One of the best known and most successful attorneys of Ballinger is M. C. Smith, engaged in the practice of his profession here since 1886. He has gained a most excellent reputation in legal circles of the county during the years of his residence and practice, and stands well to the forefront in the ranks of good citizens as well as in his profession. His progress has been of steady growth, well worthy of the energy and application with which has career has been marked. It is more than forty years since he began practice, and among his other distinctions Mr. Smith has to his credit a brief service as a soldier of the Confederacy during the war between the states.

M. C. Smith was born on March 7, 1847, in Dublin, Georgia, and is the son of Leonard and Priscilla (Oliver) Smith, both natives of Georgia, and later residents of Louisiana. The father, a man of Scotch-Irish ancestry, was a slave holder and planter, who died in Louisiana before the war. The widow and her sons moved to Marlin, Texas, in 1858, and owned farms in the Brazos bottom, which they operated with more or less success for several years after the war. There were twelve children altogether, seven sons and five daughters. Mr. M. C. Smith is the youngest of the family and the only survivor of the twelve.

In Mount Lebanon, Louisiana, and later in Marlin, Independence and Waco, Texas, M.C. Smith gained his early education by attendance at private and collegiate institutions in those places. In 1867 he went east and entered the Harvard Law School at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, in 1870, received from that Institution the degree LL.B. His first practice after his graduation was begun in 1872, in Marlin, Texas, and in 1875, he located in Brownwood, where he remained until 1886, when he came to Ballinger. Both Brownwood and Ballinger, when he began practice in those respective localities, were practically frontier towns, and Mr. Smith has grown up with Western Texas, has been a part of it in its magnificent development, and as years have witnessed many improvements in the civilization and resources of the country, so likewise have they brought increased dignity and honor to this well known lawyer. Mr. Smith has continued in practice at Ballinger for twenty-seven years, each year adding something to his popularity as an attorney of skill and position in the county, and he ranks among the most honored and ablest men of the profession.

Always a Democrat, Mr. Smith has been a staunch defender of the party, and has served it well in all the years since he came to man's estate. When the war broke out, Mr. Smith, then only a boy, enlisted in Company B of Waller's Battalion in Tom Green's Brigade, serving from January, 1864, to the close of the war.

Mr. Smith is a member of the Ballinger Commercial Club, and of the Presbyterian church, with which he has long been identified in an active manner. He was married on the seventh day of October 1877, to Miss Dona A. Tanner, at Brownwood. She is the daughter of "Sol" and C.A. (George) Tanner, and was born at Blanco, Texas, in 1860. Her father was a well known stockman and ranger before the Civil war. Three children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, two girls and one boy. Mrs. Hermia Turbeville lives in Ballinger, where her husband is a music dealer; Miss Maryatt is one of the staff of high school teachers in Ballinger, having charge of the Latin and German. Mr. M. C. Smith, Jr., is now a student in the Ballinger high school.

Source: A History of Texas and Texans, by Frank W. Johnson, The American Historical Society, Chicago and New York, 1914