Built the bridge at Smith Ford by hand himself in 1895. He was seventeen in 1865, and by 1869 had been appointed one of a five-man jury of review. In 1932, as an old man, he wrote a letter to the Southern Democrat remembering the hard years after the Civil War - the primary source behind much of what’s known about him today.
Appears in: Smith Ford and the Vaughn Bridge and Zelma Clyde Tidwell, Blount County’s Bridge Builder.