Martha SMITH
Deathdate: Unknown
Birthdate: on NOV 1843
Martha was the daughter of Ruffin Stewart and Elizabeth Bibby. She was likely born in Person County, North Carolina. By the mid-1850s, her family had moved to Macon County, North Carolina.
After her father’s death in 1860, she was bound out to Reverend Canaro Drayton Smith and lived with his family. Reverend C.D. Smith was a local Methodist clergyman. Within the Smith family, she was able to learn how to read and write. It was rare for a Black woman to be literate at that time.
She married a Carpenter man and lived with him only briefly because she “didn’t like his ways” (Carrie Stewart, Foxfire 5). After that time, she took the name Smith and began living with the Smith family again.
Shortly afterwards, in 1861, she gave birth to her only child, Mary Jane Luvenia. Luvenia was born out of wedlock. She would raise Luvenia with the Smith family so that she could learn to read and write too. She passed along the importance of education to her daughter, Luvenia, and her grandchildren.
By 1880, she moved in with her daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law, James Marion McDonnell. During this time, she would sew and weave to create undershirts for James and petticoats, likely for Luvenia and her children.
She would live with her daughter and son-in-law for about 20 years.
According to her granddaughter, Carrie Stewart, Martha may have been one of the founders of the Zion Methodist church.
She worked as a midwife and delivered several children in the community, including many of her own grandchildren.
Martha died on Christmas Day. In the words of Carrie Stewart:
“She had her burying suit, and she wanted to be buried just like she was going to church, white suit, and black shoes and black stockings. She said if she was going to church she would be dressed from her feet to her head. And, you know, they buried her in everything, just like she was going to church. I remember it very well. She said she wanted to fold her own arms in death, and so she told my mother, said, ‘Now, straighten me out. Now smooth the cover and make it all plain.’ And they did that and then she folded her arms like that and that was the last of it.”