Joshua Harvey Smith

 Oh to be a fly on the wall at the time of this article printed in the Cedar Falls Gazette on 16 Dec 1902. Joshua Harvey Smith, my 4th great grandparent, had a picture taken of his entire family and how do I wish I had a copy of it or at least could see it if it still exists. 

J. H. Smith was born in Pennsylvania and according to many unsourced trees on the internet, his line goes back a couple more generations to my 6th great grandfather who fought in the Revolution. But Smith is as  you might guess, a very common name and without records, I am loathe to take anything I read on the internet as gospel. But I do have records from J.H. Smith after he moved to Iowa and through the descending generations. 

Though I have records, I know very little about the man. Through his obituary, I know he came to Iowa at 17 years old and was a school teacher. However, none of the census records list him as such and he is always listed as a farmer. So I'm guessing, he was most likely both. At the latter, he was evidently successful as he always owned his own farm free and clear which wasn't always the case. 

Four years after his arrival, he met and married his wife Ellen Jamerson and together they would have eight children, five of them living to adulthood and the family reunion mentioned in the article above.

He lived a long life though he contracted some sort of cancer at the age of 81 and spent the last year of his life in bed devoutly praying for his pain to be removed from his body while three of his daughters saw to his every need. He would die in the spring of 1916 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery along with a whole passel of my relatives from several different lines of my family tree and I have visited his grave a number of times over the years. It is near that of his son-in-law and my 3rd great grandfather, Bertram, whom I have written about before on here. He was a woodworker who suffered a kickback from a saw he was using and had a board puncture his abdomen and kill him at the young age of 44, 15 years before the death of J.H. Smith. Bertram's wife and J.H. Smith's daughter would outlive her husband by another 30 years after successfully raising the five living children to adults. She never remarried.

Although not really relevant to the story of Joshua Harvey Smith, his line is one of three Smith lines I have in my family tree and not related to the other two lines... at least as far as I can tell. the Joshua Smith family are blue bellied Yankees and the other two Smith lines are deep rooted Virginia families. And if truth is to be told, the other two Virginia Smith families are actually the exact same Smith family and the source of the only loop I have found within the branches of my tree. The parents of my great grandmother Smith were actually second cousins, whether they knew that or not and why my 5th great grandparents John L. and Barbara Driver Smith are listed twice in my family tree of direct ancestors.