- Veteran of the War of 1812. Victim of English Impressment (Indentured Servant), about 1807. Spent several years in an English prison.
- John Whig Smith, a brother of Uriah, was a carpenter, a very fine workman. He spent seven years learning his trade. After that he went on board a ship (an American ship) sailing for the “East Indies” as a ship carpenter. At that time England and France were having trouble. England was in need of men and captured all they could find. He was taken prisoner by an English “man of war.” The treatment they gave the him was cruel, and upon the slightest provocation they would give them dreadful floggings or whippings with “cat o’ nine tails,” tying them up so they could not move. One day he saw two officers talking very low. He was anxious to hear so leaned over his bench, resting his head in his hands. They discovered him listening and reported him. He was ordered below for the flogging. He had a mouthful of tobacco at the time and told the officers he was sick, and to make good his word he swallowed the tobacco. It made him sick, deathly sick, and when they found him to be really sick he was spared the flogging. He tried many times to escape but could not. After eighteen months as a prisoner he hid himself in the bottom of the boat and for three weeks the cook, who had become his friend, would slip things to him to eat until he made his escape in Ireland. It was over two years before he got back to his home in New York, making four years from the time he embarked to his return. He afterwards married and with his brother Uriah moved to Wayne County, Penn. where your grandmother (Margaret Adeline Smith) was born.
Julia (Smith) Cullar
(Letter to Raymond C. Smith, son of Charles C. Smith)
Amboy, Illinois
February 1, 1910.
- According to family tradition, the epithet "Whig" had been applied to our early ancestor before the move to Wayne County, PA. Most probably it came about at the time of the War of 1812 and was given to indicate his opposition to England. It is quite possible that he already had the middle initial "W" as part of his name since his father was named John W. Smith. A letter dated October 9, 1930, from Miss Annie Davis, a descendent of the original John W. Smith through his doughtier Anna, gave the following information regarding the nickname Whig. it seems that it was applied because of John Whig Smith's refusal to give allegiance to King George III of England. As punishment for this offense, the British soldiers took the Smith family's hogs from their pen in the month of December, leaving the family without meat for the winter. Since John Whig Smith had been taken from an American vessel ind impressed into service on a British ship, it is small wonder that he refused to be subservient to British soldiers. It is not known when this impressment of our ancestor occurred but the Royal Navy made impressment an intermittent practice from 1790 to 1908.
The Smith Family History
By Joyce Hughes Hewitt
1964
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Our Family History
1785 - 1871 (86 years)