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- Lawson G Smith and James L Bowers, both from Fish Springs, were brothers-in-law and best friends. They were both shot to death during an argument at a pie supper on March 15, 1913. The argument was over "outsiders" from Siam who some of the local girls had invited to the supper. That didn't set well with Lawson and Jim, and at some point in the evening, "Bowers and Smith finished their supper, left their seats and walked hurriedly" toward the boys from Siam, where the two "attacked the boys viciously." The outsiders pulled out their concealed pistols and shot Jim and Lawson. "Bowers was shot at such close range that the front of his double-breasted blue serge suit was set on fire. . . . A few seconds later, Lawson Smith fell heavily as the well-aimed bullets riddled his body" (pg. 17). Timbs writes that not too long before their tragic deaths, they had been warned by an elderly resident to "'settle down and stop all this trouble making.'" Jim Bowers' reply: "'I'll never settle down. I want to die with my boot on'" (17).
Jim Bowers and his best friend, Lawson Smith, were buried side by side in a single grave, originally at the old Fish Springs Cemetery (aka Smith Cemetery). Their remains were reinterred at Rittertown Baptist Church Cemetery near Hampton due to the TVA Watauga project. Their epitaph reads: "Let our Father's will be done."
This story is taken from Mountain Memories: Stories of Old Fish Springs, Tennessee, by Lawrence C. Timbs, 1968 (self-published). Lawrence Timbs admits that many versions of this story have been reported; however, he selected this version, he says, from an eye witness, "which in my opinion comes closer to factual information than all the others."
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1884 - 1913 (~ 28 years)
