Bill Arp

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Charles Henry Smith (June 15, 1826 – August 24, 1903) was a Georgia politician who as a writer used the nom de plume Bill Arp for nearly 40 years.

Born and raised in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Smith enrolled at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia; however, he did not graduate. He moved to Rome, Georgia in the 1850s where he lived in Oak Hill before he sold to his collegaue, Andrew M. Sloan who sold the estate to Thomas Berry in 1871. During the Civil War, he served in 8th Georgia Volunteer Infantry (Rome Light Guards) as a major on the staff of several Confederate generals, including Francis Bartow.^[1] Following the war, he returned to Rome, where he served as a Mayor, Alderman, and in the Georgia Senate.

After the war and until his death, he wrote "letters to the editor" to the Atlanta Constitution as Bill Arp. They were typically in "Cracker dialect" talking about all manner of things that he couldn't say as a public figure.^[2]

He also edited newspapers in Rome, Cartersville and Atlanta and published five books: Bill Arp's Letters (1870), Bill Arp's Scrap Book (1884), The Farm and Fireside (1891), History of Georgia (1895), From the Uncivil War to Date (1903).

Smith died in Cartersville, Georgia in 1903 and was buried in that same city.

[edit] References

• Collected works online at UNC
• History of the University of Georgia by Thomas Walter Reed, Thomas Walter Reed, Imprint: Athens, Georgia : University of Georgia, ca. 1949, pp. 522-525
• "Alias Bill Arp: Charles Henry Smith and the South's 'Goodly Heritage' (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991) by Dr. David B. Parker.

[edit] External links

• Bill Arp from the Uncivil War to Date, 1861-1903. Atlanta, Ga.: The Hudgins Publishing Company, 1903, c1902.
• Bill Arp at Find a Grave Retrieved on 2009-03-26

Persondata
NAME	Arp, Bill (pseudonym)
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Smith, Charles Henry (birth name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Writer, newspaper editor, politician
DATE OF BIRTH	June 15, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lawrenceville, Georgia
DATE OF DEATH	August 24, 1903
PLACE OF DEATH	Cartersville, Georgia

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