When a Wound Led to a Wedding

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 11-A Turning Point

Prompt: In storytelling, there’s the pivotal moment – something happens and nothing is the same afterward. Think of a turning point in the life of an ancestor. It could be going to college, going to war (or not), or making an unpopular choice. You could also be more literal and consider ancestors who traveled. There’s no wrong way to interpret the theme!

She was a teenage daughter of a Quaker innkeeper, living in the Colony of New Jersey. He was a wealthy, Catholic, French nobleman financing and fighting in the Revolutionary War. What were the chances that their paths would cross?

Sophronia Sophia Smith (1759-1817) was one of a dozen children of James Stout Smith, Sr. (1730-1819). Smith was an innkeeper who lived in Atlantic County, New Jersey. He was one of numerous members of the Quaker faith who secretly aided the Revolutionary cause. One of his charitable efforts significantly altered the course of his daughter Sophia’s life.

Michael Antoine Garoutte–my 5th great-grandfather about whom I have written before, had already experienced a turning point in his own life. While preparing for the priesthood, he experienced the death of a sibling, something that affected him so profoundly that he abandoned his clerical pursuits.

Both Garoutte and his close friend the Marquis de Lafayette were inspired by the American Revolutionaries’ fight for freedom from British rule. The Colonies lacked a navy and Garoutte, a member of a wealthy family with connections to royalty, graciously donated ships to the Revolutionaries. Garoutte and Lafayette stayed in America, helping to thwart the British fleets’ attacks on the Colonies’ ports.

The Battle of Chestnut Neck on October 6, 1778, was one such naval battle. The video below details specifics of the fighting that took place that day in Egg Harbor, New Jersey. Following the battle, Garoutte and other Revolutionaries were traveling on horseback when they were attacked by a group of British soldiers. Garoutte suffered a head wound so serious that he was left for dead. James Smith, riding in his wagon, happened upon the injured Frenchman and took him back to his inn. He and his daughter proceeded to nurse him back to health.

The injured soldier must have made quite an impression upon the innkeeper and his daughter. Michael Garoutte and Sophronia Smith were married in Pleasant Mills, New Jersey, on October 26, 1778–less than three weeks after having met.

Michael and Sophia had thirteen children and lived out their lives in New Jersey. Some of their children remained in New Jersey, a few went to Ohio, and numerous children went to Greene County, Tennessee. Later, several of Michael’s children moved again to southwest Missouri. Among them was Samuel J. Garoutte (1797-1857), my 4th great-grandfather. It was one of Samuel’s seven daughters–Sophia Garoutte (1823-1873)–who married into the Laney family. The source of my maiden name are descendants of Sophia Garoutte Laney and John Laney (1818-1894).

Because a wealthy, Catholic, French nobleman fighting in the American Revolution was injured and received aid in the Colonies from a pacifist Quaker and his family, nineteen-year-old Sophia Smith was married twenty days later to someone neither she nor her family had ever met! And, because of that, I can claim a very small bit of French blood mixed with that of my predominantly Scottish roots.

Top Image: Mural Battle of Chestnut Neck painted on canvas by John Wanamaker of Philadelphia for Fred and Ethel Noyes, c. 1965. In 2007, Tony Coppola of the Inn at Historic Smithville Village gave the rights to the mural to the Sons of the American Revolution. Credit: Col. Richard Somers Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution.