1 10 11 https://smithridgela.com/files/original/66e3cf41f05ba88375137c0d47e373b8.jpg dd9e02fb8a8a69f95c9f1b1f3080cb21 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Smithridge Post-Reconstruction through World War II Description An account of the resource In 1881, Robert named the community Smithridge. In 1883, a former Freedmen’s Bureau school relocated to Smithridge on land donated by Robert. Edward and others established the Mount Calvary Baptist Church and the Mount Calvary Baptist Benevolent Association, providing funeral costs and other benefits to community members. In 1903 Edward donated land for a new elementary school, the Calvary School, which served as the only school for most Black parish residents. Many Smithridge residents farmed sugar cane on their own land, cultivating the sugar in nearby Montegut at the South Coast Company refinery, which operated for a period in the early twentieth century as the world’s largest sugar refinery. Smithridge residents also worked directly for the company as drivers, machine operators, packers, and other positions. Others returned annually for work during the grinding season, and, as they had in enslaved communities prior to emancipation, residents celebrated during the harvesting feast week after New Year’s. Smithridge was also home to local businesses, including grocery stores, a funeral home, and Black physicians and dentists. Residents attended performances by musicians like Nolan Harris Jr. and the Smithridge School Band and cheered on the semi-professional baseball team the Wiz Kids. Despite the opportunities in Smithridge, the community experienced dramatic change in the twentieth century. Many residents left Smithridge for New Orleans, Texas, Chicago, and other areas as part of the Great Migration. Robert and Ed died in 1923 and 1945 respectively. Tragedy struck the community in 1939. A pontoon bridge connected the east side—where 90 percent of residents lived—and the west side, the location of the church. A barge struck the bridge in 1939 and the parish refused to replace it. In August 1939 a boat carrying residents to a church service capsized, and six people drowned. The parish did not construct another bridge in Smithridge for three decades, forcing residents to travel several miles to the nearest bridge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Census information for Ed Smith and Eileen Thomson Smith, 1910, Lines 70-77. Ed's occupation is listed as farmer, and three of his sons are identified as laborers on the farm. Ed and his three eldest sons are identified as being able to read and write, and the three youngest children are listed as attending school. https://smithridgela.com/files/original/d1ce7d751db92a17de8d59500e053d86.jpg 7735a2d5a49ce7e2daae9dd24514b349 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Smithridge Post-Reconstruction through World War II Description An account of the resource In 1881, Robert named the community Smithridge. In 1883, a former Freedmen’s Bureau school relocated to Smithridge on land donated by Robert. Edward and others established the Mount Calvary Baptist Church and the Mount Calvary Baptist Benevolent Association, providing funeral costs and other benefits to community members. In 1903 Edward donated land for a new elementary school, the Calvary School, which served as the only school for most Black parish residents. Many Smithridge residents farmed sugar cane on their own land, cultivating the sugar in nearby Montegut at the South Coast Company refinery, which operated for a period in the early twentieth century as the world’s largest sugar refinery. Smithridge residents also worked directly for the company as drivers, machine operators, packers, and other positions. Others returned annually for work during the grinding season, and, as they had in enslaved communities prior to emancipation, residents celebrated during the harvesting feast week after New Year’s. Smithridge was also home to local businesses, including grocery stores, a funeral home, and Black physicians and dentists. Residents attended performances by musicians like Nolan Harris Jr. and the Smithridge School Band and cheered on the semi-professional baseball team the Wiz Kids. Despite the opportunities in Smithridge, the community experienced dramatic change in the twentieth century. Many residents left Smithridge for New Orleans, Texas, Chicago, and other areas as part of the Great Migration. Robert and Ed died in 1923 and 1945 respectively. Tragedy struck the community in 1939. A pontoon bridge connected the east side—where 90 percent of residents lived—and the west side, the location of the church. A barge struck the bridge in 1939 and the parish refused to replace it. In