Prefatory.

vii

widow of Mr. Abraham Irvin, a woman of cultivated mind, with whom he lived happily until her decease in 1800. They had no children.   She had five by her former marriage.

Of Mr. Smith's affection for his first wife, the following incident bears witness. It was communicated to us by Rev. J. M. Smith, son of Mr. Smith's youngest son, Robert.

"My father's earliest recollections related to the habits of his father, which he told about as follows: His mother was buried on the farm, on a hill at some distance from the house, where some large oak trees had been left standing to mark and shade the family burying ground. Under the shade of these trees my grandfather had constructed a kind of booth, somewhat after the form of an Indian wigwam, but small in size. In this he had made a couch, upon which he would lie upon his back and read. To this retreat he was accustomed to take his little son, and there to read to him from the Holy Scriptures, and point out to him the grave of his mother. Their last visit to this hallowed spot made a very deep unentered upon duty, in company with many others from that section of the country. When they had marched to Dumfries, Va., before they joined the main army, they were ordered to halt and inoculate for the small-pox. Irvin neglected to inoculate, under the impression he had had the disease during infancy. The consequence was, he took the small-pox in the natural way, and died, leaving Mrs. Irvin, and five small children, four sons and a daughter.

In the fall of 1782, Mrs. Irvin removed, in company with a number of enterprising Virginians, to the wilds of Kentucky; and three years afterward intermarried with Col. Smith, by whom she had no issue. She died about the year 1SO0, in Bourbon county, Kentucky, in the 56th year of her age. She was a member of the Presbyterian church, and sustained through life an unblemished reputation. In early life she wrote but little, most of her productions being the fruits of her maturer years, and while she was the wife of Col. Smith. But little of her composition has ever been put to press; but her genius and taste were always acknowledged by those who had access to the productions of her pen. She had a happy talent for pastoral poetry, and many fugitive pieces ascribed to her will long be cherished and admired by the children of song.