Reproduction Noah Smithwick Bowie
Carbon Spring Steel Blade
Bone Handle
Leather Sheath
 
Noah Smithwick (January 01, 1808–October 21, 1899) was a colonist who lived in Texas from 1827 and until the Civil War began. A gunsmith and blacksmith, he fought in the Texas Revolution and served as a Texas Ranger. 
Smithwick was born and educated in North Carolina. He worked as blacksmith in Kentucky and in 1827 went to Texas and settled in San Felipe, Texas. He applied for land in Stephen F. Austin's colony but never located it. In 1830 he helped a friend accused of murder escape. For this Smithwick was banished from Texas. After staying in East Texas and Louisiana, he returned to Texas in 1835 at the beginning of the Texas Revolution and took part in the Battle of Concepcion.
In 1836 he joined a ranger company to defend the Bastrop area from Indians, then went to San Jacinto arriving after the battle. He married Thurza N. Blakey in 1839 and settled in Webber's Prairie in Travis County. In 1850 he moved to Brushy Creek in Williamson County.
Smithwick claimed later in life that James Bowie brought the original sandbar fighting knife, which had now been fitted with Ivory handles and silver and did not wish to degrade it with ordinary use, to him in San Felipe to have duplicated