My Legacy

Author’s Note

Every family has a story. Most of it is whispered in kitchens, remembered in half-faded photographs, or tucked away in the quiet corners of old houses. For most of my life, I never thought I’d be the one to gather those stories, yet here I am, following a trail that stretches back more than four centuries across oceans, battles, mill towns, and living rooms filled with laughter.

This book began the day my grandfather told me we were Rhode Islanders, said with the kind of pride only old mill men know. That answer planted a seed. Years later, as I watched my own grandchildren running through the yard in Monticello, I realized how quickly memories fade if someone doesn’t write them down.

So I started collecting, records, DNA matches, birth certificates, war diaries, family tales, and the stories told at tables long after supper. Somewhere along the way, these fragments stopped feeling like research and began to feel like a living conversation with those who came before us.

This book is not about perfection. It’s about remembering. It’s about honoring the people whose choices, struggles, and love shaped the lives we live today.

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If you are holding this book, you are part of that legacy. This is your story too, carried forward through blood, time, and the quiet truth that family, no matter how far it travels, remains the root of everything.

 

— R. E. Smith
Monticello, Florida
2025

 

 

Table of Contents

Copyright © 2025 by R. E. Smith. 4

Dedication: To my grandchildren. 5

Author’s Note. 6

About the Author. 12

I was born. 12

Roots of Providence: 15

Roger Williams and the Birth of a Colony. 16

The Miller’s Path: From England to Rhode Island. 18

John “The Miller” Smith: Millwright of Providence. 20

Alice: The Quiet Strength Beside the Wheel 22

Keeper of the Wheel, Keeper of the Flame. 26

Expanded Legacy and Historical Context 28

Sarah Whipple: Partner in Purpose. 29

Guardians of the Community Flame. 30

Expanded Legacy and Historical Context 32

Mercy Angell Smith: Matriarch of Steadfast Grace. 32

Patriots of Providence. 34

Expanded Legacy and Historical Context 36

Forge of the Republic. 38

Expanded Legacy and Historical Context 39

Sarah Arnold Smith: A Matriarch Through Revolution. 40

Pillars in the Quiet Century. 42

Expanded Legacy and Historical Context 44

Abigail Phetteplace Smith: A Matron Rooted in Soil and Spirit 45

Torchbearers of the Turning Wheel 46

Expanded Legacy and Historical Context 47

Joanna Phetteplace Smith: Healer of Hearth and Field. 48

The Millwright and the Teacher of Hope. 50

Expanded Legacy and Historical Context 52

The Iron Oak and the Guiding Lantern. 54

The Life and Legacy of Edward Smith. 56

A Gentle Giant in Wartime and Peace. 60

Fire and Iron, the Smith Spirit Reforged. 64

Reflections on the Lineage. 67

Wings of the Eagle and Strength of the Equine. 68

The Wolf of Monticello. 72

Stars in the Smith Sky - The next Generation. 76

Mary-Jane Katherine Chandler – The Scholar of the Pack. 77

Jameson Roy Chandler – The Heart and Humor. 78

Octavia Scarlett Chandler – The Starlet of September. 79

The Land Remembers. 80

“The Smiths remain, even though the name has changed”. 83

Appendix: Smith Family Lineage Reference. 89

John (The Miller) Smith I (1595–1648) 90

Alice Comstock Knight (?1595–1650) 91

John Smith II 92

Sarah Putnam Whipple. 93

Benjamin Smith. 95

Solomon Smith. 97

Sarah Dexter Smith. 98

John (Capt) Smith. 99

Stephen Smith. 102

Abigail Phetteplace Smith. 104

Stephen Smith. 106

Joanna Phetteplace Smith. 109

Nicholas Smith. 111

Angeline Paine Smith. 113

Warren McLellan Smith. 114

Harriet Dixon Smith. 117

Edward Smith. 119

Marion Isabelle Ballou Smith. 122

Kenneth Andrew Smith. 124

Ethel May Smith Smith. 126

Roy Edward Smith Sr. 128

Patricia Ann McQueen Smith. 130

Roy Edward Smith Jr. 131

Ana Marisa Goodwin, Amarante, Smith. 133

Nicole Ann Smith Chandler 134

The Testament of the Lost Ones. 136

Acknowledgments. 137

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About the Author

I was born….

