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Jeremy Smith
Professor Raymond
UWRT 1102-3
Feb. 5th, 2014
Chain of Command
The Mace family is a very diverse family whose history has been well kept throughout
the centuries due to stories being verbally passed down and also keeping their own personal
history records of the lineage in which is remembered to this day. This project has provided me
with some background information that I would have never known about this side of my family
and helped me understand some connections between relatives for the upcoming reunion this
summer.
Peter Stiles, my great-great-great-great grandfather, was born in Virginia in 1841. He was
a veteran of the Civil War. Accounts from his service in the Civil War have said that he fought on
the side of the Confederates but that facts have supported and contradicted that account. During
the antebellum period, he was one of the first blacks to buy land in Mississippi. There he found
and was the preacher at Saint Peter Baptist Church in Utica, Mississippi. His picture still hangs
in the church to this day. He married Anna Stiles, whose family origin is lost. Both of their
deaths werent recorded. They had a daughter named Mahalia Stiles who was born in 1870 in
Mississippi. She married Ralph Lowe. They had five children; Queen Esther, Lernard, Mary
Jane, Mattie, and Robert. They lived in Learned, Mississippi where their son Robert later in life
lost the property that they owned due to debts he occurred through his reckless use of finances.
(Jackson)

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Queen Esther, also known as Esther, is my great-great grandmother. She was born
January 7, 1890. She met my great grandfather, George Mace Jr., when she was going to spend
time with her Aunt and Uncle at New Oak Missionary Baptist Church in which they attended.
My great-great grandparents later got married in that same church which is located in Edwards,
Mississippi. George Mace Jr.s father, George Mace Sr., mother is Harriet Mace Mozique. She
was a mulatto slave who was pregnant with George Mace Sr. when she moved from Kentucky to
Mississippi. There are no records on who George Mace Sr.s father is but it is assumed that it was
a white plantation owner in Kentucky due to his mixed skin complexion. Harriet and the other
slaves that traveled with her grew up under the supervision of Colonel Victor Montgomery in
Hinds County, MS where George Mace Sr. grew up. George Mace Sr. grew up to be a very
prominent and successful citizen in the community as a farmer, manager, and veterinarian.
However, he did not raise George Mace Jr., George Mace Sr. wanted to marry Molly Proctor,
George Mace Jr.s mother, but his family disapproved due to her being the young age of 16 so
she married James Doaks and they raised George Mace Jr.
George Mace Jr. was not known to be a cotton famer but agricultural crops such as
vegetables. He and his step father, Mr. Doaks, had a very good relationship and worked together
in harvesting crops. They decided, along with an uncle and other men in the community, to try
sharecropping in the Delta region. The men were well aware of the fact that sharecropping was a
technic designed for landowners to keep them indebted so that they would have to work longer in
order to pay off their debt but they did it anyway. The loaded up all their family and possessions
and headed to Delta. Since they did extremely well during their first year of sharecropping, they
decided that they would talk to the landowner about long term goals of them paying off their
debt. The landowner was generous and allowed them to start paying off their debt and procure

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land from him. Unfortunately before the deal was finalized that landowner died in a storm and
the next owner wasnt so generous. The men decided to move to a different part of the Delta
region to work. They worked until they were able to buy property in Hinds County, MS. A deed
was written up for the property. George and his uncle went to their respective banks to withdraw
the money that they needed to pay for the property. When his uncle was coming out he got
swindled, my grandmother calls it pigeoned (Smith), of a sizeable portion of the money to go
towards the purchase of the property. My grandmother says that being pigeoned means that a
swindler or pigeon dropper persuades you to invest money in something in order to earn more
money. It feeds on the greed of the individual to have more money. She made a connection with
this by saying its the same exact thing that happened to Walter in A Raisin in the Sun. With that
potion of money lost they couldnt pay the full amount for the land. Being that the deed had
already been signed, they still were obligated to pay the money for the land so they borrowed
money from a federal bank to cover the losses and buy the property. That property is still in the
family name to this day. (Jackson)
Once settled on their freshly bought land, they had five children. My grandmother,
Mynetta, was one of the five that was born on the land they bought in Learned, MS. George and
Esther built a big plantation house on their property to house all 11 of their children. The family
lived on the first floor of the house and used the second floor for storage. Queen Esther died
November 7, 1935. (Ancestry.com) She is best remembered as a loving mother that dedicated her
life to her kids and others kids. A few years later George Mace Jr. died on January 15, 1939. He
is remembered as an industrious man who did whatever he could to improve his family. After his
uncle and his death, the profits from the oil leases were used to pay back the money borrowed
from the federal bank. The house which my grandmother grew up in has burned down and been

