urn:taro:utexas.cah.00398 A Guide to the Noah Smithwick Papers, 1835-1922 Dolph Briscoe Center for American History Original EAD encoding by Evan Hocker according to TARO 2 EAD 2002 Editing Instructions. March 2005 Finding aid written in English. Descriptive Summary Smithwick, Noah Noah Smithwick Papers 1835-1922 28 items Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin Materials are in English. Biographical Note

Noah Smithwick (1808-1899) was born in North Carolina, trained as a blacksmith, and moved to Texas in 1827. Legal problems drove him from Stephen F. Austin's colony, but he returned to Texas by the time of the Texas Revolution and participated in the Battle of Concepción. Moving to Bastrop, he was soon forced to leave in the face of the Mexican Army during the "Runaway Scrape," eventually arriving at San Jacinto after the decisive battle. With Mexican forces defeated, Smithwick returned to Bastrop and resumed his trade as a blacksmith and gunsmith, and he married Thurza Blakey in 1839. The couple lived in Travis, Williamson, and Burnet Counties, but Smithwick's Union sympathies and secessionist death threats drove the family out of Confederate Texas in 1861. They moved west to Southern California, where he died in Santa Ana in 1899.

 Scope and Contents

Correspondence, reminiscences, land deed, notice of sale, broadside, and newspaper clippings. Papers concern Smithwick's reminiscences of Texas between 1827 and 1861, and his book The Evolution of a State: or Recollections of Old Texas Days.

Related Material

Book: Smithwick, Noah. The Evolution of a State: or Recollections of Old Texas Days. Austin, Tex., The Steck Company, 1935.

Cite as

Noah Smithwick Papers, 1835-1922, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin

 Inventory 2G267 Correspondence of Noah Smithwick: 2G267 1862 2G267 1881 2G267 1898 2G267 Reminiscences of Noah Smithwick 2G267 Land deed of Enoch Harris, 1835 2G267 Notice of sale of animals by Jesús de la Lerna, 1899 2G267 Newspapers and newspaper clippings: 2G267 Galveston News: 2G267 1897 2G267 1898 2G267 1900 2G267 1922 2G267 Dallas News, undated 2G267 Austin Statesman, undated 2G267 Georgetown Commercial, 1904 2G267 Santa Anna, California, Standard: 2G267 1897 2G267 1898 2G267 1899 2G267 Broadside, "The Book You Want: The Evolution of a State," 1900