The “52 Cousins” series of biographical sketches are Artificial Intelligence (AI) compiled narratives of selected individuals from my Genealogical database. The selected AI will used documents and data from my RootsMagic Genealogical Software. All genealogical data is my research material acquired over the past 46+ years of research. Today's Biography of "Martha Jane Graves Smith" (1841-1905) was compiled with the assistance of Claude Sonnett 4 and is entitled:
Martha Jane Graves Smith
7 October 1841 – 24 March 1905
Anson County, NC · Chesterfield County, SC
Overview
Martha Jane Graves was born on October 7, 1841, in Anson County, North Carolina, and went on to live a full and quietly remarkable life that spanned some of the most turbulent decades in American history. She was raised in the red-clay foothills of the Carolina Piedmont, married into a South Carolina farming family, raised seven children to adulthood, and witnessed the nation lurch from a devastating civil war through Reconstruction and into a new century. Martha died on March 24, 1905, in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, and is buried at the Ferguson H. Smith Cemetery alongside her husband.
Her story is, in many ways, the story of thousands of Southern women of her generation — steadfast, largely unrecorded in the public record, yet unmistakably at the heart of the family and community life around her.
The World Martha Was Born Into
When Martha Jane Graves entered the world in October 1841, the United States was still a young and expanding nation. President John Tyler occupied the White House, and the great sectional tensions that would eventually tear the country apart were already simmering. North Carolina, like much of the South, was a predominantly agricultural state, and Anson County — situated along the Pee Dee River in the southern Piedmont — was home to a mix of small family farms and larger planting operations.
The 1840s and 1850s were decades of rapid change: the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) added vast new territories to the United States and intensified the debate over slavery's expansion; the Compromise of 1850 offered a temporary patch on the wound; and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 set the nation buzzing. By the time Martha was a teenager, the political climate had grown dangerously heated, and the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 pushed the Southern states toward secession.
Martha spent her girlhood in the Gulledge Township area of Anson County, where her father Thomas farmed the land and her mother Eliza kept the household. It was a life shaped by the rhythms of planting and harvest, by close-knit community ties, and by the ever-present awareness of the gathering storm between North and South.
Family of Origin
Martha was the daughter of Sgt. Thomas Jefferson Graves (1820–1862) and Eliza "Mollie" Rivers Graves (1823–1898). The 1860 United States Census for Gulledge Township, Anson County, North Carolina, records Thomas as a farmer, age 39, living with his wife Eliza, age 36, and daughter Martha, age 16. All three are listed as born in North Carolina, though some later records record Martha's birthplace as Georgia — a discrepancy that remains unresolved in the available sources.
Thomas Jefferson Graves served in the military and held the rank of Sergeant, though details of his service have not been fully documented. He died in 1862 — almost certainly a casualty of the Civil War — leaving Eliza to carry on alone. Eliza "Mollie" Rivers Graves outlived her husband by many years, dying in 1898. She would later appear in the 1880 census of Chesterfield County, South Carolina, living in the household of her daughter Martha and son-in-law Elisha, listed as "mother-in-law," age 57. Her presence there speaks to the close bonds that kept the Graves family connected across state lines even after Martha had built her own household in South Carolina.
Siblings
The available records document two sibling for Martha:
• Mary Ann Graves Smith — Martha's sister, who also appears in the Graves family records; further details of her life and dates are not yet confirmed in the available sources.
• Eliza Graves --- age 10 in 1850 Chesterfield Census, no record beyound 1850.
Marriage to Elisha Brown Smith
Around 1866, Martha Jane Graves married Elisha Brown Smith (June 29, 1844 – June 8, 1925), a native of Chesterfield County, South Carolina. The couple most likely wed in Chesterfield County, and the estimated date is derived from the birth of their first child in December 1866, and from the 1900 Census, which recorded that they had been married 34 years and had seven children, all of whom were still living.
Elisha came from the family of Ferguson Hale Smith (1815–1902) and Catherine Melton Smith (1821–1867). He had volunteered for Confederate service at only sixteen or seventeen years of age, enlisting in Captain J.C. Coit's Company of South Carolina Light Artillery. He saw action throughout the war, was captured as a prisoner of war on August 21, 1864, and was also treated at an Episcopal Church Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, in September 1863 for an intermittent fever. By the war's end in April 1865, Elisha had survived experiences that left many men permanently broken. That he came home, built a farm, and raised a family of seven children is a testament to his resilience — and to the steady partnership he found in Martha.
