Fort Smith, Arkansas: Which General Smith Was It?

Fort Smith, Arkansas, grew up around an Army post named for Gen. Thomas A. Smith, but a 1905 federal list of place names credits a different General Smith. If you check the first edition of that same list, you’ll see it didn’t give a first name at all.

A pretty point called Belle Point

Before there was a fort, there was a name for the spot. Herndon’s Centennial History of Arkansas (1922) says that in the fall of 1817 Maj. Stephen H. Long picked the point of land where the Poteau River meets the Arkansas for a military post. Quoting Edwin James’s account of Long’s expedition, Herndon writes that Long named it Belle Point “in allusion to its peculiar beauty.”

Clara B. Eno, writing for the Arkansas Historical Association in 1911, isn’t so sure Long came up with it. She says French explorers, or “subsequent Frenchmen,” named the spot Belle Point “on account of its peculiar beauty,” and she thinks the first white men there were probably La Harpe’s party in 1722. Both agree on the name and the reason. They just don’t agree on who said it first.

The general who gave the order

Maj. William Bradford’s riflemen built the post. Eno quotes Long’s report on the site, dated May 16, 1818, and addressed to “Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Smith, commanding the ninth military department.” Then she gives the change that matters: “The name of the post was changed from Belle Point to Fort Smith December, 1818, in honor of General Smith, as it was the custom to name the forts after a general.”

Herndon names the same man. “The General Smith referred to by James, for whom the post was named, was Thomas A. Smith,” he writes, a Virginian who rose to brigadier general in the War of 1812 and later settled in Missouri.

Gannett’s extra initials

Henry Gannett’s place-name book for the U.S. Geological Survey came out twice. The 1902 edition says Fort Smith was “named for a fort built under the direction of General Smith, for whom it was named.” No first name. The 1905 edition adds one: “Gen. Persifer F. Smith.”

That doesn’t fit. Francis Heitman’s 1903 register of U.S. Army officers lists a Persifor Frazer Smith, but his first service there is as a colonel of Louisiana volunteers in 1836, long after Belle Point became Fort Smith. The same register shows Thomas A. Smith as colonel of the Rifle Regiment with the rank of brevet brigadier general, the job he held in 1818. So if you run into the Persifer version, keep in mind that it shows up in Gannett’s 1905 edition and not in his 1902 one, while the Arkansas historians, one of them quoting Long’s own report, point to Thomas A. Smith.

Sources & further reading

• Dallas T. Herndon, ed., Centennial History of Arkansas, vol. 1 (1922), p. 847. Major Long’s choice of the site in 1817, Belle Point “in allusion to its peculiar beauty,” and Thomas A. Smith as the general the post was named for.
• Clara B. Eno, “The Old Fort at Fort Smith” (Arkansas Historical Association, 1911). The French and Belle Point, Long’s report of May 16, 1818, to Gen. Thomas A. Smith, and the change of name in December 1818.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 1902 and 1905 editions. “General Smith” in the first edition; “Gen. Persifer F. Smith” in the second.
• Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (1903). The service records of Thomas A. Smith and Persifor Frazer Smith.
• GNIS feature 76952 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Fort Smith.