Charles Smith and Lucy Meredith on their 50th Wedding Aniversary.

Charlie's work always took him away from home but, he came home each weekend and that sort of made up for the other five days he was away. We had good neighbors and that community was thickly populated with Smiths as there were four of the Smith brothers living within a mile of each other, Gasper (my father-in-law), Elijah, John and Harvey and each one had large families so therefore we didn't have many dull moments. The happiest time of all our lives was when the first Mormon missionaries arrived at Smith town as they gave us that name (the missionaries). They brought the gospel to us. "My sheep shall hear my voice" has always been our motto because as soon as we heard their message there just seemed to be a little click "where have I heard that before?" Again, my sheep shall hear my voice and recognize it. Within two months time, Charlie, his uncle Joseph Smith and myself were baptized out on Little Stoney creek in the mountains where the Smiths owned a saw mill. Elders Day and Walker were the first missionaries. Elder Day, the older man, was the senior Elder and he did the baptizing. Uncle Joseph was the first to be baptized, Charlie next and then myself. I was the first lady to accept Mormonism in Giles County that was 27 February 1898. There's been a lot of water gone over the dam since then so to speak. Charlie and his father, Gasper, built the first little meeting house, in 1899, on Daddy Gasper's farm on the side of the hill where our light did shine for years. The church didn't grow very fast in that part of the Lord's vineyard, the Smith family was about the only people in that community who accepted Mormonism for the past fifty years. We did enlarge the first little chapel. One time we added to the length, took it from "one big rock to the other" and there we stayed from 1899 to 1921 when we dug out the hill on the East side and built quite a nice little chapel which did seat 200. No classrooms or anything like that but, we were quite proud of our achievement to have a new chapel, one we could at least paint.
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