauled in the parts for the first cotton gin west of the Colorado River.His three children by his first wife were William (II), Archibald and Mary Ann (m. Elijah Kelly). On 25 Jan 1836, John Smothers (I) and Mary Harris Ashby were married by alcalde Andrew Ponton under bond of $10000 until the marriage could be confirmed by Mexican law by a Catholic priest. Mary Ashby was the second child of John Miller and Mary Ashby who were also early Lavaca River settlers living near the Smothers. Her older sister was the much written about and colorful Sarah Ann Ashby McClure Braches.

From the History of Gonzales County Texas: Archibald Smothers, son of John Smothers (I) and a Mr. Nunnelley were surprised and killed by Indians by night in their camp on the Lavaca River where they were cutting trees and making boards. John (II) and older half-brother William Smothers (II) were Lavaca River minutemen under Capt. "Black" Adam Zumwalt and participated in the company's response to the Ponton and Foley killings by Comanches on their way to Linnville and were with the company when the Comanches were engaged and routed at the Battle of Plum Creek. William Smothers may have been the "old Texan from the Lavaca" that daringly shot down one of the armored, gaudily dressed chiefs that then precipitated the rout of the Comanches by the settlers. William Smothers was one of twelve men from the Lavaca serving with Capt. Hay's Spying Company which ranged west of the Medina River watching for Mexican troop movements from the south into the Republic. He was in Capt. Zumwalt's Company at the Battle of Salado in response to Gen. Woll's invasion of the Republic and capture of San Antonio in 1842.

As described by author Paul Boethel in his works on the history of LavacaCo, TX, the half-brothers William and John Smothers were two of the more colorful characters in LavacaCo politics and life throughout the latter part of the 19th century. William Smothers married Cynthia Kelly and had eight children. He maintained two stores in Hallettsville and was a militant in having Hallettsville established as the county seat rather than Petersburg (early Zumwalt Settlement) to the south. When Petersburg lost the election for seat and refused to give up the county records, Smothers formed a posse, seized the records in Petersburg and escorted them to Hallettsville to the temporary county seat buildings he had provided for the new officials. William Smothers was a "hell-raiser" who loved to drink and gamble and in 1850 operated a liquor store in Hallettsville and operated a pool hall and gaming room in the establishment, indicted at least 9 times for breaking local liquor laws and over 17 times for gambling. Multiple times he was either on the receiving or giving end of local assault cases, acquitted in some and paying fines in others. After all that he was elected sheriff in 1860 and active in recruiting companies of local men for frontier service as rangers and later the Civil War. He was in the freighting business and finally killed in a shoot out with a Union agent in 1863. His son A.J. Smothers was Sheriff of LavacaCo in 1882-1888.

John Smothers (II) was living on the Smothers homestead near St. Marys in 1860 with his widowed mother and wife Mary Hinch Smothers (married 13 Oct 1859) near sister Martha Ann and husband Jefferson Butler. John was a successful freighter and stock raiser providing beef and shipping for the Confederate troops in the 1860's. John and Mary Smothers had children Robert, Henry, John W. (Cora Kelly), George, Lucy (m. C.C. Turk), Maggie (m. Oscar Karney), Fanny (m. E.A.Turk), Ginny (m. Bird Kelly) and Lizzie (m. Robert Kelly, later John McElroy). The hard-drinking, hard-playing Butler, Kelly and Smothers "young bucks" were the source of extensive encounters with the law, both due to disputes among themselves and others which at times became violent and felonious in the Hallettsville area through the close of the 19th century.


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More About Archibald Smeathers:
Burial: Unknown, Bloomfield, Spencer County, Indiana.106

More About Archibald Smeathers and Unknown Goodman:
Marriage: June 1816, Booneville, Indiana.106

Children of Archibald Smeathers and Unknown Goodman are:
  1. Charles B. Smeathers, d. date unknown.
  2. Mary Jane Smeathers, d. date unknown.
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