In later years, Elisha was remembered in his June 1925 obituary in The Chesterfield Advertiser as "a prominent and highly respected Confederate Veteran" and "an upright Christian gentleman" who was "loved and admired by a lot of friends." He was a loyal member of Deep Creek Baptist Church. Martha predeceased her husband by twenty years, dying in March 1905. Elisha lived on until June 8, 1925, at the remarkable age of eighty-one, and was buried at the Ferguson H. Smith Cemetery in Chesterfield County.
Life in Chesterfield County, South Carolina
The years following the Civil War were extraordinarily difficult ones for families across the South. The region's economy had been shattered; the plantation system was dismantled; and communities struggled to rebuild under the complicated politics of Reconstruction (1865–1877). Into this uncertain world, Martha and Elisha set about building their home and family.
The 1870 Census found the young Smith family living in the Court House district of Chesterfield County. Elisha was twenty-six and Martha twenty-seven. They had two small children at that point — daughter Edna, age four, and son Albert, age two. By the time of the 1880 Census, the family had grown considerably. They were living in the Mount Croghan area of Chesterfield County, and the household now included six children: Edna (13), Albert (11), Mary (9), "Curbey" (Kirby, 6), Martha (4), and Bayard (2). Martha's mother, Eliza Graves, was also living with them, listed as mother-in-law, age 57.
The 1880s brought the birth of the youngest child, Florence Virginia, in August 1881. By the time of the 1900 Census, most of the older children had left to start their own households, and only two — son Thomas Bayard (age 22) and daughter Florence (age 18) — remained at home with Elisha and Martha.
Throughout these decades, Martha was the constant at the center of a busy farm household. She kept the hearth, raised the children, tended to aging relatives, and weathered the hard seasons that came with farm life in the post-war South. The census records, dry as they are, paint an unmistakable picture: a woman whose life was measured not in public accomplishments but in the quiet faithfulness of everyday devotion to her family.
Children of Martha and Elisha
Martha and Elisha had seven children together, all of whom survived to adulthood — a notable achievement in an era when childhood illness claimed many young lives. The 1900 Census specifically confirms that all seven of their children were then living.
1. Edna Catherine Jane Smith
• Born: December 4, 1866, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Died: October 7, 1956, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Spouse: John Albert Ratliff
Edna was the eldest child, born in the same year her parents likely married. She lived a long life, dying at nearly ninety years of age.
2. Albert Sidney Preston Smith
• Born: December 14, 1868, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Died: March 1, 1949, Hamlet, Richmond County, North Carolina
• Buried: Mary Lou Cemetery, Hamlet, North Carolina (March 2, 1949)
• Spouse: Anna Belle Tarlton (1872–1962)
Albert was the first son. His death certificate — one of the key documents confirming Martha's parentage — notes he was born December 6, 1868, and gives his parents as Elisha B. Smith and Martha Jane Graves. He eventually settled in Hamlet, NC, where he died in 1949.
3. Mary Ann Elizabeth Smith
• Born: March 13, 1871, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Died: January 20, 1942, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Spouse: Julius Adanijah Burch
Mary Ann was the second daughter, born in the years of Reconstruction. She remained in Chesterfield County throughout her life.
4. Elisha Kirby Smith
• Born: August 24, 1873, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Died: February 23, 1940, Ruby, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Buried: February 24, 1940
• Spouse: Mary Grace Ratliff (1878–1961); married January 3, 1897, Anson County, North Carolina
Kirby, as he was known, married into the Ratliff family — the same family that his older sister Edna had also married into. He was living at his home in Ruby, South Carolina, when he died in 1940. His father Elisha was living with Kirby at the time Elisha's submitted his pension application in 1919.
5. Martha Ellen Lorina Smith
• Born: December 22, 1875, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Died: December 21, 1957, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Spouse: Dossy Edward Burch
Martha — named for her mother — lived almost to her eighty-second birthday and spent her entire life in Chesterfield County. She and her sister Mary Ann both married into the Burch family.
