My great great Grandfather Samuel Smith was always a great story teller & passed down several exciting stories. He maintained that he rode for the Pony Express (although I can find no substantiation) at age 16, and in an 1913 affadavit in his Civil War Pension file he states "that in 1861, at Albany, Kentucky when deponent was 16 years of age, deponents mother, Liza Smith made affadavit of deponents birth , giving the date as 3/31/1845, for the purpose of procuring deponent an appointment as mail carrier under a contractor for the government." It is here that he supposedly learned "trick riding" skills which later allowed him to escape from Rebel capture. He was in the Union 13th KY Cavalry, Company F. The 13th Cav. protected south central KY from Confederate raiders like John Morgan & Captain Littleton Richardson from TN, and the Rebels were frequently chased back across the Cumberland River. Sam maintained that on one occasion he was captured by Rebels and persuaded them to let him demonstrate his "trick riding" skills from his "Pony" days. According to the tale, he rode in ever widening circles while he jumped on and off the horse and demonstrated tossing a saddlebag like a mailpouch. With their guard down, the guerilla's were enjoying the show. When Sam made his last, widest circle, he spurred the horse back toward the Cumberland River and to Kentucky, evading recapture. I have found that in October of 1863, the13th rode 75 miles in14 hours to surprise Rebel Capt. Richardson in Barren Co., KY, chasing the rebels across the Cumberland River into TN. Richardson escaped capture and is it possible that could he have captured Sam Smith in the process? Sam would have been very familiar with TN as he grew up in Clinton County, very near the border with TN and was married in Celina, TN. He also stated that he knew Jessie James, and James was known to be in the region, having robbed a bank in Russellville, KY and lived in Nashville TN for awhile. Sam may have even rode with the mail around St. Joe, MO where he could have run across Jesse James. Sam Smith also moved his family out to Texas about 1899, then on to the relatively new state of Oklahoma in 1907. That's a lot of adventure in one lifetime. He was a farmer and horsetrader by trade and never learned to read or write, but did his "figurin" with a stick in the dirt and was supposedly never cheated. I have written short stories about most of these family stories and how "it might have happened."