Fort Smith wants to welcome to town anyone whose relatives have had anything to do with the U.S. Marshals Service since President Washington commissioned the first 13 U.S. marshals in 1789.

Fort Smith’s second U.S. Marshals Service Descendants Day will be held in conjunction with the city’s Oct. 27-28 Frontier Fest, which has as its theme this year, “A Salute to the History of the U.S. Marshals Service.”

Descendants Day II events are scheduled from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 27 in downtown Fort Smith at the National Historic Site’s Frisco Depot and the Riverfront Events Building west room.

If national response is as enthusiastic a s regional response was to the first Descendants Day in 2004, hundreds of participants will be attending from all over the country.

More than 500 people from five states participatedin the first Descendants Day, which was held as part of an effort by the local steering committee formed to convince the U.S. Marshals Service to locate its new museum here. More than 70 of those attending were descendants of U.S. marshals,deputy marshals, federal court workers andothers connected with the Marshals Service.

Many brought treasured artifacts that were photographed or scanned and returned to them on the spot by Historic Site staff and volunteers. About 100 oral histories of descendants also were recorded.Since then, numerous descendants have continued to “wander in” to the historic site with interesting artifacts and stories, historic site superintendent Bill Black said.

The focus of the first Descendants Day was on people associated with the Marshals Service in this region in the mid- to late 1800s. But now that Fort Smith has been chosen as the museum site, this year’s event will be publicized nationally to attract descendants from all over the United States and the world, connected with any of the 218 years of Marshals Service history.

“If we can learn and accomplish as much on the second Descendants Day as we did on the first one, it will be staggering,” said Tom Wing, head of the interpretive history department at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith.

Black said he and his staff also hope the second event will attract descendants of Light Horse and Indian Police who worked with the Marshals Service in this area in the 1800s, so more can be documented about the great law enforcement services they rendered to their own people and to the Marshals Service.

Information and artifacts discovered and recorded during both Descendants Days events should prove useful to the content and/or creation of exhibits for the new museum, which is in the planning stages.

U.S. Marshals Service historian David Turk, a featured speaker at the 2004 Descendants Day, also will be on hand for this year’s event. He will conduct a national symposium on the History of the U.S. Marshals Service on Oct. 26, with special guest speakers to be announced.

For more information or to volunteer to help with Descendants Day events, please call Jennifer Goodson, Library Director, Fort Smith Public Library, (479) 783-0229, or email jgoodson@fortsmithlibrary.org.

Anyone with information about the Light Horse or Indian Police, please call the Fort Smith Historic Site at (479) 783-3961.

Additional information about attending the event is available at the Fort Smith Convention and Visitors Bureau, at 1-800-637-1477 or (479) 783-8888. Email director Claude Legris.

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