Smithville began on December 3, 1836, when Co Chubby, a Chickasaw Indian co-signatory of the Treaty of Pontotoc, sold Section 6, Township 12S, Range 9E to James D. Couch. About 1840, William Smith purchased land at this site and built a log house and store, and the village of Smithville was later surveyed around his home. Other early settlers included brothers William and Cornelius Dowd, Zachariah Wall, Henry Stegall, James Elliott, M.D., Daniel McCrummen, M.D., James Dalrymple, and the Cheek and Cowley families. The Smithville landing on the nearby Tombigbee River served the village and later the town as the chief means of trade and communication before the railroads arrived. Smithville was chartered in 1846, and a post office opened on June 8 of that year. During the Civil War, men from Smithville and other parts of Monroe County joined Company A (Red Rovers), 5th Mississippi Infantry, which was mustered into Confederate service at Athens on April 27, 1861. Smithville's economy received a boost with the establishment of the short-line Mississippian Railroad in 1921; initially used primarily as a logging line, it ran from Amory to Fulton via Smithville. Today Smithville and Aberdeen are the only surviving antebellum municipalities in Monroe County.