The Family

With this book J. Andrews Smith MSW makes a unique contribution to the fields of North Carolina historiography sociology and social work. Almost 20 years ago Clyde F. McSwain published a detailed account of his life at the Masonic Orphanage at Oxford North Carolina. Nearly 10 years later Richard McKenzie published a penetrating memoir of his life in the Presbyterian Orphanage at Barium Springs North Carolina. A few other full-length recollections of orphanage life may have been written and published but there is no other book I think similar to this one by Mr. Smith. His is no less than a collection of firsthand accounts of life as lived by a succession of children in the Free Will Baptist Orphanage (or Children's Home) at Middlesex North Carolina over a period of nearly 90 years-from the second decade of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century. George Stevenson Jr. Archivist (1970-2008) North Carolina State Archives Raleigh North Carolina