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Noah Smithwick banished from Texas as "a bad citizen"
On this day in 1830, Noah Smithwick was banished from Texas as "a bad
citizen." Smithwick, born in North Carolina in 1808, came to Texas in
1827 and eventually settled in San Felipe. When San Felipe authorities
ordered a friend of his who was accused of murder chained with leg
irons, Smithwick, a blacksmith by trade, provided a file and a gun so he
might escape. As a result, the authorities tried Smithwick, declared him
"a bad citizen," and banished him from Austin's colony and Texas,
providing an escort as far as the Sabine River. Smithwick returned to
Matagorda in the fall of 1835 and reached Gonzales the day after the
battle of Gonzales. He served in the Texas Revolution, married, and
after an unsuccessful stint as a Williamson County cattle rancher
established a mill near Marble Falls. With the coming of the Civil War,
the Unionist Smithwick received threats and decided to abandon Texas. He
sold his property and, with a number of friends, left Burnet County for
southern California in 1861. In California, Smithwick gradually lost his
eyesight but dictated his memoirs to his daughter. After his death in
1899, she had the manuscript published by Karl H. P. N. Gammel as The
Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- SMITHWICK, NOAH
- SAN FELIPE DE AUSTIN, TX
- GONZALES COME AND TAKE IT CANNON
- CIVIL WAR
- GAMMEL, KARL HANS PETER MARIUS NEILSEN
- FOLKLORE AND FOLKLIFE
- LITERATURE
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Texas native Doris Miller shoots back at Japanese attackers (1941)
- West Texas Historical and Scientific Society organized (1925)
- Dallas museum trustees issue statement in "red art" controversy (1955)
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