4 books in one book about a courageous pioneer, her ancestors and her descendants from the 1600s to the 1900s -- their accomplishments and defeats, their loves and their losses, as well as several murders and a disappearance! -- Obedience (Fort) Smith was born in Edgecombe County, North Carolina in 1771 when her grandfather was a member of the House of Burgesses before the American Revolution. Twenty years later her father, Elias Fort, led a group of 100 over the newly opened road to the Cumberland Territory. They became the backbone of the Primitive or Particular Red River Baptist Church in the area of Adams and Port Royal, Tennessee at its border with Kentucky. -- At 20 she married widower Maj. David Smith of Wadesboro, North Carolina. He was 17 years her senior with two young daughters and had fought as a Patriot in the American Revolution. At the behest of close friend Gen. Andrew Jackson, Smith fought in several important campaigns against the Creeks and the British in the era of the War of 1812. Obedience bore 11 children in the frontier territory of Kentucky, so wild few would venture into it before 1800. -- Obedience's second American frontier was near muddy and untamed Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi in 1822, within weeks after the Choctaw Indians ceded the area and the county was organized. Here, at their Soldier's Rest, she finished raising her children and a granddaughter, while David dealt in his land grants and large tracts he purchased. He was greatly revered by all and Smith County, Mississippi is named in his honor. His grandson, Brig.Gen. Benjamin Grubb Humphreys of the CSA, was governor of Mississippi 1865-1868. -- Newly widowed, Mrs. Smith again followed a son and bravely ventured into the Mexican province of Coahuila y Texas in February 1836, even before the Declaration of Independence was declared on March 2, and the Battle of San Jacinto brought victory to the Texians on April 21, 1836. This third frontier was initially in Brazoria County, but by August 1836 she again followed her son to the far outskirts of what became Houston, Harris County, Texas. -- The dauntless Mrs. Obedience Smith had 32 grandchildren, many eventually inheriting much of her Republic of Texas land grant of 3,368 acres in the inner City of Houston. Deeds worth billions of dollars continue to this day to bear the designation of being Out of the Obedience Smith Survey. She died in 1847 in the second year of Texas statehood, on a parcel now included in downtown's Tranquility Park. -- Three of the 254 Texas counties (Terry, Lubbock, and Runnels) are named in honor of her family members, and many other descendants are of historical importance. Smith Street in downtown Houston is named after her son, the visionary Col. Benj. Fort Smith, hero of the Battle of San Jacinto and among the city's founders. A son-in-law was hot-tempered Mississippi Governor Hiram G. Runnels, who caned his opponents and later served as a Texas legislator. -- A grandson rode with the notorious Jesse James Gang, and another grandson was the famous Col. Frank Terry of Terry's Texas Rangers during the Civil War. Another grandson was Chief Justice David Smith Terry of California, known as the Dueling Judge and as being quick with his Bowie knife. -- Obedience's daughter, Piety (Smith) Hadley, once operated a popular boarding house near the Mississippi state capitol in Jackson, and by coercision of the legislators in 1839 is credited with passage of the first Married Women's Property Act in those United States governed by the common law. -- This extensive hardback of 530 pages includes a multi-colored illustrated jacket, 27 genealogy charts, extensive endnotes with bibilographical references, 4 maps, 17 photos, and index. Audrey Cook provides this considerable volume on one of Houston's earliest important women..... The physical volume is divided into four books, tracing the paternal Fort and maternal Sugg families and the subsequent Smith family (a Highlander crew) histories. The families' trails begin in Virginia (some say most good things do), and continues to North Carolina, below the Cumberland Gap to Tennessee, down the Natchez Trace into Mississippi, and finally to Texas at Point Pleasant (northwest of present Angleton), and finally Houston in 1836. -- Obedience (Fort) Smith was a remarkable pioneer in the truest vein. And Cook is congratulated for bringing her to life on these pages. After bearing 11 children in Kentucky and raising the survivors in Mississippi, her husband died in 1835, and her son decided they would move to Texas when she was aged 65-year-old.... They arrived early in 1836 before the Declaration of Independence, got caught up in the Runaway Scrape, returned to Point Pleasant, and moved to Houston later in the year where she cared for family and others for the next 11 years before dying in 1847, after annexation. -- Although the family was landed, they were land poor. Cook cautions us that Obedience was not the Land Quee