Family History

My paternal families history was first accurately recorded in Rhode Island with my great-great-grandfather. Although his birth date is not known, Hugh Smith's accomplishments and later life have been greatly documented and passed down in my family. Hugh Smith was born a slave and worked a slave until 1857. He was the first on my fathers side of the family to be a free man in America. He was able to buy his way out of slavery in West Virginia with money he earned breeding chickens and performing odd jobs along with money given to him by his late mother Gertrude Smith. From West Virginia Hugh moved himself and his wife August to Rhode Island to escape some of the constant persecution that he experience as a freedman. In Rhode Island Hugh worked for a white family as an indentured servant in the fields while his wife worked in their house.  Hugh and August had five children. James, Steven, David, Deborah, and Angela. While in Rhode Island Hugh worked for five different families as an indentured servant before he died in 1882. 

Hugh's kids eventually bought their own homes and some started their own businesses. James, my great-grandfather, then had two kids Russell and Joy. Russell moved to Portland, Oregon and became the states first African American civil engineer. Russell married Trudie, one of Oregon's first African American nurses, and had 5 kids, David, James, Stephen, Mark, and Albert. David Smith eventually married Judy Sommer in 1992 and had two children, Haley Smith, and Hugh Smith named after his great-great-grandfather who was born a slave but died a free man.