Revolutionary and Texas Roots

Today, September 21, 2026, would be my paternal grandmother Billie Passmore Silverbrand’s 130th birthday. 

Sadly, my only memory of her is a brief one, from when I was just four years old.

After taking an abrupt car trip from New Jersey to Virginia one evening, we arrived and immediately went into a room where all I remember is my father rushing to the bedside of someone I couldn’t see and hearing him say, “I’m here Mom.”

At that point, we were ushered out of the room. 

I was a clueless four-year-old, and it wasn’t until years later that I realized I had probably witnessed the final moments of my grandmother’s life. 

The only other snippet of memory I have from that trip is sitting on the floor playing with some sort of Sit and Spin toy with a cousin. 

That was it. My entire memory of Grandma Billie. While we had no shared memories, she gave me so much more – but it took over 50 years to discover it. 

In 1896, Billie was born Willie Maud Passmore in Smiley, Texas – not kidding – to Samuel Charnick Passmore and Lunette Cyreneous “Nettie” Wilson – still not kidding.

Late this afternoon, I was distracted from work and somehow ended up looking at Grandma Billie’s profile on Ancestry. I realized today was her birthday, and I found myself wondering what Smiley, Texas would have been like in the late 1890s. 

After a little research, I discovered it was pretty much what I had envisioned – something out of a good old-fashioned western movie.

According to the Texas State Historical Association, Smiley, originally known as Smiley Lake, was established in the early 1870s when trader and sheepherder John Smiley settled by a long, narrow lake that became an important watering hole for cattle herds on the way to market. 

Smiley sits about 20 miles southwest of the county seat of Gonzales and roughly 60 miles east of San Antonio. 

By the 1890s, the settlement had a tanyard and a wire-fence factory and was reportedly the third largest town in the county. By 1896, Smiley had several hundred residents, two churches, two general stores, two grocers, and a gristmill-gin. 

Transportation would have been by horseback, buggy or wagon. 

Things began changing when the railroad reached the area around 1905, and within another five or ten years automobiles would have started appearing with increasing frequency. Even then, most roads were unsurfaced dirt roads, which meant rough travel conditions. 

Family records show the family moving to Kingsville, Texas in 1925. By then, Billie had already met my grandfather, Ralph Silverbrand, and they had married in New Jersey in 1919. 

How the daughter of a Texas family met a man born on the East Coast had always been a mystery. 

My grandfather was born in New York City and later lived in Bloomfield, New Jersey. But before that he served in the U.S. Army. He was along the southern border during the 1916 conflicts when Gen. John Pershing led American troops into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa, and he later served in France during World War I with the Army’s 1st Division – the Big Red One. 

We still don’t know exactly how they met, but putting this information together helped make some sense of it – one less family mystery to solve. 

To fully understand this part of our family’s story, though, we have to move backward a bit more.

My 2nd great grandparents, Hartwell Passmore and Mary Luceba Perkins, brought Sam and several other Georgia-born children to Texas sometime between 1877 and 1880. 

Hartwell was born in Georgia in 1845 and died in Smiley in 1896, just two months after Billie was born. He served in the Georgia militia during the Civil War and was wounded in battle. 

That’s a story for another day. But it’s sad to think they never knew each other either. 

The story stretches back four generations from Hartwell to our American Revolutionary Patriot, Jeremiah Pearson, who served with the South Carolina militia from 1781-1782 – a history that was lost somewhere along the way. 

After unearthing this information in 2017, I have since felt a responsibility to make sure it never gets buried again. 

In going through some photographs my cousin recently gave me, I found one of what I believe is my grandmother with a small boy. 

That boy could be my father – or it could be his younger brother, John, who died in Kingsville, Texas at just seven years old from complications of asthma. 

Dad spoke about spending time back in Texas when he was young, supposedly because of his brother’s health problems. One of his favorite stories was about riding a horse named “Booger Red” to school. 

But I digress. 

I was hopeful for a clue when I saw someone had neatly labeled the back of the photo in pencil. 

It said: “This picture was taken two months ago.” Not kidding. See photo. 

Dear Grandma Billie, dating a photograph from nearly one hundred years ago by writing “two months ago,” is not especially helpful. But thanks for the laugh and the shoulder tap that led me to realize it’s your special day. 

After all these years, I am able to follow her roots – and ours – back in time: from Smiley, to Georgia, to the Civil War, and all the way back to the fight for American independence. 

Though I never had the chance to know you, you gave me so much – an amazing father, a remarkable family story, and a lineage I’m proud to preserve. 

Happy 130th birthday Grandma Billie. 

Love, your granddaughter, Lauren