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Posted by Nena Smothers Thompson, Jess M. [View Citation] Stephen Rawlings was a carpenter as well as a public official and as such he built the stocks and whipping post that stood on the county court house plot in early Elizabethtown. Stephen Rawlings had a son Edward [later Capt Edward Rawlings] who qualified in 1795 as deputy sheriff of Hardin county under Sheriff Samuel Haycraft. [I have NO idea what this last part really means...LOL-but this is interesting putting Smeathers in KY in 1795, I am assuming its KY, and NOT ILL, so another clue for us where he was earlier. And it is our Smeathers we know for sure, even though its written Smothers, so often Historians did that as well as prior researchers]
Link: Wm Smeathers Migration
on 2/11/2004, 6:55 pm
69.41.129.159
My 4x grandfather was Williams Smeathers. On the Historical Marker in front of the Hartford Museum, KY, it says he was A Man of Courage.
In a book "Law of the Heart" by Dorothy Gentry of Owensboro, KY, she mentions he was a 'Just & Honorable' man & believed in 'Playing a bad hand well", pertaining to Cards. Its said his cabin on the Ohio banks called Yellowbanks was an Ordinary for the Ohio rivermen & travelers & gamblers.
I believe this. Although we have a difficult time proving his participation in the Rev. War, and his whereabouts prior to 1797, & the misspelling of his name Smeathers, this story below at least gives a picture of this grandfather whose blood still flows through our veins four generations later with honour, justice & courage.
The Jess M. Thompson Pike County history : as printed in installments in the Pike County Republican, Pittsfield, Illinois, 1935-1939. Pittsfield, Ill.: Pike County Historical Society, 1967, 582 pgs chapter 129-Pike Co ILL pg 381
Sheriff Haycraft's son Samuel Haycraft Jr relates the following story of Deputy Sheriff Edward Rawlings in his "History of Elizabethtown"
"He [Rawlings]was a slender, tall man, with but little surplus flesh, nearly all muscle, very active, and prided himself on his manhood and high sense of chivalric honor.
"A warrant was placed in his hands to arrest 'Bill Smothers', who was a rollicking kind of outlaw, and frequently guilty of personal outrages. He infested the lower end of the county [now Daviess country, formerly a part of Hardin], abt 130 miles from the present court house. Rawlings, by stratagem and some help, arrested Smothers, tied him on a horse and started with him on the long journey to the jail. When on the road between Hartford and Hardin's Settlement, Smothers addressed Rawlings something after this manner: "Ned, I have heard of you, and that you boast yourself to be much of a man. Is it fair if you are a better man than me to keep me tied? I promise to go with you untied if you are the better man, and I prove to be the better man then let me go." "Rawlings was too high strung and chivalric to stand that. He immediately dismounted, untied his prisoner, and at it they went. They were well matched, and like James Fitz James and Rhoderic Dhu, without a spectator to behold the contest. Their brawny arms encircled each other and every power of muscle, sinew and bone was put in requisition. The contest was long and doubtful. But Smothers, being as accustomed to hardships and lying in the woods as the wild beasts, outwinded the Deputy and came off the victor, and accordingly went his way. Rawlings considered that the matter had been settled by the code of honor, fist and skull and was content with the issue. His fee in case of success would have been three shillings in tobacco at a penny ha-penny per pound."
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