August 1939 a boat carrying residents to a church service capsized, and six people drowned. The parish did not construct another bridge in Smithridge for three decades, forcing residents to travel several miles to the nearest bridge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Census information for Edward Smith and Eileen Thomson Smith, 1900, Lines 42-50. Smith's occupation in the 1900 census is farmer. The census lists seven children, ages 7-18. https://smithridgela.com/files/original/4bea8a81ae7bfd5368247a44b6515f5c.jpg 3738c7e22e795881a7ae0f6cd9b20db3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Founding of Smithridge Description An account of the resource Smithridge originated with two formerly enslaved men, Robert and Edward Smith, and their white enslaver father, Benjamin Franklin Smith, who worked as an overseer in the 1840s on the Terrebonne Parish plantation owned by Phoebe Pierce. There Smith met Nellie Jones, an enslaved woman of African descent who had survived the domestic slave trade from Virginia to Louisiana. Smith and Jones had two children, Robert in 1849 and Edward in 1852. The power dynamics of their interactions—Smith as the free, white overseer and Jones as an enslaved woman of African descent—made it impossible for their relationship to be truly consensual. In 1853 Smith began buying property for his own plantation on Bayou Little Caillou. He also began purchasing enslaved people, including Nellie and their two children. By the Civil War, the Smith Plantation encompassed over six hundred acres and was one of eighty sugarcane plantations in the parish. According to the 1860 US Federal Census Slave Schedule, there were twenty-eight people enslaved on the Smith Plantation. The Civil War disrupted sugar cane production and ultimately led to the end of the slavery-based economic system. Although the Union Army occupied parts of Louisiana, Nellie, Robert, and Edward maintained their status as enslaved people as the Emancipation Proclamation did not extend to Union-held territories. In September 1864, Louisiana voters adopted the state’s new constitution, which abolished slavery, freeing Nellie, Robert, Edward, and the other enslaved people on the Smith Plantation. Robert and Edward remained on Smith Plantation working as tenant farmers. Upon Benjamin Smith’s death in 1877, Robert and Edward purchased the land from his white widow. By 1881, they owned much of the original six hundred acres. Other formerly enslaved people, including John Brown, Victor Fitch, Daniel Harrison, Jim Harris, and Jack Nightshed, purchased plots of the plantation. Most African Americans in the area labored as sharecroppers or low-wage field workers on sugar plantations in the same gang-labor system employed under slavery and lived in the cabins once occupied by formerly enslaved people. Smithridge was an outlier as the Black residents owned the land they farmed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Slave Schedule," 1860 Census. This document lists 28 people enslaved by Benjamin Smith on the right-hand column. Please note enslaved people are not named. The ages of the enslaved people range from 3-65. https://smithridgela.com/files/original/78b6d42c6a4b08e1d0492ebf89d1859a.png c2bd15f4f471d441db538635cce31a30 https://smithridgela.com/files/original/17462de503a3b96445c3a4768bba4ea8.png 74f9f5de432e545eb00953d71a1cfd97 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Smithridge Post WWII through the Present Description An account of the resource After World War II, many residents lost ownership of their land due to exploitive lending by banks and private sources. The community suffered from inequality in allocation of resources, including education. African Americans had no opportunities beyond fifth grade until the state opened Southdown High School on the site of the former Naval Air Station in 1946. Even with a new building in 1952, the school was small and under-resourced. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the segregation of schools to be unconstitutional, however, many Louisiana school districts including those in Terrebonne delayed integration for years. In 1969, fourteen years after Brown v. Board of Education, the parish school district desegregated. Students transferred to the formerly all-white Terrebonne high school, and Southdown closed. However, Smithridge residents reported targeting by white administrators, leading to high rates of suspension and expulsion. As the fight for Black civil rights continued, Smithridge residents successfully fought against discrimination in other areas, pressing the parish for a recreation center in the early 1960s and a new bridge in 1968. Even with these victories, Smithridge faced