Barney Senior, Part 1

1. Barney McCoy Smith, Senior  (Part 1 of 4)

[These are the words of Barney McCoy Smith, Jr., recorded on an audio cassette tape, January 1999] 

Two or three days ago I started very seriously thinking about this little project, that we might call our family history, and I’ve been experimenting with this little tape recorder.

So I’m going to start with my dad. As you know his name was Barney McCoy Smith. I think that name was probably picked up from the song that was popular back at the time he was born.  I read something a good many years ago in the Macomb Public Library. One of the songs popular at that time was Barney McCoy.

Unfortunately I’ve never seen the song. I don’t know what the lyrics were or how the song sounded at all.

My dad’s parents were a very good, solid people. They were not educated. My dad’s father was Benjamin Tillman Smith, named after a politician that was notable at that time I think. Governor of North Carolina or something like that. 

Benjamin Tillman Smith was the son of William Smith, who was probably originally named Wright, and he was the one who was adopted by the Smith family, and the Smith family gave him their name. That of course is why all of us are still Smiths. That’s an interesting thing to think about. I don’t know if anyone will ever get around to the search necessary to find out anything more about our background in that. I’ve heard of course that the Mormons have extensive records. I don’t know if there are any records on that or not.

[He is buried] in the same little graveyard where Lyndon Johnson’s father is buried, and a few other [??] Texans. My dad’s parents had nine children. My dad’s mother was Sarah Burns I think. Burns or Byrns, I’m not sure which. There are practically no records that show how it’s spelled.

Notable things about my dad’s family was that they moved around an awful lot. They must have moved at least once a year. They came from over east somewhere, maybe the Carolinas. They came across through Kentucky. The story is that they came across with Daniel Boone and settled in Texas. My grandmother I think was born in South…

I’ve always heard that my Grandmother was born in Web City, Missouri. 

My dad’s family as I said had nine children, and they were four boys and then a girl and four more boys. The boys were Claude, [Tony?], [Rod?], and then Barney, then Levi, and Erica, after that was Wallace, Russel, [Mills?] and Kurt. I think you probably have some of this information. 

Anyway, my father was born on July 15, 1893.  My father was born in central Texas. I don’t know whether it was Belton or whether it was near Holland. There are both stories there and of course it doesn’t make much difference. The family moved around and by the time my dad was in his teens they were living in Texarkana, Texas. 

His father, Benjamin Tillman Smith, put in time as a policeman. He was also a street car conductor, or a farmer, and without any particular skill or particular education I’m sure with a big family they must have a pretty rough time—much different from what we’re used to today. 

My father went to the eighth grade and by the time he was a teenager he was forced to get a job to support himself. His family moved to Oklahoma and left him in Texarkana. He’d say he didn’t leave his family or leave his home, but his home went off and left him. He found a job with Uncle Horace, my mother’s brother.  That’s the only kind of business my dad was ever in as far as I know. The dry cleaning business.

He must have met my mother probably about 1913 or 1914. When she graduated from high school in 1915 he asked her to marry him. She put him off for about three years. They didn’t get married until 1918. Every since I was a little kid I heard stories that my dad proposed to my mother the night that she graduated from high school. 

The main characteristics about my father, that I remember… he was faithful. He was a hard worker. His religion I suppose was Southern Baptist. He must have joined the church as a child or as a teenager. In fact I remember his saying that he sang in the choir at one time. So I think he was what you’d call a deeply religious man, but he was a very good man—a good family man. I have to give him credit for that. I never heard him curse or swear or use strong language. I never saw him drunk. He was always very careful about his personal appearance. He liked to wear suits. He liked to wear ties. In fact when I was a little boy he used to buy suits for me and dress me up in a full dress suit. I guess back in those days it was probably more common than it is today… 

In 1918 my dad was drafted and had to go off to war, World War I. He was first sent to a training camp called Camp Travis, near San Antonio Texas. I think it was called Leon’s Range, Texas. My mother went down there to see him in June, 1918, and they got married on June the third, 1918. He almost immediately was sent overseas and didn’t get back until August, 1919. After he got back he must have gone back to work for Uncle Horace. When I was born in 1921 he was working for Uncle Horace. Uncle Horace had this factory in [cleaning?] business on West Broad Street in Texarkana on the Texas side.

Uncle Horace’s family consisted of Aunt Hess, two children, Horace Jr., and Hester Carol. Unfortunately Hester Carol came with tuberculosis, and she died in 1925 at the age of about 15. It was soon after that that Uncle Horace left Texarkana and went out west. I think it was probably the result of a deep depression. He just gave living in Texarkana and moved west, I suppose, to try to forget Hester Carol and the terrible tragedy.

I’m not sure what happened to his business, but my dad might have been out of a job then. He got another job in the same kind of business, got two jobs, different places. Finally he tried to start his own business. I think that was about 1929. Things were bad though. He just couldn’t make enough money and had to give up. 

He thought that there was a job he might get in Beaumont Texas, and in the summer of 1930 he went down to Beaumont, took the job, and later mother and I joined him in Beaumont. My dad kept that same job from that point on until his death in 1945. He worked for Mr. Lindner, Lindner dry cleaning. That’s a very successful… where he lived longest as he… until his health got bad in 1944. Of course he died in June 1945.

So my memories of my father were a bit… He was very sweet. He sure cared an awful lot about me. I was his little boy. When he came home from work he would bring candy and all sorts of stuff. On Saturday nights he would always bring [sounds like “sure-prong”??] comics from different newspapers. Sunday comics. 

This seems to be working pretty well, and my voice seems pretty clear, and you should be able to understand it. This is harder to do though than I thought it would be. I’m sitting here talking to a little black box. I’m starting to get [tired?] I’m going to stop in a moment. 

 (continued in Barney, Senior, Part 2)