Rev. James Smylie's tombstone reads:

The first Presbyterian minister who settled permanently in Mississippi, and continued laboring as an evangelist in that field from 1805 until his death which took place April 4 AD 1853 in the 74th year of his age. He was born in Richmond County N. Carolina 1780 educated in Guilford County NC by Dr David Caldwell and licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Orange in October 1804.

The following was found in the LOUISIANA GENEALOGICAL REGISTER, 1977, PAGE 324:

"Any sketch of Re. James Smylie's life must necessarily be something of a sketch of early Presbyterianism in Mississippi, so clearly are they connected.... Born in Richmond County, North Carolina, in 1780. James Smylie came first to the Mississippi territory in 1800 and from the time of the first visit he never considered living anywhere else. He died at his Mytle Heath Plantation in Amite County in 1853. Honored by family, church and state, James Smylie was as accurant Greek and Latin scholar, a lover of the classics, a profound theologian, endowed with social graces and a man of such remarkable foresight as to be credited by many with a prophetic vision. His youth was a busy one and he was 30 years old before he married. His first wife was the yound widow of Thomas Smith of Jefferson County, who died a few years after their marriage. Mae (Polly) Cottonwood Smith married the gifted young preacher in 1810 and to them one child, Amelia Farrar (Montgomery) Smylie was born. When this child was 5 months old the young mother, Polly, died. On the tomb above her in the James Smylie graveyard, near Liberty, are figures showing that she was born in 1792, married James Smylie in 1810, died in 1812, aged 19 years, 8 mo. and 5 days. In the brief span between her birth and death, the beloved Polly had been maiden, mother, widow, and twice a wife. Her daughter, Amelia Farrar Smylie, was educated in Philadelphia, Penn. at the young ladies seminary and in social circles in Pennsylvania and Princeton, where she often visited her father's friends, she was greatly admired because of her grace and manner and her warm southern beauty. In her young girlhood, she enjoyed a brilliand social experience and when only 17 came home to visit and promptly fell in love with Joseph Addison Montgomery, the handsome son of her father's dear friend Rev. William M. Montgomery.

James Smylie became great not only as a minister of the Gospel, but was a man of business, upright and honest and rich beyond the average. He was a man of exceptional social graces and a ruler of his kind, whether in high church courts, in the drawing room, in busy marts or among the scholarly men of church and state with whom he delighted to mingle. His was a trenchant pen and it is a matter of great regret that his writings were not more carefully preserved. Quoting from one who married into this branch of the family, "the tribute to his wife which he wrote just after her early death was more beautiful, I think, even than David's lament for his son."