Overview

There are two family trees stored here, the Smith family centered around L. K. Smith Sr. and Frances Stokes Smith, and the Searle family centered around Helen Hartman Searle and Lawrence G. Searle. Those are, of course, the parents of Sam Smith and Laurie Searle, your hosts for this website.

The Smith family tree

There are lots of surnames in our past. The actual Smith surname cannot be traced back past Emmett Aaron Smith, since I do not think there is any way to determine his father. The other surnames include Stokes, Britt, Rye, Fields, Powers, Harrison, Wiliford, Carpenter, Rutherford, Bullard, and others yet to be discovered. The names may be strange to us, but they are all direct ancestors.

Who were these people? They were poor, white farmers, with large families and no property. Many of them were illiterate. When they weren't farming they worked in the cotton mills and lumber mills. They lived in the border counties between North Carolina and South Carolina, including Robeson and Columbus in NC, and Darlington, Florence, Marlboro, and Marion in SC. Also Macon and Chilton couties in Alabama and an unknown county in Georgia. They hardly ever lived in a town; when they did, it was because they were working in a cotton mill.

When I started this genealogy project my hope was to discover when our ancestors first set foot on American soil and where they came from. I have been unsuccesful so far. Our family was in America before there was a United States. The surnames are all English, but so far I can't link any person with England.

Another hope I had was to discover if any of our ancestors owned slaves. I am sorry to report that James K. Fields is listed in the 1850 census as owning one slave, an eleven year old boy. We can take some comfort in the fact that by 1860 he owned no slaves, and he only owned one. I'm still doing more research, of course. His link to us is somewhat confused. Be sure to read the notes on his entry.

There are lots of gaps left to be filled in, especially of maiden names, which will add more surnames to our history. Stay tuned!

The Searle Family tree

The Searle's have a much more varied and affluent past than the Smiths. Laurie is a distant cousin of Charlton Heston, and her great-great grandfather James Charlton was a railroad tycoon in the midwest. In contrast to the Smith family, it was easy to trace her ancestors back to England, Wales, Germany and Hungary. There are also plenty of coal miners and even a saloon keeper in the family.