Will Smith Family History

Willard Carroll Smith II, better known as the actor Will Smith, was born on September 25th, 1968 to Willard and Caroline Smith in Philadelphia.

Willard was an Air Force veteran and a refrigeration engineer, his wife Caroline a school board administrator.  When Will was two the family moved to the upmarket area of Wynnefield in west Philadelphia.

As the eldest son, Will was often privy to his father’s violent outbursts.  In his self-titled 2021 memoir Will, he recalled:

“When I was nine years old, I watched my father punch my mother in the side of the head so hard that she collapsed.  I saw her spit blood. That moment in that bedroom, probably more than any other moment in my life, has defined who I am.”

Rapping.  Will began rapping at the age of twelve.  He then started to make music with his childhood friend Jazzy Jeff Townes.  Will became known for his light-hearted story-telling raps.  A month before he graduated from high school. they had their first hit.

At that time Will decided to eschew college in order to concentrate on rap music.  In 1989, when Will was twenty-one, he and Jeff received their first Grammy Award for the rap song Parents Just Don’t Understand.

Acting.  Will began to turn his attention towards an acting career in the early 1990’s.  His first major role came in Six Degrees of Separation in 1993.  Three years later he hit paydirt with the box office smash hits Independence Day and Men in Black.  These films put him on a par with a great such as Tom Cruise as an action-man movie hero.

For a while Will combined a singing and an acting career.  There were other major movie hits, including a number of Men in Black follow-ups.  But it was not until 2021, with the release of King Richard, that Will was able to win the prestigous Academy Best Actor award.

Controversy came at the time of the Academy Awards ceremony the following year.  Will arrived on stage and slapped the host Chris Rock because he had made a bad joke about his wife Jada.  As a consequence Will was banned from further appearances.

Stage One – North Carolina

Will’s African American line post-slavery is thought to have originated in Pasquotank county, North Carolina, although some – it should be pointed out – have posited a different lineage.

During the time of slavery this county had been home to a number of plantations along the Pasquotank river.  Their owners employed slave labor.  But Pasquotank also had one of the largest free African American populations in North Carolina – with more than 900 free African Americans recorded there in 1830.

The county’s location near the coast, by the Pasquotank river and the Albemarle Sound, meant that many of the slaves worked in the maritime trades. The river also served as a crucial gateway for runaway slaves seeking freedom.  Indeed Pasquotank itself was a site for both the practice of slavery and for resistance against it.

Interestingly, Will himself portrayed a runaway slave in the 2021 film Emancipation.  In this case his escape route lay through the Louisiana bayoux rather than the North Carolina waterways. The runaway Peter here completed a harrowing ten-day journey in 1863 in order to join up with Lincoln’s army.  This role marked Will’s first acting venture into Black history at the time of slavery.

Post Slavery.  The Smith line in Pasquotank county, North Carolina post-slavery ran as follows:

• Miles Smith (1857-1930) married Margaret Johnson in 1882
• John Edward Smith (1886-1931) married Maria Holley in 1908

Over this period the family migrated around 1880 from Nixonton, once a busy seaport, to the small rural community of Salem where they raised crops.  Miles lived on in Pasquotank county and died there in 1930.  His children – seeking better opportunities – had mostly moved away by that time.

Stage Two – Philadelphia

These Smiths left Pasquotank county, North Carolina between 1915 and 1920.  Some of John Edward’s siblings headed for Norfolk, Virginia 45 miles away.  But John and his family went first to Baltimore, which was 280 miles away, and then made their way further north to Philadelphia.

John’s children – Margaret, Pocahontas and Vivian – all got married in Philadelphia around the year 1926.  And Wilmon Lee, the younger son, probably married there a few years later.  Wilmon’s reported son Willard Smith, Will’s father, was born in Philadelphia in 1939.

Willard’s Father?  Several sites have claimed that Willard Smith’s father may instead have been George Willard Smith, also from North Carolina, who had married Ellen King.  But Willard’s obituary in 2016 did state the following at its beginning:

“Willard C. Smith Sr. was born on November 24, 1939 to Wilmon Lee Smith and Ellen Washington Smith.”

This is notwithstanding a 1940 US census entry where Williard C. Smith was recorded in the household of Claude King (Ellen King’s father) at Ardmore in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania.

Willard’s Life.  Willard was educated in the 1950’s in eastern Pennsylvania through private schooling.  He served in the US Air Force and afterwards attended Penco Tech, where he studied air conditioning and commercial refrigeration. He then started his own company named ACRAC, primarily supplying refrigeration to supermarkets, which he ran for thirty years.

His obituary said nice things about him, for instance that he was known to many as Daddio, that he had laid the first perfect brick for Partners for Civic Pride, and that he was highly influential to many neighborhood youths and their aspirations for life.

But there was a dark side to Willard as well, what with his alcoholism and violence.  As a result Willard and his son Will had a rocky relationship for a long time.  But things changed after Willard was given a life-threatening diagnosis and told that he only had six weeks to live.  He died in 2016 and they had reconciled.

Will Smith’s Family Tree

• North Carolina

• Miles Smith from Pasquotank, North Carolina (1857-1930) m. Margaret Johnson (b. 1862) in Pasquotank in 1882
• – Addie (Minnie) Smith (b. 1884) m. Thomas Overton
• – Bessie Smith (1886-1931) m. John Sawyer
• – John Smith (1886-1931)
• – William Smith (1889-1950) m. Lexie Thomas
• – Lovett (Love) Smith (1891-1937)
• – Pocahontas Smith (1893-1980) m. David Lynn
• – Sarah Smith (1894-1930) m. James Lewis
• – Inez Smith (1895-1968) m. Ervin Boyd

• John Edward Smith (1886-1931) m. Maria Holley (b. 1885) in Pasquotank in 1908
• – Margaret Smith (1907-1989) m. William Carrington
• – Pocahontas Smith (1909-1983) m. Theodore Downing
• – Vivian Smith (1910-1980) m. Irvin Freeny
• – Wilmon Lee Smith (b. 1910)

• Willard Carroll Smith Sr. (Daddio) from Philadelphia m. Caroline Bright (b. 1937) around 1962, separated in 1981 and divorced in 2000
• – Pamela (Pam) Smith (b. 1964) m. Mahlon Cephas
• – Willard (Will) Smith (b. 1968)
• – twin Harry Smith (b. 1971) m. Amanda Lewis
• – twin Ellen Smith (b. 1971), charity business
• – Ashley Pettway Smith (b. 1980’s), half sister