significant obstacles in the post-civil rights era. In 1972, South Coast closed and moved its sugar refinery to Guatemala. The local shrimp factory, which employed many Smithridge women, also closed in the 1970s. Some residents found work in the booming oil and gas industry. Even these individuals suffered through the 1980s oil bust. When the industry slowly recovered in the 1990s, many residents left for the shifting oil and gas work in west Louisiana and Texas. Coastal erosion and the effects of flooding and hurricanes increasingly threatens Smithridge. Hurricanes have repeatedly impacted Terrebonne Parish. Yet, Smithridge has received little damage due to the elevation of the ridge and the wetlands and barrier islands. However, Louisiana has lost over two thousand miles of coastal land and 40 percent of barrier island land in the past century due to the building of levees and other flood-control structures, canals, and channels; drainage for development; and the increase in oil and gas fields. Much of the wetlands and barrier islands protecting Smithridge eroded in recent decades. The parish government’s decision to pump water from communities north through Smithridge led to drainage problems and the overtopping of the bayou. In 1985, Hurricane Juan caused substantial flooding in Smithridge. In 2021, Hurricane Ida displaced many residents, and damaged and closed the school, churches, and the recreation center. The parish refused to repair the recreation center, and instead built a new recreation center outside of Smithridge. The bridge, the only swing bridge in Terrebonne, remains an issue. The parish refuses to replace the bridge, even though engineers have deemed it structural deficient. Residents have advocated for a new bridge, the reopening of the recreation center, the construction of sidewalks, and other needed improvements. There is still a strong group of elders in Smithridge, such as Sterling Sims, Henry Knightshed, Keith William, Nolan Harris, Jr., and LeAudry Harris, that share the history and their experiences. We would like to thank them for sharing their stories and photos with us throughout this process. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Wedding in Smithrdige, Circa 1950s. Courtesy of Leaudrey Harris. https://smithridgela.com/files/original/0136a6d2e89a7370d35187c2ec9853a8.png ea54254ee733a6e5658c7367c0b8ab30 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Smithridge Post WWII through the Present Description An account of the resource After World War II, many residents lost ownership of their land due to exploitive lending by banks and private sources. The community suffered from inequality in allocation of resources, including education. African Americans had no opportunities beyond fifth grade until the state opened Southdown High School on the site of the former Naval Air Station in 1946. Even with a new building in 1952, the school was small and under-resourced. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the segregation of schools to be unconstitutional, however, many Louisiana school districts including those in Terrebonne delayed integration for years. In 1969, fourteen years after Brown v. Board of Education, the parish school district desegregated. Students transferred to the formerly all-white Terrebonne high school, and Southdown closed. However, Smithridge residents reported targeting by white administrators, leading to high rates of suspension and expulsion. As the fight for Black civil rights continued, Smithridge residents successfully fought against discrimination in other areas, pressing the parish for a recreation center in the early 1960s and a new bridge in 1968. Even with these victories, Smithridge faced significant obstacles in the post-civil rights era. In 1972, South Coast closed and moved its sugar refinery to Guatemala. The local shrimp factory, which employed many Smithridge women, also closed in the 1970s. Some residents found work in the booming oil and gas industry. Even these individuals suffered through the 1980s oil bust. When the industry slowly recovered in the 1990s, many residents left for the shifting oil and gas work in west Louisiana and Texas. Coastal erosion and the effects of flooding and hurricanes increasingly threatens Smithridge. Hurricanes have repeatedly impacted Terrebonne Parish. Yet, Smithridge has received little damage due to the elevation of the ridge and the wetlands and barrier islands. However, Louisiana has lost over two thousand miles of coastal land and 40 percent of barrier island land in the past century due to the building of levees and other flood-control structures, canals, and channels; drainage for development; and the increase in oil and gas fields. Much