However, Beall Smith’s relatives did not approve of the marriage, and the relationship fell apart, forcing a then-pregnant Beall Smith to return home to her family in Georgia. Their children, Barbara and Beverly Smith, identical twins, were born prematurely.[3][4] Beall Smith died from complications of rheumatic fever when Smith was nine, and the siblings were brought up by Smiths’ extended family, with her grandmother as primary caretaker.[5] The Smith siblings grew up in Cleveland, living in a two-family house inhabited by her grandmother, two aunts, the husband of an aunt, and (formerly) their mother.[6]