With this book, J. Andrews Smith, MSW, makes a unique contribution to the fields of North Carolina historiography, sociology and social work. Almost 20 years ago, Clyde F. McSwain published a detailed account of his life at the Masonic Orphanage at Oxford, North Carolina. Nearly 10 years later Richard McKenzie published a penetrating memoir of his life in the Presbyterian Orphanage at Barium Springs , North Carolina. A few other full-length recollections of orphanage life may have been written and published, but there is no other book, I think, similar to this one by Mr. Smith. His is no less than a collection of firsthand accounts of life as lived by a succession of children in the Free Will Baptist Orphanage (or Children's Home) at Middlesex, North Carolina, over a period of nearly 90 years-from the second decade of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century.

George Stevenson Jr.
Archivist (1970-2008)
North Carolina State Archives
Raleigh, North Carolina