To Leland Edgerton Smith, the Eldridge Hotel isn’t just a place for the 94-year-old Nashville, Tenn., resident to stay when he visits Lawrence.

It’s also part of his family history.

On Aug. 21, 1863, when William Quantrill and his raiders invaded Lawrence, Smith’s great-grandmother, Sarah Jane Edgerton Smith, was living on the second floor of the hotel, 701 Mass.

“She heard a knock at the door and a raider told her to leave,” Smith said. “She remembered walking down the stairway and having to step over a dead man.”

“(The raiders) were polite,” Smith said. “They killed all of the men. But there are no records of them killing a single woman.”

Smith never met his great-grandmother, who died in 1909, but he knew his great-grandfather and heard stories of the years the couple lived in Lawrence between 1855 and 1866.

Sarah and Benton Smith lived in the northwest part of town for about eight years before the raid.

Benton, who was a lieutenant in the in 9th Kansas Calvary, had to leave before the Quantrill attack, so he checked his wife into the Eldridge to keep her safe, Leland Smith said.

Sarah and her husband later moved to Topeka, Leland Smith said. Though Leland Smith grew up in Kansas, he retired in Nashville about 20 years ago, he said.

Leland Smith, 94, of Nashville, Tenn., visits Lawrence periodically. Monday afternoon he was at the Eldridge Hotel, researching his family history. Smith's great-grandmother Sarah Jane Edgerton Smith was staying in the hotel when Quantrill's raiders burned it in 1863; she escaped and lived to tell the story.

History is so important to Leland Smith that he and his son, Bradley Edgerton Smith, 70, decided to retrace the footsteps of their Kansas ancestors last week. That included a stop at the Eldridge and a visit to Sedan in southeast Kansas, where Sarah’s father-in-law was a town founder. It was Leland Smith’s fourth visit to Lawrence.

Given the city’s rich history, he said it surprised him how little residents he encountered seemed to know about it.

“I’m disappointed that so few people are interested in their history,” he said. “If you don’t know history, you don’t know where you’re coming from and where you’re going.”

Smith said that’s why he wants everyone in his family to learn about their past, especially the younger members of the family, such as grandnephew Ryan Gordon.

Though Gordon has heard some stories about his family’s history, the 21-year-old said that he didn’t know a lot about it.

“During lunch, both of them gave me a quick quiz over our family history,” said the Hutchinson junior, a business major at Kansas University. “I didn’t do too well.”

Though his relatives teased him about his lack of knowledge about history, Gordon said he didn’t mind the mini-lectures.

“It’s important to learn about our history because it shows how proud the family is,” Gordon said. “I’ll definitely pass those (stories) along.”

Leland and Bradley Smith returned to Nashville after a couple days in Lawrence. For Bradley, the visit was bittersweet.

“I’m nostalgic and sad because I can’t talk to all these wonderful old people who were important in forming me and my character — not just genetically but by family tradition.”