Dr. Marji Smock Stewart, my late mother-in-law, wrote her family story for her son and grandsons. She called it “Finding the Rivers.” She shared it with other family members too and I think would be happy to see it online. Here is an excerpt about her father Monroe Smock and his father John Thomas Smock, from Daviess County, Kentucky. (Also see her Smock family tree.)
Finding the Rivers – Part I
John Thomas Smock 1863-1944
Granddad John Thomas Smock and his family of three kids (George, Leora and Monroe) plus my grandmother Cora lived in an old red house near the bridge and curve on Curdsville Road.
In his youth, Granddaddy was a real working cowboy. He worked in the plains States, following the wheat harvest, riding his horse from one area to another. We’re talking circa 1880. Granddaddy rode a horse almost until his death in 1944. He was an avid reader of old Western cowboy novels all his life.
John Thomas must have been working in South Dakota when he met Cora Delia Kohrdt. They married about 1880. Cora’s parents were German immigrants. Her father was Otto Kohrdt. My aunt Leora was born in Elk Point, South Dakota and probably that was also true of the eldest son, George. Their youngest, Monroe Thomas Smock, was born in Monroe, Louisiana. They moved to Daviess County, Kentucky, when Monroe was very young.
In Kentucky, the Smocks lived a typical farm life but apparently Granddad did well enough to acquire more property. There were a few farm hands who did the hard labor. My Daddy learned to work on the machinery and keep it in top running order. At some point John Thomas built the big house on the bend that I remember being my grandfather’s house. I never knew grandmother Cora. She died of breast cancer April 17, 1911 when Daddy was 15.
Not too long after Cora died, Granddaddy went to Tennessee with a team of horses, pulling a big wagon. When he returned home. his children recalled, he pulled up to the house with a new wife, Lena Denton, and her four children and their belongings. In 1915 Lena and John Thomas had a baby girl: Edna Mae Smock, later Glenn.
Monroe Smock 1896-1980
Also in 1915, my father Monroe married Cecile Sims. He was about 19. Their son, Hugh Kenneth, was born May 23, 1916. Monroe and Cecile were divorced when Hugh was very young. World War I was brewing so Monroe joined the US Navy. He became a machinist and was stationed in Philadelphia before shipping overseas.
Perhaps it was this experience on a ship, far below the deck, removed from fresh air and sunlight, that caused Monroe to think “If I ever have a chance, I’m going to be a ship’s pilot.” Those working on the engines had to stay on ship and work in the heat to “ready the engines” while those assigned to topside got to go ashore when the ship pulled into dock. Probably young Monroe knew what he was missing.
After the Armistice in 1919, Monroe returned to Kentucky and I assume he farmed. Granddaddy had given his daughter Leora (Denton) a farm (his first one with the red house on Curdsville Road). This might have been when Granddaddy gave Monroe a very small farm at the back of his bigger one, which backed up on Green River.
Elizabeth McDonald 1889-1991
In the meantime, down the road towards Curdsville, Lum and Sarah McDonald’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, had returned home from Louisville. She became secretary/bookkeeper for her brothers Joe and Homer, who owned a coal mine near Henderson KY.
At some point Monroe and Elizabeth renewed an acquaintance and began “seeing each other.” After all, they had lived most of their lives about 5 miles from each other. The old Curdsville Baptist Church history shows the Smock, McDonald and Denton families had been clerks, Deacons, Sunday School Superintendents etc. since the 1800s. In a small village, everyone knows each other.
On Dec 1, 1921 Monroe and Elizabeth tied the knot in Evansville IN with Rev. Rake officiating. Elizabeth Weldon and Homer McDonald stood up with them as witnesses. Elizabeth was Mother’s childhood chum and later in 1922 married Homer, Mother’s closest brother. The two Elizabeths were friends as well as sisters-in-law for almost 80 years.
The newlyweds moved to the little farm on Green River. Somehow farming didn’t hold them, although they had a daughter, Betty Jean, born in 1924 in Curdsville.
Texas
In 1927 Mother was pregnant again but Monroe and Elizabeth, with 3 year old Betty, packed up and moved to west Texas. Ranger TX was not too far west of Fort Worth but it was the beginning of the dry country. The oil fields promised good employment, plus a small house on site was provided to married men.
Living on a lease was dirty and very different from the green fields of Kentucky. The house was right out among the huge wooden rigs, unprotected from rambunctious kids. The wind blew continually and dust was everywhere, except it was often mixed with dark sticky stuff – black gold.
In early fall 1927 Daddy received an invitation to go to one of the prime Texas hunting spots for deer with a group of men. Mother wasn’t pleased, but somehow I politely waited for my daddy to come home before I put in my appearance. On October 14, 1927, I, Marjorie Ann Smock, was born.
Kentucky and Missouri
Apparently the oil boom turned bust and when I was still young Monroe took his three gals and went back to Kentucky. Perhaps he had been lured by invitations from Homer and Joe McDonald, Mother’s brothers. Homer and Joe had a towboat, the Sarah Mac (named for their mother), built for use on Green River in Kentucky. It probably was used in moving barges of coal around, or towing barges of coal to buyers in Evansville, IN. Daddy had the offer to master her so he and Mother followed his dream again.
Around 1930 Daddy got an offer to take the Sarah Mac to Missouri. I know nothing about the financial arrangement with Homer and Joe, but the idea challenged Monroe. There was Green River, the Ohio River, the mighty Mississippi River and briefly the Missouri River to navigate prior to finding the little Osage River that ran through the Ozarks. I don’t know if Daddy had been on any rivers other than the Green and the Ohio near Daviess and Henderson Counties in Kentucky until then.
So off Daddy went, hopefully to make a better life. Mother and her girls stayed in Kentucky, waiting for word. “First find the river” was a challenge to face Daddy throughout his life. When we would go to a new place, the byword always was, “first find the river.” That was our compass.
The depression was in full swing and, knowing my mother, she was concerned about the family’s future and how her two girls would fare. Would Elizabeth leave the comfort of being in Kentucky where many of her siblings and her mother lived? Monroe and Elizabeth had an exceptional love for each other. Would it stand this test? It wouldn’t be easy, as we shall see, but theirs was a tenacious bond. It lasted almost sixty years!
Next time: Elizabeth and the girls join Monroe Smock in Missouri.
