From the 1830s onwards, numbers of white settlers from the Cape Colony crossed the Orange River and started arriving in the fertile southern part of territory known as the Lower Caledon Valley, in which the commonage of Smithfield would later be established.

In early South Africa, European notions of boundaries and private land ownership had no counterparts in African political culture.

To the local African chieftains, customary tribute in the form of horses and cattle represented acceptance by the reigning chief of land use under his authority.

To both the Boer and the British settlers, the same form of tribute was believed to constitute purchase and permanent ownership of the land under independent authority.

In particular, the Basotho destroyed farmhouses and burned large swathes of pasturage and cropland in the area between Smithfield and Reddersburg.

Waterval farm was the original site chosen in 1848 for settlement as a Dutch Reformed (NG) church centre.

one of the dominees who served there was Rev Andrew Murray.The Second Boer War General Christiaan de Wet was born on the nearby farm Leeukop in 1854.

On 19 August 1960, Prime Minister HF Verwoerd addressed a conference in Smithfield, where he announced plans to withdraw from the British Commonwealth and to unilaterally declare a Republic.

[8] The town is tucked into a horseshoe of hills, some 132 km southeast of Bloemfontein along the N6 national road to East London, Eastern Cape.

The generally run-down condition of the town is contrasted by the comparative prosperity of the surrounding wool-growing and cattle farming district.

Scientist George Stow excavated a cave near Smithfield in 1877 and found tools from the Late Stone Age which he described in his book, Native races of South Africa.