"Tonight perhaps a happy mother sits on the threshold of her humble cabin and sings a lullaby to her babe or perchance has the children at her side and tells them stories about father’s return. Anxiously she listens for the clashing of the horse’s hoofs upon the road, she awaits the ring of the chains upon the front gate heralding her husband's approach-she listens in vain. The shadows of night veils that home in darkness, a flickering candle is placed in the window to guide his footsteps when he returns: the mountains cast their gloom over the place. Patiently the children await father’s approach, but the father comes not. In great expectancy they long for his return to hear him tell stories from the big town. But the mother consoles them with the excuse that the river is high, that father is waiting to return tomorrow. One by one they forget about father and fall into sweet slumber dreaming of the stories they are to hear him tell. Finally, the mother too, consoles herself with the happy thought that he is alright, not dreaming for a moment that the cold form covered with a crude box is now on its way to that erstwhile happy home. Bullet pierced is the body-a warm reception awaits him, but a sad one it will be. Fourteen children and a happy mother will run out to meet the wagon but their happiness will be turned to tears when they see the corpse. The strong arm of support is gone and instead of resting upon it the family will be compelled to rest upon the mercy of the world. Another temperance lesson for him who is wise enough to profit thereby."

The Knoxville Morning Tribune (July 17, 1896)

The remains of the deceased, Wash Smith, were laid to rest just across the crest of a ridge from Powell River at Henegar’s Bend in a cemetery that would be nearly emptied by TVA a little less than forty years later. In a little less than six years, the shooter, Dave Rogers, would be assassinated by the son of the man he shot, and also be laid to rest in the same cemetery.

Although their wives were first cousins there had been bad blood between Wash Smith and Dave Rogers for some time before they left Henegar’s Bend to “float timber” down the river in 1896.

The spring rains must have been late that year. At that time, it was the practice of farming families who lived along the river to fell and skin logs during the winter months when there was little farm work to be done. Later the logs would be bound together to make rafts that would be floated down the river to the lumber market at Chattanooga when the river was up after the spring rains.

It must have been quite an adventure for male members of the family who would ride atop the rafts down first the Powell, the Clinch, and then the Tennessee Rivers on their way to the lumber market at Chattanooga.

Somehow, Wash Smith and Dave Rogers had managed to make it all the way to Chattanooga and back as far as Knoxville without incident. Almost immediately upon meeting up, on April 16, 1896, in the livery stable at Stewart & McCampbell’s Feed and Hitch on South Central Street, in the Bowery section of Knoxville, both men drew their guns. One, Wash Smith soon lay dead. The other, Dave Rogers, was only slightly injured.

Knoxville's Bowery section was a notorious vice district around the turn of the last century. According to the July 17, 1896 edition of the Knoxville Journal, Wash Smith’s brother in-law, William Brandenburg, the first witness at the inquest, testified that he thought that both Rogers and Smith had been drinking. John Richardson, Wash Smith’s brother in-law, testified that he did not see the shooting. John Sweat testified that he heard four or five shots in all.

After much legal wrangling, Dave Rogers was eventually set free. Almost six years later on June 24, 1902, he was shot and killed in the crowded dining room of a Maynardville boarding house by Wash Smith’s son Troy Smith. According to the June 25, 1902 edition of The Knoxville Journal, Rogers had just entered the dining room and started to take his seat at the table, when Troy arose and exclaimed “There’s the man who killed my father”, drew his pistol and fired twice striking Rogers once in the chest and once in the head. Little if any effort was made to stop Troy who fled to LaFollette where he caught a train to California. Troy’s first cousin, Troy Richardson, was born that night, but of course, the father, Troy's Smith's uncle, Stonger Richardson, knew nothing of what had transpired that night.

Troy Smith’s body was brought home for burial at Fincastle Methodist Church Cemetery after his death on March 5, 1944 at La Jolla, California. Wash Smith and Dave Rogers were re-interred from Henegar’s Bend, not far from each other, at Baker’s Forge Memorial Cemetery in 1935, by TVA. when Norris Reservoir was formed. The epitaph on Wash Smith’s monument, obviously intended as a message to someone, reads “A faithful witness will not lie”.