Allie Walker

Bound Boy's Son: Book One of Covered Wagon Family Books Allie Walker

Synopsis Sylvanius Davidson Smith was born in Randolph County, Indiana January 15, 1882, to a poor farmer and his wife. His father, David Richmond Smith, was half Indian and his mother a relative of Stonewall Jackson. They were poor A Share-croppers. His life was happy and typical of poor farm folks of the times, until, when he was seven years old, he lost the sight in his right eye while playing with his cousins who had a bow and arrows. When he was eleven his father left the family, a wife and six children, taking his oldest son, a half brother to Sylvanius and the other five children with him. It became necessary for Sylvanius's mother to move her family to town and take in washings and ironings, trying to make a living for them. Sylvanius became her pardner by running errands for neighbors, earning a dime or a nickel, he helped a farmer weed gardens and cut wood. His mother began to call him her "pardner" and his siblings just called him "Pard". He had to drop out of school after the fifth grade because of a lack of money for clothes and school books. The first three years of their city life were a struggle to exist, and without help from an uncle, they couldn't have made it through the first cold winters. It helped when he got a paper route, but they were still the poorest of the poor until, at age fourteen, he got a job in a factory by lying about his age. Life was getting better for the family until his mother re-married when he was sixteen. The handsome man she married was a bum, he wouldn't keep a job, he drank and "womanized". Pard endured supporting him too for a while; then, decided to find his own father and live with him. Pard, his father called him Vet, traveled with his father from Detroit to Canada, back to Michigan, to Tennessee, and back to Michigan, again, in search of a good way to make a living. In Michigan he met and married a little Swedish girl. They moved to Indiana; then, decided to try homesteading in Arkansas. This true story is Book 1