Noble Smithson

Born in Williamson County, Tennessee, on December 7, 1841, he spent part of his youth in Alabama before settling in Pulaski, Tennessee, after the Civil War. Contemporary biographical records describe him as largely farm-raised and educated in local schools, and he was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1866.

His public life was substantial as well as literary. He served as district attorney-general for Tennessee’s Eleventh Circuit and later as a state senator, where older county histories note his work on judiciary matters and public-school legislation. He later practiced law in Pulaski, Birmingham, and Knoxville.

Alongside his legal career, he wrote across several genres. Sources credit him with the legal reference Smithson’s Civil Procedures in Tenn., the novels Judge Ladd and Count Imola, and Smithson’s Theory of Special Creation, a book arguing against evolutionary theory from a religious point of view. He died in Knoxville on July 20, 1919.