In recognition of Women’s History Month, the Dillon County Theatre will present on March 5th Kathryn Smith, who will be talking about “George Washington’s 1791 Tour of the South, Related by His Consort, Martha.” Washington toured Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, keeping a campaign promise to visit every state during his first term. Smith has researched this for her book “Methodists and Moonshiners: Another Prohibition Expedition Through the South…with Cocktail Recipes.” Washington operated the largest distillery in America after he retired, and she will delve into that too.
Smith is a journalist and author of six non-fiction books as well as the co-author of five mystery novels. A graduate of the University of Georgia Henry Grady School of Journalism, Kathryn had successful careers in daily newspaper reporting and nonprofit management before turning to writing full-time. Her books include The Gatekeeper, the biography of FDR’s private secretary Marguerite LeHand (Simon & Schuster, 2016); and Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy, (Evening Post Books, 2019). She has published two more books with Evening Post that explore the history of Prohibition in the South, Baptists and Bootleggers (2022) and Methodists and Moonshiners (2024).
A popular public speaker, Kathryn has given hundreds of talks at libraries, museums, and other venues, including the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York and the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. She often impersonates LeHand in her presentations about The Gatekeeper, like the one she did at the Dillon Theater last year. Kathryn is the co-author of a series of mystery novels with Kelly Durham featuring Missy LeHand as an amateur detective solving capers and murders in between her duties with President Roosevelt.
Kathryn and her husband Leo have two grown and married children and six grandchildren, all living in South Carolina. In between family visits, they fill their empty nest in Anderson, South Carolina with a cat and a dog.
The Dillon County Theatre will open its doors at 6:30 p.m. with the program beginning at 7:00 p.m. The theatre is located at 114 N. MacArthur Ave., Dillon.
