At the sale of the Cherokee lands at Waynesville in September, 1820,
his father bought the land known as the Tessentee towns, now Smith's
Bridge, where C. D. Smith was reared to manhood. He attended the
subscription schools of the neighborhood, and in 1832 went to Caney river,
then in Buncombe, now in Yancey, to clerk for Smith & McElroy, merchants,
where he spent five years, buying ginseng principally, getting in in 1837
over 86,000 pounds which yielded 25,000 pounds of choice clarified root,
which was barreled and shipped to Lucas & Heylin, Philadelphia, and thence
to China. In the meantime Yancey had been created a county and John W.
McElroy had been elected first clerk of the Superior court, making C. D.
Smith his deputy. At a camp meeting held at Caney River Camp Ground in
1836, by Charles K. Lewis, preacher in charge of the Black Mountain
circuit, he was converted and joined the church. At the quarterly
conference at Alexander chapel the following June he was licensed to
preach by Thos. W. Catlett, presiding elder. He continued to preach till
1850 when he went on the supernumerary list on account of bad health. In
1853 he became agent for the American Colonization Society for Tennessee
and sent to Liberia two families of emancipated negroes. In 1854 he became
interested in mineralogy, and continued this study of mineralogy and
geology till his death. He was assistant State Geologist under Prof.
Emmons and a co-worker with Prof. Kerr. He is mentioned in Dr. R. N.
Price's works on Methodism, and has an article in Kerr'sGeology of North
Carolina. He died in 1894.