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rebuilt but the children still lived in that house until courts divided up the property equally
between the 11 children.
My grandmother, Mynetta Mace Smith, was born November 27, 1926. She was a teacher
in the Jackson, MS educational system. She married Marcellus D. Smith, who was born October
31, 1927. My grandparents met each other when they attended Southern Christian Institute in
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Marcelluss father, Roosevelt, was the janitor at the institution so
Marcellus was always around the school all year long. My grandmother said: Its weird how
they met because she always say him as a creepy nosey man but somehow that still courted her.
They got married on September 17, 1952 in her sisters living room in Vicksburg, MS. After my
grandparents got married, Marcellus soon embarked on his career in the US Army. My
grandfather never saw any live combat war action. He was stationed in at Fort Bening in
Georgia. He was then transferred to a Fort in Virginia. His first assignment of the States was to
Greenland where he worked on machinery there to support the war. Although he was stationed
and located in these places, my grandmother stayed in Mississippi. He frequently took trips back
and forth to see them. They had two sons and a daughter. My dad, Dennis OKeith Smith, is their
youngest child. My grandmother is still living today but my grandfather died July 17, 1999 when
I was 4. The last and only memory I have of my grandfather before he died was him being rolled
out in his wheelchair to go have surgery. He died from complications after it.
My dad was born November 7, 1958. He has been living with diabetes since he was 14.
He grew up as a very prominent and respected athlete. He went to Southern Miss where he
majored in Park and Recreational Services. After getting his undergraduate degree, he went to
graduate school at LSU. Upon graduating from LSU, he met my mother while applying for a job
at Benedict College in Columbia, SC as the head basketball coach. He got the job. My mother,

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Desiree Prowell Smith, was born August 8, 1960. She was one of eleven children. She was
working at Palmetto Baptist Hospital in Columbia, SC. They got married March 21, 1984. My
dad soon left the job as head coach of the Benedict College basketball team to head coach a rival
colleges Allen University; which was also located in Columbia, SC. He soon left that job and
became the Athletic Director at both schools respectively. He currently works for the South
Carolina Department of Corrections penal system. When my mother left from working at the
hospital, she got a job as an instructor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South
Carolina. An interesting fact is that my mom taught some of my friends parents. She currently
works as a keyboarding teacher at Alcorn Middle School. They had three children; Benny,
Jeremy, and Jalen. Benny was born February 5, 1988. The twins, Jeremy and Jalen, were born
September 5, 1995. Everyone in my immediate family was born within the first 10 of their
respective months. The time difference between Benny and the twins being born is exactly 7
years and 7 months apart. The most interesting thing about it all is that the twins birthday is
detonated as 09/05/95.
The Mace family is very diverse and whose linage has accomplished a lot of things from
being the first blacks to buy land in Mississippi to being the athletic director at two local
respected community colleges. The family linage and history has been well kept despite part of it
being unknown. It has been really important for the future generations like myself to understand
and sort of connect the dots between certain family members because most of us dont know who
each other are and that would create a very weird family reunion.

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Works Cited
Ancestry.com. Ancestry. 2015. Website. 22 Jan. 2015.
Jackson, Queen Esther Mace. "Mace Family History." Hinds, 25 July 2013. Document.
Smith, Mynetta. Chain of Command Jeremy Smith. 15 Jan. 2015. Interview.