Pioneer Smith Brothers

The Smiths hunted bear in Jernigan Thicket, two miles west, and it sheltered less welcome people too. The thicket covered ten to fifteen square miles of northeastern Hunt, southeastern Fannin and western Delta counties, dense with bois d'arc, pecan, oak and rattan vines, and took its name from a hunter lost there twelve days in 1843. Fugitives hid in it, among them the Martin D. Hart company of bushwhackers. In 1863, the Handbook says, citizens caught three of four Charleston men who had fought for the Union and hanged them after a summary court-martial; it names none.

What the plaque says

Pioneer Smith Brothers Tall, strong men who helped to carve Delta County out of Texas frontier. Benjamin, Charles, Gilford and Mira J. Smith came to Texas from Arkansas before or during the 1840s. They obtained from heirs title to the Moses Williams land grant, patented 1849, and surveyed by Major George W. Stell. After 1853 several generations of the Smith family lived here. The brothers were each 6 feet, 4 inches or taller and weighed over 250 pounds. they cut logs and built their cabins with puncheon (split-log) floors, riven-board roofs and homemade furniture. Instead of nails, wooden pegs were used; instead of glass windows, board shutters. Chimneys were of black clay mud plastered over sticks. Bear meat was the main food, obtained by hunting with flintlock rifles in such dangerous places as Jernigan Thicket, 2 miles west. Charles Smith kept bees, and was known as "Honey." Mira J. Smith was a key man in settling of Delta County, because he was an early blacksmith. His first son, Moses, became a tanner; the second son, Henry, a blacksmith. The women of the four families carded cotton and wool, and spun, wove and sewed clothing. Young Moses Smith also made men's buckskin suits. Grant has produced over $1,000,000 worth of cotton. Marker sponsored by Lina M. and Melvin W. Smith, Margueritta and Ernest O. Smith (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 7.9 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 23 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 24 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Eiffel Tower — 24 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.

More markers nearby

• Union Cemetery, Old — 2.4 mi
• Old Klondike Cemetery — 4.0 mi
• Abel Morgan — 5.1 mi
• Giles Academy — 5.4 mi