of the wetlands and barrier islands protecting Smithridge eroded in recent decades. The parish government’s decision to pump water from communities north through Smithridge led to drainage problems and the overtopping of the bayou. In 1985, Hurricane Juan caused substantial flooding in Smithridge. In 2021, Hurricane Ida displaced many residents, and damaged and closed the school, churches, and the recreation center. The parish refused to repair the recreation center, and instead built a new recreation center outside of Smithridge. The bridge, the only swing bridge in Terrebonne, remains an issue. The parish refuses to replace the bridge, even though engineers have deemed it structural deficient. Residents have advocated for a new bridge, the reopening of the recreation center, the construction of sidewalks, and other needed improvements. There is still a strong group of elders in Smithridge, such as Sterling Sims, Henry Knightshed, Keith William, Nolan Harris, Jr., and LeAudry Harris, that share the history and their experiences. We would like to thank them for sharing their stories and photos with us throughout this process. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Snowstorm Smithridge 1957. Courtesy of Leaudrey Harris. https://smithridgela.com/files/original/5c16bcb70f0df09d8cec44f00ac17ec5.png c51e4c34915a418b10a60b4193b4d78f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Smithridge Post WWII through the Present Description An account of the resource After World War II, many residents lost ownership of their land due to exploitive lending by banks and private sources. The community suffered from inequality in allocation of resources, including education. African Americans had no opportunities beyond fifth grade until the state opened Southdown High School on the site of the former Naval Air Station in 1946. Even with a new building in 1952, the school was small and under-resourced. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the segregation of schools to be unconstitutional, however, many Louisiana school districts including those in Terrebonne delayed integration for years. In 1969, fourteen years after Brown v. Board of Education, the parish school district desegregated. Students transferred to the formerly all-white Terrebonne high school, and Southdown closed. However, Smithridge residents reported targeting by white administrators, leading to high rates of suspension and expulsion. As the fight for Black civil rights continued, Smithridge residents successfully fought against discrimination in other areas, pressing the parish for a recreation center in the early 1960s and a new bridge in 1968. Even with these victories, Smithridge faced significant obstacles in the post-civil rights era. In 1972, South Coast closed and moved its sugar refinery to Guatemala. The local shrimp factory, which employed many Smithridge women, also closed in the 1970s. Some residents found work in the booming oil and gas industry. Even these individuals suffered through the 1980s oil bust. When the industry slowly recovered in the 1990s, many residents left for the shifting oil and gas work in west Louisiana and Texas. Coastal erosion and the effects of flooding and hurricanes increasingly threatens Smithridge. Hurricanes have repeatedly impacted Terrebonne Parish. Yet, Smithridge has received little damage due to the elevation of the ridge and the wetlands and barrier islands. However, Louisiana has lost over two thousand miles of coastal land and 40 percent of barrier island land in the past century due to the building of levees and other flood-control structures, canals, and channels; drainage for development; and the increase in oil and gas fields. Much of the wetlands and barrier islands protecting Smithridge eroded in recent decades. The parish government’s decision to pump water from communities north through Smithridge led to drainage problems and the overtopping of the bayou. In 1985, Hurricane Juan caused substantial flooding in Smithridge. In 2021, Hurricane Ida displaced many residents, and damaged and closed the school, churches, and the recreation center. The parish refused to repair the recreation center, and instead built a new recreation center outside of Smithridge. The bridge, the only swing bridge in Terrebonne, remains an issue. The parish refuses to replace the bridge, even though engineers have deemed it structural deficient. Residents have advocated for a new bridge, the reopening of the recreation center, the construction of sidewalks, and other needed improvements. There is still a strong group of elders in Smithridge, such as Sterling Sims, Henry Knightshed, Keith William, Nolan Harris, Jr., and LeAudry Harris, that share the history and their experiences. We would like to thank them for sharing their stories and photos with us throughout this process. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nolan Harris Sr., Harris Bar and Grocery 1955. Courtesy of Leaudrey Harris. https://smithridgela.com/files/original/3538584ebf8eaca8730c2ab7aa56e139.png 3f2274ad3b93e3f6ca35d0033ae4e040 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Smithridge Post WWII through the Present Description An account of the resource After World War II, many residents lost ownership of their land due to exploitive lending by banks and private sources. The community suffered from inequality in allocation of resources, including education. African Americans had no opportunities beyond fifth grade until the state opened Southdown High School on the site of the former Naval Air Station in 1946. Even with a new building in 1952, the school was small and under-resourced. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the segregation of schools to be unconstitutional, however, many Louisiana school districts including those in Terrebonne delayed integration for years. In 1969, fourteen years after Brown v. Board of Education, the parish school district desegregated. Students transferred to the formerly all-white Terrebonne high school, and Southdown closed. However, Smithridge residents reported targeting by white administrators, leading to high rates of suspension and expulsion. As the fight for Black civil rights continued, Smithridge residents successfully fought against discrimination in other areas, pressing the parish for a recreation center in the early 1960s and a new bridge in 1968. Even with these victories, Smithridge faced significant obstacles in the post-civil rights era. In 1972, South Coast closed and moved its sugar refinery to Guatemala. The local shrimp factory, which employed many Smithridge women, also closed in the 1970s. Some residents found work in the booming oil and gas industry. Even these individuals suffered through the 1980s oil bust. When the industry slowly recovered in the 1990s, many residents left for the shifting oil and gas work in west Louisiana and Texas. Coastal erosion and the effects of flooding and hurricanes increasingly threatens Smithridge. Hurricanes have repeatedly impacted Terrebonne Parish. Yet, Smithridge has received little damage due to the elevation of the ridge and the wetlands and barrier islands. However, Louisiana has lost over two thousand miles of coastal land and 40 percent of barrier island land in the past century due to the building of levees and other flood-control structures, canals, and channels; drainage for development; and the increase in oil and gas fields. Much of the wetlands and barrier islands protecting Smithridge eroded in recent decades. The parish government’s decision to pump water from communities north through Smithridge led to drainage problems and the overtopping of the bayou. In 1985, Hurricane Juan caused substantial flooding in Smithridge. In 2021, Hurricane Ida displaced many residents, and damaged and closed the school, churches, and the recreation center. The parish refused to repair the recreation center, and instead built a new recreation center outside of Smithridge. The bridge, the only swing bridge in Terrebonne, remains an issue. The parish refuses to replace the bridge, even though engineers have deemed it structural deficient. Residents have advocated for a new bridge, the reopening of the recreation center, the construction of sidewalks, and other needed improvements. There is still a strong group of elders in Smithridge, such as Sterling Sims, Henry Knightshed, Keith William, Nolan Harris, Jr., and LeAudry Harris, that share the history and their experiences. We would like to thank them for sharing their stories and photos with us throughout this process. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Baseball Stadium, Smithridge circa 1950s. Home of the Wiz Kids. Courtesy of Laudrey Harris. https://smithridgela.com/files/original/0eb7613aa91bc685e4542d6d2322b51f.png c3d11a418b735cc062c1a0d31888ee83 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1850 U.S. Census listing for Benjamin Smith, occupation overseer https://smithridgela.com/files/original/1d2cdedab13ca2ac66865d3fd74f83f9.png d7f65e678231c77f9986cfdcc471775a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Founding of Smithridge Description An account of the resource Smithridge originated with two formerly enslaved men, Robert and Edward Smith, and their white enslaver father, Benjamin Franklin Smith, who worked as an overseer in the 1840s on the Terrebonne Parish plantation owned by Phoebe Pierce. There Smith met Nellie Jones, an