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"This Mr Stegall had opened the Ironwood Bluff Young Ladies Boarding School. He would go north and hire teachers. At that time my grandfather owned 500 acres joining Mr Stegall on the west side. He had a brick yard just beyond the negro church. The clay pit may still be visible. For many years all the old tall chimneys that are standing in Smithville now were built of these brick. A great fire destroyed all of the Stegall property except the land of which there were hundreds of acres. My grandfather, Robert Perkins had a wonderful home at New Salem.
Dr Stegall then bought the home where Mr Aden Moore now lives. I think this widow Bowen who later married a Ballard had built the house where Major Smith's old home was. I suppose Mr Stegall bought this from the Ballards. He built the old store that the Nabors tore away. He also built a 24 room institue where McKenzie's shop and the COOP store is and went north and hired teachers. Smithville became an educational center. My dad remembers acting in a play with John Bankhead at one of these exhibitions. This was the Senior Bankhead who served in the Senate so many years from Alabama.
By this time his second wife had died and left him with 5 daughters. They were talented musicians: each one had a grand piano in the house at the same time. Mr Stegall was now looking for a athird wife. He went north again to hire teachers. He picked up a woman in New York, went to Washington and married her. Rube Davis, a noted lawyer of Aberdeen, witnessed this marriage. He brought her home and she shut herself up in the daytime and caroused the saloons at night. At the end of one month he handed her $1000. She stepped on the stage and left in time. Mr Stegall then set out to marry Sally Spence. He lavised every luxury on this young girl until he won and married her. Her mother was grandfather Perkin's sister. Grandpa was so enraged at his sister for permitting this marriage they never spoke to each other again. Of this marriage there were 5 sons and one daughter and part of that family was younger than I. Sometime in his prosperous days he had built a mill on what is now the Jack Brooks estate. From 1818 to 1861 no country had ever flourished as this had around Smithville. There were beautiful homes and fine farms and Smithville was a thriving little town.
However there were lots of people who were very poor. They were without means to take up land. Share cropping was unknown. There was little demand for labor as the slaves did the work. From the bounties of nature they could get most of their living. The streams were almost packed with fish, the woods alive with game of all kinds, besides nuts and wild fruit. The rich men's negroes looked down their noses, and called the white people who owned no property "poor white trash."
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