6. Thomas Bayard Smith
• Born: 14 January 1878, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Died: May 10, 1050, Cabarrus County, North Carolina.
• Spouse: Pattie Sue Jordan
Thomas Bayard, the youngest son, was still living at home with his parents in 1900.
7. Florence Virginia M. Smith
• Born: August 18, 1881, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Died: March 15, 1913, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
• Buried: Pine Grove Baptist Church Cemetery, Chesterfield County, South Carolina (March 15, 1913)
• Spouse: Thomas Wesley Eddins (1877–1955); married December 24, 1907, South Carolina
Florence was Martha's youngest child and her death, at only thirty-one years of age, came just eight years after Martha herself had passed. Her March 1913 obituary in The Pageland Journal described her as "a daughter of Mr. E. B. Smith, a member of the Baptist Church, and a consecrated Christian lady who will be sadly missed in her community and in her home." She was survived by her husband and two young children.
Final Years and Death
By 1900, Martha was fifty-eight years old. Most of her children were grown and gone, and the family homestead in Mount Croghan was quieter than it had been in decades. The census that year shows just four people in the household: Elisha and Martha, and their two youngest children, Thomas Bayard and Florence.
Martha Jane Graves Smith died on March 24, 1905, in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, at the age of sixty-three. She was laid to rest at the Ferguson H. Smith Cemetery, the family burial ground in Chesterfield County, where her tombstone still stands as one of the primary sources confirming her birth and death dates. Her husband Elisha would survive her by twenty years, living until June 1925.
The year of Martha's death — 1905 — was itself a moment of transition. The Jim Crow era had tightened its grip across the South; the Wright Brothers had made their historic flight just two years before; and the America Martha left behind was already unrecognizable in many ways from the one into which she had been born. She had lived through secession, war, defeat, Reconstruction, and the long hard decades of rebuilding. That her seven children all survived to adulthood, that her husband remembered her for the rest of his long life, and that her family continued to flourish in Chesterfield County — these are her real legacy.
Martha Jane Graves Smith is my 1st Cousin 4X Removed.
Sources and Documentation:
The following records and sources inform this biography:
1. 1850 U. S. Census, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, population schedule, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Page 176B, Line 19, Dwelling 1196; Family #1196, Household of Thomas GRAVES; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : viewed 3 September 2011); citing National Archives Microfilm M432 Roll 851.
2. 1840 U S Census, Anson County, North Carolina, population schedule, Anson County, North Carolina, Page: 86; Line 17, Household of Thomas J. Graves; digital images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : viewed 20 June 2011); citing National Archives Microfilm M704, Roll 354.
3. Chesterfield County, South Carolina, 1: 115, Thomas J. Graves is a witness to a Chesterfield County Land Deed between W. H. Gainey & Thomas Adams to Cameron Adams; Register of Deeds, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina.
4. 1860 U. S. Census, Anson County, North Carolina, population schedule, Gulledge Township, Anson County, North Carolina, Page 230A, Line 6, Dwelling 1067, Family 1027, Household of Thomas GRAVES; online database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : viewed 20 November 2011); citing National Archives Microfilm Publication M653, Roll 887.
5. Ancestry, "Civil War Service Records" database, Military Service Records (https://www.fold3.com/ : accessed 20 June 2011), entry for Thomas J. Graves, Private; Co. C, 8th SC Infantry; Confederate.
6. Ancestry,Military Service Records, database entry for Thomas GRAVES, Pvt.; Company "C", 8th S.C. Infantry; Confederate; https://www.fold3.com/image/77411037.
7. Find A Grave, Inc., Find A Grave, database and digital images, (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 18 May 2015); Memorial page for Eliza "Mollie" Rivers Graves; (13 June 1823–29 October 1898); Find a Grave memorial # 146202521, Citing Ferguson H. Smith Cemetery; Chesterfield County, South Carolina, USA.
8. 1880 U S Census, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, population schedule, Mount Croghan, Chesterfield, South Carolina, enumeration district (ED) 007, Page 368C(stamped), Line 49, Dwelling 293, Family 293, Household of Elishue SMITH; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : viewed 20 November 2010); citing National Archives Microfilm T9-1225.
Prepared by:
Charles Purvis
Thomasville, NC 27360 | CPurvis1@gmail.com
13 June 2026
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