Obedience Smith
by Marshall Verniaud
Every Southampton lot owner should know from reading the derivation of his land title that his property lies in what is legally described as the Obedience Smith survey.
Who was Obedience Smith? How did he get that strange name?
Correction: Obedience Smith was a woman. And by scant historical accounts, she was quite a woman.
Born in North Carolina on the last day of January, 1771 - more than five years before the Declaration of Independence was signed - Obedience Smith eventually raised a family of ten children and received from the Republic of Texas (NOT as a reward for raising all those kids) a grant of approximately 3,370 acres of land in what is now the greater part of central-southwest Houston.
There is no reliable evidence that the husband with whom she lived for 41 years ever came to this city.
The land patent - dated July 23, 1845, and signed by Anson Jones, last president of the Republic of Texas - granted to Obedience Smith and her heirs and assigns forever "Nineteen - 016,710/1,000,000 labors of land."
(A "labor" was a land measure in Texas and Mexico equivalent to 177 and one-seventh acres.)Earlier, Obedience Smith had applied for and received in 1838 a Republic of Texas headright certificate to the land, proving that she had arrived in Harrisburg (now Harris) County in February, 1835, and that she was then the head of a family.
Her family of ten children included twin sons, two stepdaughters, and two adopted youngsters. In what was apparently a second-generation of the strange-name syndrome, Obedience Smith named one of her daughters Piety, another Obedience, and gave one son a four-initial prenom (Jno. W. N. A. Smith).
She also named her oldest daughter Sarah, born in 1793, for her husband's deceased first wife.
David Smith, the man Obedience Fort married in Kentucky in November, 1791, had a colorful career of his own - even though it didn't include a visit to Houston.
As a major of volunteer cavalry under General Andrew Jackson he participated in the Battle of New Orleans at which the British were defeated in 1815.
At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Jackson was pierced by an Indian arrow. Seriously wounded, he turned to David Smith and yelled "Yank it out!"
Smith yanked it out. The battle continued.
The Obedience Smith survey, if superimposed on a map of present-day Houston, would extend roughly from about Blodgett and LaBranch in a straight line to Greenbriar and Rice Boulevard, then north in a straight line projection of Greenbriar to about the intersection of Troon and Denman Roads in River Oaks, then east to about West Dallas and Bagby, and finally in a straight line to the place of beginning.
Disputes about boundaries of her vast land grant plagued Obedience Smith until her death and kept her heirs in and out of courtrooms for many decades longer.
Litigation over claims that the Obedience Smith survey overrode a big portion of the previously- assigned Isaac Betterson League was reported pending in courts a hundred years later!
Another bitter quarrel about the survey's east boundary resulted in creation of a "no man's land" that existed for several uneasy years. The dangerous strip reached, somewhat roughly, from about West Alabama between San Jacinto and Milam on the south to about West Dallas between Bagby and Valentine on the north.
Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, lived near what is now the Woodrow Wilson Elementary school. There seems to be no record that he ever perfected his title to that property.
Obedience Smith and her daughter Piety, then the wife of Thomas B. J. Hadley who became county judge of Harris County during the Civil War, were among organizers of the first Baptist church here. They were instrumental in bringing Reverend James Huckins to Texas in May, 1841, under auspices of the Home Mission Society of New York.
Services of demonination were at first held in the Presbyterian Church at Main and Capitol.
The aging woman - she was 64 when she brought her large family to Harrisburg County in 1835 - lived at Louisiana and Dennis, near the site of what is now a Knights of Columbus building, until six weeks before her death.
At that time, unexplainably, she bought from her son-in-law Thomas Hadley a house and one-fourth of a block at the corner of Rusk and Brazos.
She died there March 1, 1847, two months after her 76th birthday.
Obedience Smith devoted half of her will to provision for disposition of her slaves.
The provisions:"I give and bequeath to my beloved daughter, Obedience Runnels, wife of Hiram G. Runnels, and to her heirs and assigns, forever, my negro slave girl, Amy.
"I give and bequeath to my beloved daughter, Piety L. Hadley, wife of Thomas B. J. Hadley, and to her heirs and assigns forever, my negro boy slave, Alfred.
"I give and bequeath to my daughter, Piety L. Hadley, my negro manslave, Ned, together with my waggon and team in trust, however, that she will appropriate to the support and maintenance of my grand children, Benjamin Josiah Smith and Esther O. Fall in equal portion, one third of the proceeds of the hire of Ned and of the waggon and team, the remaining two thirds to be paid over to Ned himself, which is to be continued as long as Ned shall live and it is my wish and desire that my said daughter, Piety L. Hadley, as trustee as asforesaid, give unto the possession of Ned the waggon and team to be worked by him and that she permit him to hire his own team if it not be in violation of the law but if it be so esteemed that then Ned with the waggon and team be hired to some one who will treat him kindley in either event the proceeds to be appropriated as already named.
"The above provision is made for my slave Ned, as a reward for his faithful services to myself and my family."
She then directed that her executor should, within six months after her death, "expose to public sale in the City of Houston" her other slaves and their "increase" - Sarah and her three sons, Osborn, George, and William, also Rachael and her two children, Mills and May - with the proceeds to be divided equally between her surviving two daughters, two sons and six grandchildren.
But as a follow-up she added: "An equal division of the above named slaves or of their value, being my only object in directing them sold; it is my earnest desire that they be purchased by some of my children or grand children that (they) may not be compelled to leave my family."
There was an eerie sequel to one of the many land contests that continued long after Obedience Smith's death.
Heirs to the property thought of filing a lawsuit to stop encroachment on a part of their land, but they could not find documents they needed to prosecute such an action.
In the early 1900's one of Obedience Smith's granddaughters, a Miss Franklin, accompanied a friend to a seance with Madam Watts, a popular Houston spiritualist.
During that seance the medium turned suddenly to Miss Franklin, whom she had not seen before, and said: "There is a very elderly genleman, slender and distinguished in appearance, who insists upon talking with you. He is waving some papers that look like deeds or documents and exclaiming 'Don't let them take my land! You will find all the papers in your grandmother's old leather trunk.'"
Miss Franklin thought immediately of her grandfather, Judge Hadley. She and other relatives searched through the trunk that had belonged to Piety L. Hadley.
Yes, they found the evidence they needed to justify their lawsuit.