We would remember him today because of the old community named for him and because his name pops up in a lot of he-was-there accounts. He had a look at the evolution of Texas from a wild and untamed land, to a Republic, to a part of the United States and he managed to get it all down in a book that is a classic of its kind.
Born in 1808, in North Carolina, Smithwick was one of those rambunctious boys who liked the idea of Texas and its untamed, and largely ungoverned, wide-open spaces. He arrived in the state in 1827, but Smithwick's time in Texas did not get off to a good start. He smuggled tobacco from Mexico with his good friend Dr. John Webber, and at one point was forced to eat horse meat -- and liked it.
A blacksmith by trade, he settled in San Felipe for a while, but implicated himself in a murder by providing a file and a gun to the suspect, who was subsequently captured and shot, which was how the court system often worked in those days. The gun tied him to the escape and so Smithwick was put on trial and found guilty of being a "bad citizen." He was banished from town and given an escort to the Sabine River. He tried to hex the place as he left and might have because the community did not survive.
The hex was in the form of this whiskey toast to the health of old San Felipe: "If there is an honest man in the place may he be conducted to a place of safety, and then may fire and brimstone be rained upon this iniquitous town."
Smithwick made his way to the Redlands of East Texas and Louisiana before returning to Texas at the time of the revolution against Mexico. He arrived at Gonzales a day after the famous battle at that site. He witnessed and participated in the battle for independence from Mexico and tried to protect the fleeing settlers as they scattered in a panic during the Runaway Scrape.
Later, he lived with the Comanches for a time as part of a treaty negotiation and not only lived to tell about it, but would give the tribe a depth and personality usually lacking in frontier memoirs. He returned to civilization and married Thurza Blakey and moved from Webber's Prairie to Brushy Creek, and then on to Fort Groghan at present-day Burnet. He bought a mill from Lyman Wight and his band of Mormons and later built another mill east of Marble Falls.
The community named for him is located there, between Doublehorn and Hickory Creeks. He left the area and the state when the Civil War started. An avowed Unionist, Smithwick knew that Texas was no longer safe for him and his family, so he sold the mill and drove a prairie schooner to California, where he lived out his remaining years.
Late in his life, blind but as mentally alert as ever, he began his memoirs, dictating them to his daughter. Portions of the book were first published in the Dallas Morning News and later compiled and published in 1900 as "The Evolution of a State." The book has enjoyed steady popularity ever since, mainly because it is, according to critics and scholars of such things, the best book of its kind in existence.
"It is not about heroes and heroic events. It is about everyday people in extraordinary times," A.C. Greene wrote of Smithwick's book in his own "The 50 Plus Best Books on Texas."
"There is not a more human document of early days in Texas -- one that readers today can find themselves in -- than 'The Evolution of a State.'If I could recommend only one book of early Texas, it would be 'The Evolution of a State.'"
Smithwick had been gone from the state for almost 40 years when he died in 1899, but he stayed in touch with his state as best he could, mainly through newspapers. He concluded his book with this passage:
"It is extremely improbable that I shall ever see Texas again, as the first of January 1899, ushered in my ninety-second year, but I will cherish the memory of the long ago spent on her soil, and wish her a prosperous future. I am proud to note the progress she has made, though I can scarcely realize the transformation that progress has brought."
