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Prefatory.

pression upon the mind of my father; he never referred to it without tears, even when he was an old man. They were about to remove to the State of Kentucky, and all other matters having been arranged, he took his little boy and repaired to the grave of his wife, which he was soon to leave forever, and there the two kneeled, side by side, and the widowed husband offered up his last prayer on behalf of his orphan child over the grave of the departed wife and mother. This done, leading his little son by the hand, he followed his family, who had already started from their old home to seek a new one in the wilds of Kentucky."

This was in 1788. He took with him, his wife and her children, and of his own children, James, William, Robert, and Rebecca, and settled on Cane Ridge, in Bourbon county, Kentucky, about seven miles from Paris.

Col. Smith was a man of very quiet and taciturn character, a reader and a thinker, and much given to religious reading and meditation. In him, however, the courage of opinion was fully developed, and when roused, he had more than ordinary talent in debate, so that among his new neighbors he soon became a man of mark. He was elected the same year a member of the convention which sat at Danville to confer about a separation from the State of Virginia, and afterward represented Bourbon county in the General Assembly of the State.

In religious matters Col. Smith was an enthusiast, and for some time took an active part in the Stoneite movement, which so excited the early church in Kentucky, for an account of which we must refer our readers to Davidson's History of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky. He finally, however, returned to the Presbyterian church, and receiving licensure, or perhaps ordination, he spent much of his time in his later years as a missionary among the Indians, for