Editor's note: John's parents were Francis Marion Smithson and Sarah Edwards Chiles.
Born in Louisa County, Virginia, he moved with his parents to Lunenburg County in 1747. He married Drucilla Anne Walker in 1763, and they had seven children. John and Drucilla lived in the same area as their parents and his seven brothers and two sisters and their families.
John's Revolutionary War record shows he enlisted February 6, 1777 in the 6th Virginia Regiment of Continental Forces, commanded by Lt. Colonel James Hendricks, where he served under Captain James Johnson. Family legend says that the entire clan was in the business of raising horses on the several family farms. Three of the brothers left for war on their horses but there was no cavalry attached to the armies at that time.
John became what was later called a "courier" with the army of General Nathaniel Greene. At that time he was referred to as an express rider, delivering wagons. He owned no complete uniform so he rode in civilian clothes. He reported to Valley Forge in December 1777, but did not winter there.
John was badly wounded at Monmouth Court House, New Jersey, on the afternoon of June 29, 1778. Family legend has him making his way to the sea coast, some 20 miles east and being taken in by a fisherman and his wife who had a son in the Continental lines. It is thought that he recovered enough to make his way back home with a medical discharge.
In the battles around Monmouth, General George Washington was commanding, with General Nathaniel Greene and General the Marquis La Fayette holding subordinate commands.
In 1780, attention of the war shifted to South Carolina. General Greene was transferred there and the British captured Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. Apparently that same year John Smithson reinlisted with a unit of Virginia Militia. One of John's brothers was now riding with General Count Pulaski's legions who had moved south to Charleston, South Carolina. They moved further south to Savannah, Georgia where General Pulaski was mortally wounded. Years later this brother would come over the mountains to Tennessee with his children and John's children and settle in what became Giles County, TN where they named the new county seat Pulaski, after their General.
Another brother was serving under General La Fayette to the end of the war and was with La Fayette at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. John was not so fortunate. Apparently he went with the Virginia Militia to join General Gates at Camden, South Carolina. He was again wounded there and either died there or as the grandchildren believed, he once again made it home to die. The battle of Camden was a series of engagements, with the possibility that John was actually wounded as the Americans retreated from there. Both General Cornwallis and General Banastain Tarleton were in command of British troops who harrassed the Americans into North Carolina and even into Virginia in 1780.
John must have put some of his time at home to good use because Sylvanus, his youngest child, was born in 1780. John and wife Drucilla Anne Walker, had seven children, one of whom was Nathaniel B. Smithson. Nathaniel B. rode dim horse trails with his wife, Mary Cheatham, and brought two young children with them when they came to Williamson County, Tennessee in 1803 to share in a 1600 acre land grant given them for their father's services to "the Continental Forces, from 1777 to 1780".
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