The Ancestors of Washington Logan Smith

My second great grandparents, Washington “Logan” Smith and Amanda Louisa “Lou” Mezo. My great aunt Eva Lorene “Reenie” Smith Dial wrote “Pa Smith” and “Ma Smith” on the front and back of this photo.

93.75% confirmed or likely to be English

6.25% German and German-speaking Swiss

Before I ever saw a picture of Washington Logan Smith - or “Pa Smith” as my grandma and her siblings call him - I pictured my second great grandfather as kind of a big burly guy. I don’t know if that’s because one of the few things I knew about him is that he worked in the Hamilton County oil fields most of his life or because he seems to be named after two military generals - George Washington of course, who’s from Virginia, where Pa Smith’s father was born, and John A. Logan, a Civil War hero and U.S. senator from Southern Illinois, where Pa Smith was born. Now that I’ve seen pictures, I’d say he was actually about five feet tall and 125 pounds. Standing next to him, his wife Lou looks very tall, but in other pictures, it’s clear that she was no taller than my great aunt Reenie who is by no means a tall woman.

Pa Smith usually went by his middle name, and it’s probably worth mentioning that his first name might have come more directly from his great uncle George Washington Hunt, who lived in Hamilton County, Illinois and fought in the Civil War. The older Washington’s sister, Elvira Hunt, is Logan’s maternal grandmother, and the two of them were born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, a spot located about an hour northeast of Durham, North Carolina.

George Washington Hunt, the brother of Elvira Hunt and great uncle of Washington Logan Smith

Their grandfather and oldest traceable Hunt ancestor, William Hunt, Sr., was born in 1720 in the same county. Then when William was 46, his son Jesse was born. Jesse Hunt married a woman named Mary Wagstaff and had several kids back in Mecklenburg County before the family relocated first to Tennessee and then to Hamilton County, Illinois around 1840. At the time, Elvira - Jesse and Mary’s daughter, and Pa Smith’s grandmother - was about 21 years old.

Mary Wagstaff Hunt, Logan Smith’s great grandmother who was born in the 1700’s, is buried close to this spot in Knights Prairie Cemetery, a couple of miles down the road from Braden Valley Church

Today, Jesse is buried at Memphis National Cemetery in Tennessee. Based on this and his year of birth, he is likely a veteran of the War of 1812. His wife Mary is buried at Knights Prairie Cemetery in southern Hamilton County, along with most of her children. One of them, though, enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 and died at a prisoner of war camp in Richmond, Virginia four years later.

Bern, the capital city in the German-speaking region of Switzerland

Shortly after her family’s arrival in Illinois, Elvira Hunt married Logan Smith’s grandfather, Solomon Huffstutler. Apparently back in Switzerland (it’s Switzerland now anyway), the name was “Hochstatler” or “Hochstettler”. In 1736, this family migrated from the city of Bern to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a spot just west of Philadelphia and just east of Harrisburg. It looks like the change from the name’s original form to “Huffstutler” happened when Pa Smith’s ancestors relocated to North Carolina, which is not too surprising considering Pennsylvania was a pretty German area, and the Carolinas weren’t so much. The move to North Carolina was eventually followed by a move to Russellville, Kentucky. Then by the early 1830’s, Logan’s great grandparents, John Huffstutler, Jr. and Maria Elizabeth “Betsy” Davidson, were living in Hamilton County, Illinois. 

Here’s a drawing of the Harpe brothers, who were actually cousins. They stole and murdered all over the area between deep southern Illinois and northern Mississippi.

There’s an extremely interesting story recorded by John and Betsy’s third great granddaughter, Linda Huffstutler, which I have no way of verifying or refuting. According to Linda, Betsy was kidnapped at age five by two infamous outlaws known as the Harpe brothers. “Big” and “Little” Harpe, she says, then left her at a Cherokee village in Tennessee for years before coming back to retrieve her when “Big” Harpe deemed her suitable to be one of his companions.

Cave-in-Rock along the banks of the Ohio

Linda says that “Big” Harpe fathered a child with Betsy, and that she and another woman stayed some time with the Harpes at their hideout in Cave-in-Rock, a cave in Illinois found along the banks of the Ohio River, where the women would lure the Harpe brothers’ victims by standing on the river bank and calling out for help to men travelling along the Ohio. After both Harpe brothers were caught and executed by beheading in Kentucky, the two women attempted to live legitimate lives. It’s written that around this time, Betsy changed her last name to Roberts and met John Huffstutler, Jr. in Russellville, Kentucky.

Russellville, Kentucky

Linda says she was able to piece her narrative together by using the stories her family passed down and other stories she read about the Harpe brothers. It’s hard to say what percentage of it is actually true (if any), but regardless, John and Betsy’s son Solomon Huffstutler was born in the Russellville, Kentucky area in 1820 - about ten years or so before the family came to Illinois. Solomon Huffstutler married Elvira Hunt in Hamilton County in September of 1841, and a year later Elvira gave birth to Pa Smith’s mother, Martha Jane Huffstutler. It appears that Solomon died in the Civil War. I don’t know all the specifics, but he enlisted in the Union Army in October of 1861 and died in December of 1862. He is buried - or at least there is a marker for him - at Knights Prairie Cemetery, just down the road from Braden Valley Church.

Mary Jane Huffstutler Capp is the aunt of Washington Logan Smith and the sister of Martha Jane Huffstutler. Here she is pictured with her husband.

On Pa Smith’s father’s side, it looks like the Smith family lived along the border of Virginia and North Carolina. Pa Smith’s father’s first name was James, and he was born in Virginia. I don’t know if James’s parents came with him to Hamilton County, Illinois or not. But at age 24, that’s where he married Martha Jane Huffstutler. The two of them had four sons and three daughters. Washington Logan Smith, their fourth child, was born on August 28, 1868.

Logan and Lou Smith are pictured here. The woman on the far left is probably one of their daughters. Notice the dog in front.