enslaved woman of African descent who had survived the domestic slave trade from Virginia to Louisiana. Smith and Jones had two children, Robert in 1849 and Edward in 1852. The power dynamics of their interactions—Smith as the free, white overseer and Jones as an enslaved woman of African descent—made it impossible for their relationship to be truly consensual. In 1853 Smith began buying property for his own plantation on Bayou Little Caillou. He also began purchasing enslaved people, including Nellie and their two children. By the Civil War, the Smith Plantation encompassed over six hundred acres and was one of eighty sugarcane plantations in the parish. According to the 1860 US Federal Census Slave Schedule, there were twenty-eight people enslaved on the Smith Plantation. The Civil War disrupted sugar cane production and ultimately led to the end of the slavery-based economic system. Although the Union Army occupied parts of Louisiana, Nellie, Robert, and Edward maintained their status as enslaved people as the Emancipation Proclamation did not extend to Union-held territories. In September 1864, Louisiana voters adopted the state’s new constitution, which abolished slavery, freeing Nellie, Robert, Edward, and the other enslaved people on the Smith Plantation. Robert and Edward remained on Smith Plantation working as tenant farmers. Upon Benjamin Smith’s death in 1877, Robert and Edward purchased the land from his white widow. By 1881, they owned much of the original six hundred acres. Other formerly enslaved people, including John Brown, Victor Fitch, Daniel Harrison, Jim Harris, and Jack Nightshed, purchased plots of the plantation. Most African Americans in the area labored as sharecroppers or low-wage field workers on sugar plantations in the same gang-labor system employed under slavery and lived in the cabins once occupied by formerly enslaved people. Smithridge was an outlier as the Black residents owned the land they farmed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ed Smith (1852-1945) Image from Sterling Sims, Slaves by Choice https://smithridgela.com/files/original/26affaf5f9c66c2e6868264b03568bc6.png 1a735d02105102987076e3edf5fe1f52 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Founding of Smithridge Description An account of the resource Smithridge originated with two formerly enslaved men, Robert and Edward Smith, and their white enslaver father, Benjamin Franklin Smith, who worked as an overseer in the 1840s on the Terrebonne Parish plantation owned by Phoebe Pierce. There Smith met Nellie Jones, an enslaved woman of African descent who had survived the domestic slave trade from Virginia to Louisiana. Smith and Jones had two children, Robert in 1849 and Edward in 1852. The power dynamics of their interactions—Smith as the free, white overseer and Jones as an enslaved woman of African descent—made it impossible for their relationship to be truly consensual. In 1853 Smith began buying property for his own plantation on Bayou Little Caillou. He also began purchasing enslaved people, including Nellie and their two children. By the Civil War, the Smith Plantation encompassed over six hundred acres and was one of eighty sugarcane plantations in the parish. According to the 1860 US Federal Census Slave Schedule, there were twenty-eight people enslaved on the Smith Plantation. The Civil War disrupted sugar cane production and ultimately led to the end of the slavery-based economic system. Although the Union Army occupied parts of Louisiana, Nellie, Robert, and Edward maintained their status as enslaved people as the Emancipation Proclamation did not extend to Union-held territories. In September 1864, Louisiana voters adopted the state’s new constitution, which abolished slavery, freeing Nellie, Robert, Edward, and the other enslaved people on the Smith Plantation. Robert and Edward remained on Smith Plantation working as tenant farmers. Upon Benjamin Smith’s death in 1877, Robert and Edward purchased the land from his white widow. By 1881, they owned much of the original six hundred acres. Other formerly enslaved people, including John Brown, Victor Fitch, Daniel Harrison, Jim Harris, and Jack Nightshed, purchased plots of the plantation. Most African Americans in the area labored as sharecroppers or low-wage field workers on sugar plantations in the same gang-labor system employed under slavery and lived in the cabins once occupied by formerly enslaved people. Smithridge was an outlier as the Black residents owned the land they farmed. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Marriage License of Ed Smith and Ellen Thompson Feb. 11, 1880 (Note that Ed Smith is described as the "legitimate issue of Benjamin Smith and Nelly Jones")