| Sources |
- [S515] Ancestry.com, U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2012;).
- [S874] Heritage Consulting, Millennium File, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2003;).
- [S1817] Ancestry.com, Utah Pioneers and Prominent Men, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2000;), Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah; Genealogies and Biographies; S; Privates;.
Richard Smith was born September 19, 1792, Holston River, Sullivan, Tennessee. He died March 18, 1876, Provo, Utah.
Richard Smith's birth place of Holston River, Sullivan County, Tennessee was very much a new frontier area at the time he was born there. The county is located in the easternmost portion of that state near the Virginia border. The first permanent settlement by white people in Tennessee was in the Holston River valley in 1765, only a few years before Richard Smith's father arrived there sometime in the early 1780's. Richard Smith grew up there not only with his own father's large family but also with the families of his uncles on his mother's side of the family (the Agees).
At or near the time that Richard Smith married Diana Braswell in 1817, he and his wife were living in the area now Bradford, Gibson County, located in the far western part of Tennessee. They are said to be among the earliest settlers in that community (see Flossie Fletter) (and Culp). Gibson County was not formed as a county until 1823. Prior to that time it was a ward of adjacent Carrol county. And the name "Bradford" was not given to that community until after 1872 when the first railroad was constructed there. Probably all 13 of Richard and Diana's children were born in Gibson County, a densely forested wilderness at that time.
There is some evidence that Richard's brothers James, Thomas and William also lived in Gibson County, as well as some Agees; all names are listed in the 1840 Tennessee Census Index.
Richard and Diana, according to Mormon Church records, joined the Church in August of 1840 or 41. They and their children remained in this frontier community in Gibson County until perhaps sometime in 1842 or 1843 when they moved to St. Albans, Hancock, County, Illinois, about five miles south of the Mormon city of Nauvoo, Illinois. Nauvoo, the principal Mormon city at that time, is located on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River just opposite the Iowa border. It was founded by the Mormon Church in 1839. By 1846 Nauvoo had already reached a population of over 12,000, essentially all were members of the Church. Mormon converts like the Smiths were also migrating to communities surrounding Nauvoo.
Rachel Leah Smith (always known as "Leah"), the third child of Richard and Diana was about 21 years old when she moved to St. Albans, presumably with her parents in 1842 or 43. She had recently been widowed by the death of her first husband, Andrew Jackson Ross, who died from a logging accident in Tennessee. She had had two children by her first husband. They were James Richard (Dick) Ross, born in 1839, and Melvin Ross, born in 1842. These two Ross sons and their later families remained with their mother and her subsequent families for most of the rest of her life.
The Mormon exodus from the Nauvoo area to the Great Salt Lake Valley in Utah began in February 1846 and continued for many years. The Smiths were among those Mormon groups that left Nauvoo in 1846. The slow and difficult progress across Iowa forced the Mormon leaders to reconsider their plan to continue on to the Great Salt Lake area in 1846. The Church established temporary settlements that could serve as outfitting points for those journeying to the far west in the following years. In 1846 the Smith family moved to one of these camps in Iowa called Mt. Pisgah, where they remained for about four years. Mt. Pisgah was in what is now Union County, Iowa.
While there their sons Thomas C. and Philip Smith married sisters Sarah and Eliza Frampton. In addition to Richard's sons and daughters, at least one of Richard Smith's brothers, James Agee Smith, and most of his family also joined the Mormons and migrated to Utah, settling eventually in Washington County near St. George, Utah (see Deuel). By 1850 more than 11,000 Mormons had reached Utah.
The Richard Smith family, including Leah and her second husband John Whitlock Radford were participants in this movement, having arrived in Utah by 1850. Richard, Diana and many of their children settled in the Provo area after an initial stay in Salt Lake City. Richard Smith is listed in both the 1850 and the 1860 census of Utah as a resident of Provo. In 1860 Richard and Diana were listed as farmers in Provo and had a house valued at $150.00. None of their children were listed as part of their household., they were age 68 and 67 respectively.
In about 1860 Richard and Diana and their son Ephraim and his family moved to the beautiful Heber Valley in the Wasatch Mountains east of Provo. They arrived there only one year after the initial settlers. They lived with other settlers in a compound of log cabins that were adjoined in a fort style arrangement forming a square, as they had previously done when first settling in Provo. These cabin row forts afforded protection against possible Indian raids. Ephraim became a tanner in Heber, a trade which he had learned in Tennessee. By 1862 another son, Thomas C. Smith and his family also moved to Heber, and their son Philip and his family also lived in Wasatch County (possibly in nearby Wallsburg). The Smiths all raised very large families in Heber. Leah, however was not among them, she instead moved with her husband John Whitlock Radford and their families to Millard County, Utah.
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1797 - 1875 (77 years)
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