I’ve been adding my family tree to the WikiTree website which spurred me to do a bit of a deeper dive on my 6x great grandfather Dr. Francis Smith. Dr Smith is the father of by 5x ggmother Sarah Smith Shoemaker, mother of my 4x ggmother Deborah Cramer Holden, mother of my 3x ggfather William Holden, father of my 2x ggmother Ina Holden Starr, my dad’s paternal grandmother.
In doing bios of ancestors you always hope to glean enough information from all the documents people leave behind to get a tiny sense of who these people were. With Dr. Smith I hit the jackpot. He wrote his own bio, his own statement of what he’d learned in his time, his philosophy of life. He wrote this in 1795, almost 20 years after coming to America, after escaping a dungeon in Brussels, being disowned by his family and running away to fight in the American Revolution, after becoming an accomplished physician, husband and father:
“Having been frequently asked of what profession I was and having as often declined answering to satisfy these persons in a future day, let them peruse the following lines. They contain in short the whole. I was born in Brussels, capital city of Austrian Netherlands, my true name is Josephus Jacobus Aerts, son of Aerts Lord of Opdorf and Zimmersecle,
I altered my name in year 1777 when I proceeded to join the American army; I could not expect to travel through Europe as I had to go through France by that name, I took the name of Smith and my passports both in England and France under it, also my commission from congress, etc.
I was brought up in the there established Roman Catholic religion in which I was regularly instructed. Having been employed from my youth to a military life but at the same time to the study of all nations and their histories possessing the German, Low Dutch, French, English, Italian, Latin and part of the Greek languages-the means of acquiring in-formation were by their aid facilitated. I took from the age 18 an extreme aversion to Despotic and Monarchial government which in part was the occasion of my being made a state prisoner, and confined in irons in a dungeon for six months when I made a lucky escape from the prison at Brussels.
BELGA PHOTO TIMON RAMBOER
I went into Holland where I took service in order to be protected by the military. Col. Maus who commanded the regiment of the Prince of Weilburg, was my friend and protected me until his death. When I traveled through the greatest part of Europe until I was suffered to return to Brussels.
Having endeavoured to acquire the knowledge of the religion of all kinds of nations, sects, etc. I am now forty-six or forty-seven years of age and the result of my inquiries is enclosed in the following lines. All sects and religions with one other but all agree there is one God.
“I SAY’
1. I believe in one God the universal cause of all visible and in-visible known and unknown things. I hope for future happenings or at least no worst existence. I can’t say that I believe it, because there must be a proof to believe a thing. My senses ought to be convinced of it.
2. I believe that mankind was born alike and to answer the ends of creation unknown to me.
3. I believe that mankind is born for society on the basis of justice and benevolence for its protection and preservation, an abuse of which instinct constitute crime.
4. I am of opinion that every man hath a right to think as he chooseth concerning religion and to act as his conscience dictates.
5. I believe all the religion the world is crammed with are of human invention by course liable to all the errors, passions and views of their institutors.
6. I am persuaded that all the unsurpations made of the liberty and quality of mankind have originated either from’ priestcraft or unsurped proven of tryants.
7. I am persuaded that religion until the present instant I write this have done no kind of good in proportion to the innumerable evils they have caused.
8. I believe that the innate idea of good and wrong is sufficient to inspire virtue and humanity-the works of God giving an ample example.
9. I have a small idea (if any) of prayers God’s decree being as immutable as eternal. How can the monotony of an atom affect them?
10. I believe that the rewards of Heaven so promised, and the torments of hell so dreaded are a mere priestcraft or rather a farce which like the half-way house or purgatory of the Roman Catholics, has been the inexhaustible source of which the Sacredotal powers have been usurped and I believe the same of all their miracles.
11. I believe that every animal of whatsoever denomination hath sense in proportion to the ends of its creation and openly avow that I believe. Quod Deus Sit Anima Omnium Animalium. (That God is the soul of all animals/living beings)
12. Assured that education is of the greatest consequence to mankind, I am of opinion that it ought to be the duty of every good member of society to extripate all prejudices whatever to look on all as one family of men, created for mutual benefit, and to instruct the republican youth in every branch of science condusing to render it happy, free and independent without clogging his early days with useless languages or problems or requiring unreasonable subordination which dangers the brightest spark of a Latent genius.
13. I believe that all monarchs and despots will shortly either surrender their prerogatives or their heads to insulted manhood and reason.
14. I believe it my duty to submit to the laws enacted by our representatives duly and constitutionally elected, neither will Io temperate to any other power.
15. I believe to die, and to restore to the four elements their respective materials from which I proceeded but wisely know not what, when or in what manner, for which I return my gratitude to God-and when the electric fluid shall be withdrawn I desire to be buried in earth or water or burnt to ashes where or how I do not care, there where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary beat rest.
J. J. AERT OF OPDORF, Known by the name of Francis J. Smith, 1795 In Lower Smithfield Township, the first of the year, 1795.
Ever since 1777 I have lived in America, my parents died in the meantime and as a rebel, disinherited me. My brother, James Henricus Aerts, Lord of Boom near Antwerp, invaded my patrimony which I think ought to amount to 100,000 florins, if not more, the French republic, I hope will keep the Netherlands and do justice to my children, without distinction on an equal basis. My reasons for acting as I have done are best known to me. I shall only add that if it was not done I would do it again, however, these reasons are known to some of my friends who will do me the justice to explain them on a future ‘day, if I should not have time and opportunity to do it myself. After my decease I wish these few lines might be published-if any of my friends should see cause for it. My desire is further to be buried on a separate spot in the woods on land claimed by me without any pomp or ceremony, carried by old continental officers or soldiers, who will be so obliging as to perform this last service.”
This bio is also included with his: Francis “lived and died on the farm owned by his father-in-law, Garrett Brodhead, in Smithfield Township, which in after years was known as the Peter Kurtz farm. He first married a girl of whom nothing is known, only that she bore him one son, Francis J. Smith, born in 1789 and died 1857. He became a doctor, and lived in Milford, Pa.
He was the father of the late Jesse Ransberry Smith of East Stroudsburg. Dr. Smith’s (Aerts) second wife was Elizabeth Brodhead, daughter of Garrett Brodhead, who resided in the house now owned and occupied by Mrs. Mary Flory, East Stroudsburg, Pa. At the time of Dr. Smith’s (Aerts) death, his estate inventoried about $1000, most of which was bills due him for medical service. Since he left no will, his widow administered. Besides a request we previously related, he did not want to be buried in a cemetery. Mrs. Mary Smith Flory, great, great granddaughter of Dr. Smith (Aerts), related another request he made as to his burial. He did not wish to be buried on any land owned by the Brodheads. This request, as well as the one previously related was carried out. After his death, Garrett Brodhead, in 1802, deeded to his daughter, Elizabeth, Dr. Smith’s widow, six acres of land in Smithfield Township, which no doubt was the home in which she and the doctor lived. The deed stipulated that after her death, the place should be inherited by her children. From his statement he made and other records extant, one of which is a will he wrote for John Metzgar in 1794, shows that he was a man well educated, and very careful in transacting business, as in signing his name to a legal document, as previously mentioned. No stone or inscription marks his last resting place on a hill over-looking Delaware Water Gap, but it is hoped that some public-spirited person or persons will rise up and do due honor to a man, who fought for our independence and then spent the balance of his life alleviating the pains of the suffering in a wild and sparsely inhabited country.”- this bio was written by a granddaughter in 1879.
Someone did indeed put forth the effort to mark his grave with a headstone indicating his service in the Revolutionary War, but not until 1944 was it ordered.
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