R. L. Smith

ID: 1674 ~ Source: Image courtesy of the Texas Collection, Baylor University
This file appears in: Farmers' Improvement Society
R. L. Smith

R. L. Smith was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1861, and came to Texas in the late 1800s. Smith and his wife were indispensable to FIS and served as important factors in helping the society avoid collapse throughout the 1930s. Smith is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in East Waco.

This file appears in: Farmers' Improvement Society

By Dalton Strouse
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Farmers’ Improvement Society (FIS) worked to help poor farmers escape the cycle of debt caused by the share cropping and credit system which developed in the wake of the Civil War. Although…