Marion Smith Family
Smith's
Daniel and Nancy (Spain) Smith
Charles Smith (2/27/1827-?) married Mary Marvel (1829-?)
1. Marion Smith (ca. 1854-?) married Eliza Ella Mills, whose parents were Benjamin and
Susan (Hall) Mills, whose grandparents were Nathan and Catharine Mills.
2. Jamesh Smith (ca. 1852-?) married Louise Summers
3. William Alexander Smith (ca. 1856-?) married Idaletta Hunter
4. John F. Smith (1857-?) married Elsie "Viola" Silvers
5. Daniel Wiley Smith (1860-?) married India Pollard
6. Charles C. Smith (1862-1862)
7. George W. Smith (1863-?) married Susie E. Keyey.
8. Ida Smith (1866-?) married Frank Samuels
9. Mary Emmaline Smith (1869-?) married Charles Edward Gambral
10. Florence Smith (1870-1873)
11. Nellie Smith (1874-?) married Thomas O'Dell Brown
Mr. F. Marion Smith
The following is a newspaper article from the Edison-Norwood Review published in the Chicago suburbs of Norwood December 2, 1937:
This week, dear readers, we interviewed and spent a pleasant afternoon with Mr. F. Marion Smith of 5858 Nina Avenue, who is well known in our community and about whom we were able to unearth some exceedingly interesting bits of news that perhaps you did not know before.
Mr. Smith was born in January, 1853 and in October of that year his parents and he and his brother moved from Indiana to Illinois, settling in DeWitt County eight miles west of Clinton. The country here then, stated Mr. Smith, was very wooded and it was not at all unusual to see a wild deer frolicking almost in your front yard. Mr. Smith said too that his parents were quite well-to-do and their house was the only one for miles around that was painted on the outside and thus was considered a beautiful and expensive farm.
Now we come to see what we consider the most interesting part of the story. Mr. Smith says that when he was just a young lad on the farm, a horse and buggy drove up to their fence one day, and the man inside, who was a friend of Mr. Smith’s father, introduced them to a tall, lanky young man, saying, “I’d like you to meet one of our promising young lawyers from Springfield.” This young lawyer was none other than Abraham Lincoln. But the funniest part of all, really, gave us a good laugh with our friend, Mr. Smith; this was that this buggy was the first one that Mr. Smith had ever seen and he was more thrilled at driving the buggy to the barn than at meeting the young lawyer, little realizing that this man would some day be President of the United States. “From then on,” said Mr. Smith, “Abe Lincoln had his long legs under my mother’s table many a time.” Later on during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which are so well-known to every boy and girl, man and woman, both Lincoln and Douglas came to Mr. Smith’s parents’ home, arriving there on horseback to eat dinner en route to Rockford, Illinois for a debate. Mr. Smith in answer to our inquiry, said that Lincoln’s pictures are exactly like him, tall lanky pleasant young man that he was.
Among other interesting people who often stopped at Mr. Smith’s boyhood home was Joseph Medill, founder of the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Smith also made the acquaintance during visits at his home of Judge David Davis, and Adlai E. Stevenson, who became vice president of the United States under Grover Cleveland.
After the assassination of Lincoln, the Smith family received word that the funeral train would pass through their county and so they all drove sixteen mules to see the train go through, bearing the body of a dearly beloved personal friend who was President of the United States.
In September, 1872, Mr. Smith married Ella Mills, who had grown up with him and lived on the adjoining farm. In October of that same year he subscribed for the Chicago Tribune and has never missed reading it for one day since that time. In 1879, he and his family moved to Clarion, Iowa, where they resided for eight years. Of Mr. Smith’s children three of them are living at the present time: his daughter Mrs. Lee J. Bisdorf, with whom he makes his home; a son, Mr. Leldes M. Smith, who lives in Chicago and another son, Charles B. Smith of Champaign, Illinois.
It was soon after moving to Iowa that Mr. Smith started in the business that he has been in ever since, that of selling groceries. At the present he call on wholesale grocery houses, working for George H. Leslie Co., having been with them since 1912. However, to get back to our story, Mr. Smith spent his time from then on traveling on the road and he can recall many long and bitterly cold trips by horse and buggy through the snow in a desolate country. In 1892 he made the acquaintance of Senator A. B. Cummings of Des Moines, Iowa, who was almost nominated for President. By this time Mr. Smith’s family had moved to Sioux City, Iowa and in 1896 he and his family all came to Chicago.
After coming to Chicago Mr. Smith, as we said before, continued in the same line of work. He also became intensely interested in Republican politics. It was recently at the Sherman House that Mr. Smith presented Wayland Brooks, who was the Republican candidate for governor, with a silver loving cup on his thirty-ninth birthday. Mr. Smith had been chosen for this honor as one of the oldest staunch Republicans. We were shown newspaper clippings o this interesting part of Mr. Smith’s life.
Before we close we should like to tell you that Mr. Smith has never missed a day of work in his life and that he is still working and we don’t have the least doubt he will.
We so enjoyed our time with this prominent resident of our community. We hope that somehow you may catch our enthusiasm in our write-up. Thank you so much, Mr. Smith!
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Email: marcmills@hotmail.com
