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- Arthur Magill was the chief engineer aboard the T. J. Smith, a Neches River mail packet built in 1857 at Bevilport, Jasper County, and owned by Capt. Henry Clay Smith of Orange. In 1858, while riding the 100-foot steamer to Sabine, Henry R. Green, a Beaumont correspondent of Galveston Weekly News, wrote that the T. J. Smith ran "like lightning with a thunderbolt after it."5 Green also wrote that "Magill is scientific in his line, very careful, and experienced." Nevertheless, the engineer was killed on November 2, 1859, when the vessel's boiler exploded. The T. J. Smith was later repaired and in 1862 was confiscated by the Confederate States government when its owner, H. C. Smith, defected to the Federal forces. Probate records reveal that Kate Magill soon sued Capt. Smith to collect her dead husband's wages.
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