Alva Leah Smith

Tuesday, January 6, 2009 my grandmother passed away. We traveled to Bellville to attend the funeral with my family. For years, she had always been Leah to us. Married to "Big Dad" for years and lived in the green house across the street from the fair grounds. I remember her making icebox cookies and Butterfingers cookies. But after listening to her friends and family during visitation, so many new things were found out. She was born and raised in this little town of Bellville. That is 93 years of being in the same town (except for about 8 years that they moved for Big Dad's work). 93 years in a town that still holds its history in its buildings and people. If you ever see the town, it seems that very little could have changed in the past 93 years. Because of the small town, Leah's obituary won't be in the paper for a week. So to let friends in town know about her passing, notices are hung in the local stores!
Leah's maiden name was Keiswetter, and if you drive through Burleigh (the smaller town down the road where most of the farms are) you can see the roads are named after the German settlers who settled Bellville. For the first time in 26/27 years that Kent has been apart of my life, the road called Keiswetter had some meaning to me. And Leah's neighbors (the Wendt's) their road is just up a bit from Keiswetter Rd. Of course learning all this history about this amazing town sets my mind in motion and the next step in my genealogy research. For years I did not want to research Kent's family because doing genealogy on "Smith's" can not be an easy task, but Keiswetter will be where I start. Leah was only 1 of 2 daughters.
The funeral was very nice. Richard and Dylan were pallbearers, with Josh and Tony being honorary pallbearers. She was laid to rest next to Big Dad at Pilgrim's Rest, at top the hill where you can see forever.