Hi - if you're right that your great great grandparent is Jane Smith, daughter of Christopher "Gritty" Smith & Elizabeth Albone, then that makes us 5th cousins (me being descended from Christopher's brother, Bartholomew). Have you done the Ancestry DNA test? I have, so if your test is there too we should hopefully be able to find a concrete link.
So, Christopher and Barthy's parents were James Smith and Elizabeth Odell (not O'Dell). That's going back some time, in Romany terms, so details are sketchy and hard to come by. I've made copious notes over the years in the hope that one day they'll all make sense (
) I started a long time ago and am no academic with my source-quoting (though I've made valiant attempts) ... so here is the first of two tangled balls of wool for you to pick through. Due to the 5,500 character limit (my total for these two people came to over 16,000) I'll chop up into 6 "pages" ...
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JAMES SMITHAmanda Antoniou's tree describes James as being "one of the Cambridge Smiths". Her data also has James' DOB as 30 Sep 1808 (as does the tree of another researcher, Barry Gould).
The place of birth / baptism: "Piddington, Cambs" seemed to be incorrect. The only Piddingtons in the UK are in Oxfordshire, Bucks and Northants (source: multimap.com). However, a clue presented itself in the form of the baptism of daughter Alice (13 Jan 1839, St Andrew's, Soham, Cambs), where her parents were described as "James & Elizabeth of Acleton Northamptonshire" ... on searching Googlemaps for "Acleton" I discovered it was in fact Hackleton with a dropped 'H' ... and by chance I noticed the village right next door: Piddington ... a part of the civil parish of Hackleton.
The only result in a targeted search for a baptism in the IGI for a James Smith son of a Thomas Smith and a Sarah in 1808 took place 08 AUG 1808 in Ullingswick, Hereford. Doing a targeted search for the 1800 option is 07 DEC 1800 in Tur Langton, Leicester. Either or neither could be right, but I have not great hopes for either. The same search spread between 1800 and 1810 (a total of 25 possibilities) does not bring up any Piddington placenames - it could be a red herring, as can often be the case with Romany claims for POBs, or - as is often the case - the travelling family will save any baptism until a scheduled meet-up with family, or for when they are passing a 'traveller-friendly' church with which they've had good previous experience or have received a recommendation about it from another traveller.
Either James' father had at least two wives, or James was the very youngest of a long series of children. Grandson Rodney Smith recalled in his autobiography that his "grandfather and grandmother were both seventy [when they died or when they were converted? I am assuming the latter], and lived five years after their conversion." and "Grandfather’s brother was camping with him, and he, too, sought and found the Saviour. He was ninety-nine years of age, and lived two years after this, dying a triumphant Christian death."