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I am a Smathers researcher and as you can see his ggrandfather was not married to a Rice nor was his wife's mother a Rice, nor was his grandfather md to a Rice nor was his wife's father or mother a Rice
so not sure of the Rice connection you mention. Would be interested in seeing the data that mentions George is a grandson of the Rice, maybe I could do some research and figure it out. Also if you have the obit for George would you mind posting or sharing? If you need more info I am happy to share. It is documentated.
I am just going to take an educated guess and possible there was a mix up in the George name. John Charles had a son name George Henry who did marry a RICE GAL lst before she md him. This George would be an Uncle or grand uncle to George Armistead Smathers. as George's g grandfather John Charles and George Armistead's father were brothers.
-George Henry SMATHERS b Jan 29 1854 NC (John Charles 'Turnpike' Smathers & Lucinda Elizabeth Johnston) d Aft. 1930 Buncombe Co NC
+ DAISY Rice Abt. 1891 Buncombe Co NC b Dec 1860 Ala died Bef. 1930 Buncombe Co NC.
Child of GEORGE SMATHERS and DAISY Rice
i. ELLEN SMEATHERS B July 1893
1900 Waynesville, Haywood, North Carolina
George H Smathers 46 B Jan 1854
Daisy R Smathers 39
May A Rice 19 Step daughter
Ellen R Rice 6 daughter [I have not figured out why thou Ellen was a Rice on the census ?
=========================
Great Grandfather
JOHN Charles SMATHERS b Feb 15 1826 Haywood Co NC (GEORGE FREDERICK, JOHN,WILLIAM2,WILLIAM SMITHERI)d July 21, 1918
+ LUCINDA ‘Lucilla’ ELIZABETH JOHNSON May 1 1848 Haywood Co NC b Oct 16 1829 d May 5 1911
dau/o Henry Johnson b 20 MAY 1801 England & Phebe Hall b 27 FEB 1801 Buncombe Co NC
Grandfather
-Benjamin Franklin SMATHERS Sr b 3 AUG 1852 Buncombe Co NC (Jno Chas, GEORGE FREDERICK, JOHN, WILLIAM2,WILLIAM SMITHERIPA) D 12 DEC 1942
+ Laura 'Mollie' White HOWELL Aug 1 1875 b 29 MAY 1855 d 28 JUL 1949 dau/o Dr Collins HOWELL & Mourning Minerva GARRETT.
Father
-Benjamin Franklin Smathers Jr b July 17 1909 NC (Benjamin Franklin sr, John Charles, Geo Fred, John, Wm2,WilliamSmither1PA) d Mar 17 1998 FL
+ Laura F Jones
12th child
12GEORGE ARMISTEAD SMATHERS b Nov 14 1913 Atlantic Co NJ (BENJAMIN FRANKLINJR7, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN6, JOHN CHARLES5, GEORGE FREDRICK4, JOHN3, WILLIAM2, WILLIAM SMITHERIPA) d 2007 FL
+ ROSEMARY TOWNLEY b June 20 1914 d Sep 16 2002 Vero Beach FL
Notes for GEORGE ARMISTEAD SMATHERS:George Armistead, (nephew of William Howell Smathers), a Representative and a Senator from Florida; born in Atlantic City, N.J., November 14, 1913; moved to Miami, Fla., in 1919; attended the public schools of Dade County, Fla.; graduated from the University of Florida at Gainesville in 1936 and from its law school in 1938; admitted to the bar in 1938 and commenced practice in Miami, Fla.; assistant United States district attorney 1940-1942; during World War II served in the United States Marine Corps from May 1942 until discharged as a major in October 1945; special assistant to the U.S. attorney general from October 1945 until his resignation in January 1946 to begin his campaign for Representative in Congress; elected as a Democrat to the Eightieth and Eighty-first Congresses (January 3, 1947-January 3, 1951); was not a candidate for renomination in 1950; elected to the United States Senate in 1950; reelected in 1956 and 1962 and served from January 3,1951, until January 3, 1969; was not a candidate for reelection in 1968; chairman, Special Committee on Aging (Eighty-eighth and Eighty-ninth Congresses), Select Committee on Small Business (Ninetieth Congress);resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C., and Miami, Fla.; is a resident of Washington, D.C., and Miami,Fla.
