TOBIAS SMYTH: IN EARLY EMORY & HENRY COLLEGE HISTORY!!!
Early Washington County History: Postwar KKK Incident
The following story was found in the archives of Emory & Henry College, located in Emory, Virginia. The incident took place sometime between the beginning of the fall semester in 1867 and the close of the spring semester in 1870. This time period corresponds roughly with the Reconstruction Era in the South, and with it the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.
The young man who was shot, Henry B. Pitts of Abingdon, Virginia, spent four years at Emory & Henry College, but is not listed in the catalogs as having earned a degree. Mr. Pitts entered Emory & Henry in the fall of 1866, and rose to junior class standing in the 1870-71 academic year before he disappeared from the records. The 1887 alumni catalog listed him working as a clerk and living in Shreveport, Louisiana.
His friend “from Georgia named Nolan” was Thomas C. Nolan from McDonough, Georgia. Mr. Nolan graduated from Emory & Henry in the spring of 1870. The 1887 alumni catalog listed him as an attorney living in McDonough, Georgia.
The woman who told the story was Rachel A. Smyth, the granddaughter of Tobias Smyth. Tobias Smyth served on Emory & Henry’s board of trustees from 1836 until his death in 1866.
At the close of the Civil War, when the Negro slaves received their freedom, naturally they knew not how to take the first step in the exercise of that right except to leave the home of their master, the only home they knew. North of my present home, across Walker’s Mountain, the Kelly slaves, numbering twelve or fourteen, (about one-half children) took up their belongings in their arms and across their backs and started out on the Saltville Road facing south, going they knew not where. Late in the evening they were camping in a fence corner on a road leading from Emory to the mountains they had left. Tobias Smyth, brother-in-law of Kelly, riding by recognizing them, checked his horse and called out, “John, what are you doing here?” He gladly answered, “Marse Tobie can’t we go up and spend the night in one of your cabins?” “Yes, John, go.” They took possession of two cabins, which served them as homes for a number of years. John, the oldest one of the tribe and leader claimed no wife and appropriated to himself the best one of of [sic] the saveral [sic] cabins in the mountain and in the course of not a long time went down and asked Aunt Jannie, Prof. Longley’s favorite servant to share the home with him, which she did. Some later, a group of college boys donned the garb of the Ku Klux Klan and went to John’s cabin to frighten him. When he saw them approaching his door he barred it against them, took up his shot gun and fired through the door, hitting one of the boys named Pitts.
He fell, and the crowd not knowing but that he was mortally wounded, fled to their rooms, except one boy from Georgia, named Nolan, who stood by his comrade, until seeing a storm approaching, ran to the Smyth home and to the room of a Smyth boy (a student also) and told in great excitement the story. Smyth called his uncle and the three went for the boy, bringing him to the home. At this late hour it cannot be said positively whether the cowardly group told of the shooting, or if Nolan went for Dr. Story and to send a message to his father, a physician of Abingdon.
The news spread and great excitement pravailed [sic] among the boys and quite a number came through the rain and mud to the home. One boy fainted in the room. Dr. Pitts came that night and after an examination by the physician, his wound was pronounced not fatal. At the close of the examination, Dr. Pitts said, “Henry, if you could not learn common sense in any other way I am glad that it has been shot into you". His mother came the next day and when the father pronounced it safe, he was removed to his home, where he recoved [sic] and returned to college.
John left his cabin immediately, walked to Abingdon and gave himself into the hands of an officer who permitted him to return home. No charge was brought against him and there was no trial.
Mrs. P. A. Scott.
Nese [?] Rachels A. Smyth
granddaughter of Tobias Smyth.
P. S. The Smyth home in this story was the original log house now on the college campus and was located on the exact spot where Bobby Weaver’s house now stands.
Story (came/copy) from this Web-site...
http://www.restoringthevoices.org/historywash1.html
