Farm Boy to Businessman

In all my years of family history blogging, I see I have somewhat neglected my maternal great-grandfather. This is the story of his life from 1867 to 1917, as told by my grandfather.

By Laurence M. Smith, edited by Eilene Lyon

Charles Edward Smith was my father, as well as the father of four other sons and two daughters. Over the years I have pieced together some rather interesting facts about my father and his life. Although he died believing that his life was something less than a success, the facts seem to prove otherwise.

He was born in Tipton County, Indiana, on November 1, 1867. His father’s name was Martin Smith. The Martin Smith family later moved to a small farm near Denver, Indiana, in Miami County where Charles grew up. This is Indiana farm country. In those times, as soon as possible, the boys were pressed into the work of the farm family. This consisted of taking care of chickens, cows, and pigs; planting of crops and harvesting.

Charles went to school until the sixth grade in a one-room school house. He quit school after the sixth grade, which in those times was not at all unusual. He went to work as a farm hand and eventually wandered to the State of Missouri where he ended up working with a man named Henry Biernback. Henry was his friend for many years.

In those days the social activities were held either at the school house or the community church. There was usually one of each in every rural area. It was also a monthly occasion for young people to gather at a church social. One of the popular events was a “box social” where the girls would fix a scrumptious box of food and tie it with their own identifying ribbon. At the social the boys would bid for the boxes and try to get the right girl with the right box of food, their interest being more on the girl than on the food.

With the encouragement of his friend Henry, father went to several of these box socials and before long it was noticed that he was trying and succeeding to purchase the box of goodies brought by the same girl. Mary Lila Reams was the girl, one of a large family of farm girls living in a small community about 60 miles east of Independence, Missouri. Charles and Lila Reams were married September 2, 1888 in the front parlor of the bride’s farmhouse home.

They set up housekeeping in a small shack on a 160-acre grain farm which they were able to rent on shares. [Note: this meant a share of the harvest went to the owner as rent.] This was an accepted way of getting started in that day and time. On April 24, 1890 their first child was born, a girl who was named Clara Bell. On October 20, 1892 another child, Harry Edward, was born. A third child, Dora Ada was born December 20, 1894.

The farm life was hard and the family was barely able to make ends meet. Charles’s friend Henry Biernback had moved his family to a farm area “out West.” [Note: Henry married one of Lila Reams’s step-sisters, Harriet Boyer, in 1901. He was her third husband.] The Reams were preparing to move West.

Charles and Lila worked the farm for two more years then they also made plans to move West. In the fall of 1897 their household goods were hauled by wagon to the railroad depot and loaded on a freight car going to Spokane, Washington. By early in 1898, the family was settled in a clapboard house on a farmstead near Cunningham, Washington. Another child, Leon L. Smith, was born on May 21 of that year.

Water was a problem at this farm. It was essential to have a water wagon. The farm families in the area each had a wagon with a large wooden tank used to haul water several miles from a central source.

With much hard work, and luck on the weather, a good crop of wheat was harvested in 1899 and the fortunes of the family started to get better. They farmed several different sections of land in the area. Because of the semi-arid nature of this land, about one crop at each location was all that anyone got. In October of 1901 another son, Clifford L. Smith, was born.

About 1905 the family moved to Colville, Washington, and settled on a valley farm west of town. It was here on May 26, 1908 that I was born. The family was much better off financially here and the older children were helping with the hard work of the farm.

In 1910 the family moved to Moscow, Idaho, where father owned and operated an ice cream parlor called the “Palace of Sweets.” In 1911 the last child, Loren Oscar, was born. About 1912, father started a grocery delivery service in Moscow that was quite a financial success. He had horses and wagons—about six or eight rigs—which picked up groceries at various stores in town for delivery to the householders. Leon and Clifford worked for father in this business, but Harry worked as an auto mechanic for Tim Sullivan who owned the Ford agency in town, an automobile business that was just getting started.

The end to this essay is the October day in 1917 when the mother of this large family of Smiths passed away. When this happened, the family literally broke up, with the older children mostly going their separate ways.

For more about Charles’s later life, see The Stepmother.