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George A. Smathers United States Senator from Florida, 1951-1969 Interview #1: The Road to Congress(Tuesday, August 1, 1989) Interviewed by Donald A. Ritchie (Excerpt)
Smathers: Yes. My father was very political, and there were two reasons. First, he had worked for his uncle,whose name was George H. Smathers, in North Carolina. He had worked for him when George H. Smathers was the president of the North Carolina state senate, and was a Republican. My father had been invited by his uncle to go down there to uncle and be a page. So my father fell in love with politics at that very early age, and he really never got over it. Then my father, after graduating from the University of North Carolina, became a lawyer and went to New Jersey, actually as a professional baseball player in Newark. While he was there he took the bar and passed it, and decided to make New Jersey his home. He moved to Atlantic City, because he was a Democrat, and there were no Democrats that he could find in Atlantic County. He figured this was the place to go to start the Democratic party. It was shortly thereafter that Woodrow Wilson, who had been president of Princeton University, decided that he wanted to run for governor, and he wanted to run as a Democrat. So he came to Atlantic County and solicited my father to handle his campaign in Atlantic County, which my dad was glad to do. Wilson won and became governor, and thereafter as governor Wilson appointed my father as a county judge,so to speak. My father served in that capacity until his rheumatism got so bad and the cold weather bothered him so much that the doctors finally said, "You've got to go south, as far south as is possible because you need warm weather. This cold, damp New Jersey weather is going to leave you in this pain that you're having." So my dad put us all on the train and we went south as far as you could go. We got off the train in Miami, in 1920. I was a very little boy, I just remember we were all dressed in long black stockings and wool stuff, and gosh it was hot! I couldn't believe it. The sun was so bright. I was five, I guess. But anyway, my dad established the family in a place called Magnolia Park, which today is almost downtown Miami! It was a little, small community at that time. We lived there ever after. But my father loved politics all the time, from his own experience in Raleigh, and from his brother's experience as United States senator. I wanted to say page 2 how that happened was that when my father got sick, as a judge, he wrote his brother Bill Smathers, who was also from Waynesville, North Carolina, but who had gone to Washington and Lee to school, and was a good athlete. He had graduated as a lawyer and gone back to Asheville. My father wrote to his little brother--younger brother, not little, because Bill was bigger, physically. He wrote to Bill to come up to New Jersey and take over this judgeship. He felt that he could be an interim appointee and then probably run and get elected, which is what happened. When my dad left New Jersey, the governor appointed Bill Smathers to fill the unexpired term. Bill Smathers did become a judge, and a rather prominent judge. Then he ran for state senator, and got elected, and then he ran for the United States Senate and was elected from New Jersey, and served one term in the Senate [1937-1943]. I came up to see him from Miami, twice, to see Bill Smathers. I didn't come up here to see him, exactly, but came up and saw him. So,to go back to your original question about my interest in politics, I was named after a politician, a state senator;my dad was greatly interested in politics and served as a judge by virtue of politics; and my uncle Bill was a United States senator from New Jersey. So it was fairly easy for me to have a big interest in politics.
OBIT 2002 a daughter of one of Miami's pioneer families and former wife of United States Senator George Smathers, died on September 16, 2002, at the age of 88. Mrs. Smathers was born June 20, 1914, in Dallas Park in Miami, Florida, of John Madison Townley and Lillian Enloe Townley. Mr.Townley and his brotherwho arrived in South Florida in the early 1890s, opened the first pharmacy and one of the first movie houses in Dade County. The Townleys were early business and community leaders in the founding of the City of Miami. Because of her father's business travels, Mrs. Smathers spent her early childhood in Versailles, Missouri, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Colorado Springs, Colorado and Ashville, North Carolina. Her family moved to Atlanta, Georgia to be centrally located to the family's multi-state investments when she was 10 years old. Mrs. Smathers attended North Avenue Presbyterian School and graduated from Washington Seminary in Atlanta. She attended the Ogontz School in Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin, where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma prior to a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union. Mrs. Smathers made her debut in Atlanta at Piedmont Driving Club and was a member of the Junior League of Atlanta. She also had a brief career as a Powers Model in New York City. Mrs. Smathers moved to Miami in 1939 when she married George A. Smathers, joining her brother, James R. Townley and her sister, Mrs. C. Larimore (Thena) Perry of DiLido Island. During WWII, she served as a Servicemen's Pier hostess and Jr. League Treasurer (in Dade County).Upon her husband's election to Congress in 1946 she moved to Washington, D.C., where she stayed until his retirement from the United States Senate in 1968. Senator Smathers was one of Jack Kennedy's closest personal friends and rose to key leadership positions as one of Lyndon Johnson's inner circle. Mrs. Smathers was quietly active as an impeccable hostess to the Washington political scene during her 24 years in Washington, and formed close friendships with Katherine Graham, Lady Bird Johnson and Pat Nixon. She was a member treasurer of the Ladies of the U.S. Senate Red Cross and a member of the Chevy Chase Club. Mrs. Smathers moved to John's Island in Vero Beach, Florida, in 1971 from Washington, D.C., where she had lived for 24 years. She is survived by her children, John Townley Smathers, married to Judith Weber Smathers, and Bruce Armistead Smathers (former State Senator and Florida's Secretary of State), married to Susan Gamble Smathers as well as her grandchildren, Jennifer Townley Smathers, John Samuel Smathers and Bruce Armistead Smathers, Jr. Mrs.Smathers is remembered as a vivacious southern lady and a devoted and considerate friend by many of the nation's leading men and women, as well as by a wide spectrum of friends in Atlanta, Miami, Washington D.C.,and Vero Beach. She was a devoted wife, a loving mother and grandmother, and as the matriarch of the Townley family, numbering over 50 relatives. Mrs. Smathers was buried in Vero Beach on September 21st. A Memorial Service will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach at 3 p.m. on October 5th. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the VNA Hospice of Indian River County, 1111 36th Street, Vero Beach, Florida,32960, in memory of Rosemary Townley Smathers. Published in the Miami Herald on 9/29/2002.
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