Pvt. Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith was soldier and farmer from Rappahannock County, VA. He served in Co. H, 50 Reg’t U. S. Colored Infantry. He enlisted on May 1, 1865 when the unit was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama. Thomas and Elmira married in 1891 and had 7 children; five sons and two daughters. Thomas and Elmira’s children took part in the Great Migration of blacks who left the Southern states for Northern and Western cities in search of jobs and opportunities. After Thomas’s death, in 1920 Elmira lived with her son Dudley and his wife Helen in Mississippi. Thomas’s son Dudley was a WWI veteran. His grandson Sylvester Smith was a WWII veteran.