William Bartley Smithson (1835-1907)


 * Tombigbee 1845 LDS Church Branch
 * Mississippi Saints 1846 Pioneer Company

Tombigbee 1845 LDS Church Branch
Monroe County, Mississippi, had been settled largely by couples with young children who had immigrated to that good cotton country from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama in the late 1830s. As their children grew they intermarried, and practically the whole county was kin. When the missionaries arrived in 1843, the converts spread the gospel among their families, and within a year, a congregation of perhaps 150–200 Latter-day Saints was thriving. It was called the  Tombigbee Branch after the river where most of them settled. They were reasonably well-off, with livestock, homes, slaves, and good land.

The first six children of the William and Lucinda Smithson family were born here.

Mississippi Saints 1846 Pioneer Company
Numbered amoung the participants in the Mississippi Saints 1846 Pioneer Company, a early Mormon pioneer wagon train that left Mississippi in 1846 to join the Mormon exodus to Utah. This group Brigham Young's vanguard company and spent the winter of 1846/47 at  Fort Pueblo where the were joined by soldiers of the sick detachment of the Mormon Battalion. They reached Salt Lake City in late summer of 1847.