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Lacking a written history of the day-to-day activities of indentured servants at Smithfield Plantation, it’s difficult to say what Henry Linkous did during his indenture there.
However, he must have done his job well.
“After 20 years, he got 160 acres of Smithfield Plantation, so evidently they liked him,” said Linkous descendant and Montgomery County businessman, Larry Linkous. “I don’t know how he was able to save up that much money, but maybe they gave it to him.”
Henry Linkous, a native of Hesse-Kassel — present-day Germany — was among 6,000 British and German troops captured by the Continental Army after the 1777 Battle of Saratoga, New York. The prisoners were detained around Boston for a year before about 4,000 of them were marched 650 miles south to Albemarle County, arriving in January and February 1779. Linkous was among the prisoners who made the arduous trek.
He was brought from Albemarle County to Smithfield Plantation by Col. William Preston around 1780-81, said Mike Hudson, executive director of Historic Smithfield.
“A theme played out during [Preston’s] life,” Hudson said. “When there was a dearth of a particular skill on his plantation — not just Smithfield, he owned two others — if he needed a blacksmith and couldn’t fill it with his own slaves, he found indentured servants to fill that need.”
Larry Linkous, who served on the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors in the 1990s and has served on the boards of several area museums and other local organizations, said there’s no record of how long Henry’s indenture lasted, but he worked on the plantation for about 20 years. Some of that time could have been after his indenture.
Henry had experience as a coal miner and a blacksmith, “which fit perfectly in this area,” Larry Linkous said. “Most people don’t realize that up until about 1939 the biggest industry in Montgomery County was coal mining.”
Although Henry had a family in Hesse-Kassel, he married a Blacksburg woman, built a large house, which remains well-preserved not far from Blacksburg High School, and had nine children, Larry Linkous said. Larry said he is a descendant of Henry’s son, John.
Larry Linkous learned much of the family history from a pair of Kipps sisters who were schoolteachers and lived all their lives in the home.
“It was the same family,” Larry said of the Kippses. The Kipps sisters learned the history from Jaetta Hart Linkous, a granddaughter of Henry Linkous who lived in the home until her death in 1918.
Henry died in 1822 and is buried in a small cemetery on the property along with several family members. His will, which Larry has, revealed that he had four books and a number of farm animals. Larry also has two of the four books, but has not found the other two.
“I guess that was a big deal then to have books. We don’t know if he could read English, but the books were in English, and they were religious books, mainly.”
The Linkous name remains somewhat common in the New River Valley, Larry said, but descendants have spread out through the upper Midwest and other states. He even bumped into one on a trip to Charleston, South Carolina.
“It’s very unique that one family can trace their roots back to one single house,” he said. 
