James Peyton Smith
James Peyton Smith, known as James P. Smith , was a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from Union and Morehouse parishes in North Louisiana, a position which he held from 1964 to 1972 during the administration of Governor John McKeithen. In the first term he represented only Union Parish. Thereafter from 1972 to 1992, he was the sergeant-at-arms of the Louisiana State Senate.
Smith was one of eight children of the Reverend J. Duff Smith and the former Sallie Jane Turner. The Reverend Smith served in the state House of Representatives from Union Parish from 1944 to 1948 during the first term of Governor Jimmie Davis. Smith was born in the Conway Community of Union Parish but resided in his adult life in the parish seat of Farmerville.
In August 1946, Smith was ordained as a deacon by the Antioch Baptist Church in Farmerville and for six decades was the caretaker of the Antioch Cemetery, where he and many of his family members are interred. He was a member of the Gideons International, Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, Lions International, Masonic lodge, the Order of the Eastern Star, and Woodmen of the World. He worked for construction of a monument on the Alabama Landing Road near the Dean Community in honor of an "Unknown Soldier" of the American Civil War.
As part of the 106th Infantry Division, Smith earned a Bronze Star for combat bravery in 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Smith and his wife, the former Foye Nolan, to whom he was married for more than sixty years, had three sons, James Bradley Smith and wife Nikki of Farmerville, Danny Allen Smith and wife Ann of Marion in Union Parish, and Max Graham Smith and wife JoAnne Bennett Smith of West Monroe, and two daughters, Roslyn A Smith and husband Stan and Jayne Smith-Green and husband Bobby, both couples from Farmerville. He was survived by a sister, Lucille Smith Dawson of Iowa, Louisiana; he outlived his six other siblings.
Smith won his second and last term in the House in the general election held on February 6, 1968, when he and former intraparty rival, T. T. Fields of Farmerville, defeated the Republican Edwards Barham of Oak Ridge in Morehouse Parish, who polled 44 percent of the vote in a three-candidate field in which only two could be elected. In 1975, Barham became the first Republican since Reconstruction to be elected to the Louisiana Senate, but he was unseated in 1979 by the Democrat David 'Bo' Ginn of Bastrop in Morehouse Parish.
In September 2013, the Louisiana Highway 33 bridge over Lake D’Arbonne in Farmerville was named in Smith's honor. The legislative bill to rename the bridge was introduced by Republican Representative Rob Shadoin of Ruston, whose House District 12 includes part of the territory once represented by Smith, whom Shadoin calls "one of the greatest men of Union Parish". The Senate sponsor of the legislation is Mike Walsworth, a Republican from West Monroe.
