[Magdalen] RIP Uncle Bob

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

I'm a descendant of a guy named James Smith.

It can get a bit confusing.  We still have no idea where he is buried.

He grew up in the Indiantown Gap region of Pennsylvania, and was with
Braddock's march to Fort Duquesne, humiliation, and oblivion. He was
fortunate in that a raiding party captured him and the indians adopted him
and after a period of time treated him as one of their own. Later on, when
there was a massive prisoner exchange, he was given the free opportunity to
return to the White world, and he took it.

He got home the day his former sweetheart was marrying someone else.

Didn't let that stop him.  He married, raised a family and organized a
group for local defense, using the Indians' own methods against them. After
a time, having buried his first wife, he moved away from all the crowding
of Pennsylvania to Kentucky, where he had some hand in organization of the
State. He tried to volunteer during the war of 1812, but was considered too
old.

The Jim Smith Club has a book out chronicling the lives of various Jim
smiths through the centuries. I'm told my Jim has a whole chapter....

His account of his captivity is here:
https://archive.org/stream/accountofremarka00smit#page/n1/mode/2up

A wiki article about him is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Smith_(frontiersman)



James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com>
wrote:

> As a matter of fact, my mom, in her genealogical studies, found some
> evidence that "Smith" was Anglicized--either from Schmidt or from
> Szmyt--or possibly each of those depending on who was in power at the
> time in the Danzig/Gdansk area (Kaszubia).
>
> Doing genealogy must be a drag when you're a Smith! But she has found
> out a lot so far.
>
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 12:51 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen
> <magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> > He should have a Germanicized name like Robert Schmidt having lived
> > in Germantown, Wisconsin!
>
>
>
>
> --
> Scott R. Knitter
> Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA
>