SUBJECT:Your Interviews With Dr. Garland's daughter & Dr. E.A. Smith
from Dr. Doster:
The people I knew who were present in 1865 when federal troops arrived at the north side of the river bridge at Tuscaloosa were Eugene A.Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Thomas Clinton.
My recollection is that the University President, with Smith, the student commandant of cadets, assembled the students and marched them off several miles to the south and out of the way of the Federal troops. The students were dismissed and had to find their way home.
Smith walked all the way to Prattville, where he came from, and was sent to Germany, where he studied geology and other sciences.
The daughter of the president, later Mrs. Smith, told me that she saw troops come into the kitchen of the president's house (which still stands) and set fire to the curtains. But her mother shamed them into putting out the fire, and the house survived.
At the age of 10-12 I lived across the street from the Smiths, but I do not remember any comments by Dr. Smith on the war.
He died in 1927, and for reasons that I have never understood she burned his papers.
Somehow some of his empty file boxes fell into my hands. A lot of information on Smith was collected by Alex Sartwell [?] and is probably in the University's oil and gas library.
Sartwell told me that Smith, born in 1840 had been in the Confederate Army.
Thomas Clinton, father of my teacher and lifelong friend Matt Clinton, published accounts of the burning of the University in newspapers. I believe his papers are in the county library.
This about exhausts my memory of these subjects.
-- J.F.D.