On a crisp September evening in 1971, in Providence, Rhode Island. But the true roots of my life were not in the city hospital where I drew my first breath—they were in Manville, a small village stitched into the larger town of Lincoln. Tucked along the Blackstone River, Manville was no more than a speck on the map to most. But to me, it was a whole world.

I was raised in a home that pulsed with life and echoed with generations. Aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings—we were thick as thieves and closer than close.

 

There were always extra chairs out in the yard, always laughter in the air, and always someone ready with a story about one Smith or another. In the middle of it all was my grandfather, Kenneth A. Smith, a man whose quiet presence spoke volumes. He lived with us for most of my childhood, and I thank God every day that I got to grow up under the same roof, beneath his stories, and in the shadow of his legacy.

Ours was a blue-collar community. We weren’t rich in money, but we were wealthy beyond compare in something far more valuable: roots. Everyone knew everyone. Neighbors were more like extended family, and the streets carried the same names they had a hundred years before. Even as a child, I knew I came from a long line of Smiths. The name echoed through the mills, the schools, the churches, and the cemeteries. I didn’t understand it all back then, but I could feel it in my bones—that sense of belonging, of continuity.

One day, I asked my grandfather a simple question: "Gramp, what nationality are we?" He didn’t hesitate. With a sly grin, he said, "We’re Rhode Islanders." I didn’t grasp the weight of his answer at the time.

I thought maybe he didn’t hear me right. But I’ve come to realize over the years that he was exactly right. We weren’t just from Rhode Island. We were Rhode Island. Our family story is part of the bedrock of that little state.

 

My journey into our family’s history began as a simple curiosity, but it quickly grew into something more—a calling, almost. The deeper I dug, the more I discovered that the Smiths weren’t merely part of Rhode Island's past; they helped shape it. We are the descendants of settlers, soldiers, mill workers, and Mayflower passengers. Our roots stretch back to the founding of the state itself.

 

This book is not about me. It is about us. It is a record, a tribute, and an attempt to capture the spirit of a family that helped build a place and, in doing so, built one another. It focuses on the paternal legacy of my grandfather, Kenneth A. Smith, and the ancestral line that runs through him. From the forests of Burrillville to the rivers of North Smithfield, from the first plowshares in the colonial dirt to the modern lives of his many descendants, this is our story.

 

Family means everything to me. It is the anchor that holds me fast, the compass that points me forward, and the inheritance I hope to pass down unbroken. I write this not out of pride, but out of reverence. The Smith family isn’t defined by fame or fortune, but by something far rarer: resilience, loyalty, and love.

 

So if you are a Smith by name, by blood, or by heart—welcome. You are part of something much larger than yourself. May you find in these pages the same sense of wonder and belonging I found in my grandfather’s eyes the day he said, "We are Rhode Islanders."

 

Let the story begin.

 

Roots of Providence:

 

The Smith Family Saga of Rhode Island

 

“Through salted seas and whispered prayers,

A family crossed to new frontiers.

With hands of toil and hearts of fire,

They built a town, a state, a spire.

From miller's wheel to captain's sword,

Their stories rise in whispered word.

And now, as new leaves take their place,

The Smith name holds its honored space.”

 

Roger Williams and the Birth of a Colony

 

 

 

In the chill of a Massachusetts winter, 1635, a man walked away from the familiar comforts of the Puritan colonies—and into the unknown. That man was Roger Williams, an English-born theologian and minister whose ideas were as radical as they were righteous. He believed that no government should meddle in the sacred realm of the soul. To the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, this was heresy. To Williams, it was divine truth.