Mary Lena Smith (1865 - 1920)

Born 19 Mar 1865 in Somerset, Hillsdale, Michigan, United States

Ancestors

Died 18 Aug 1920 at age 55 in Cook County, Illinois, USA

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Biography

Lena was born on March 19, 1865, just before the end of the Civil War, at the farm home of her parents Hart Smith and Selina Burr. She was the oldest of their five children. She was quite educated for a woman in her generation, not just in liberal arts but also in the emerging field of agricultural sciences. ^[1]

After attending nearby Plank Road School for elementary school, Lena graduated from Addison High School (5.5 miles from home). She then studied at Olivet College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Olivet, Michigan (54 miles from home). This college was founded in 1844 by Rev. John J. Shipherd, a Congregational minister with strong abolitionist views.^[2] Lena graduated in 1886, and was known as an excellent student with a "natural talent for writing, a talent she was said to have inherited from her mother."

One of her close friends from Olivet, Blanche Page, began teaching "at a negro missionary school at Jonesboro, Tennessee in 1886" and persuaded Lena to join her in 1888-89. The school was organized by Congregational missionaries after the Civil War and both Lena and Blanche's names names are found in the annual publication of the American Missionary Association in the "Field Staff" section, under Jonesboro. ^[3] Add T[Add year as teacher in Tennessee + story]

After a year of graduate work at the University of Michigan, she taught English at the high school level in Michigan, Iowa and Kansas for several years. She was very conscientious in her work, but her health suffered and she returned home. "She restored her health by outdoor work, raising poultry on the home farm and making a thorough study of the business."

A few years later, Lena was invited to lecture on poultry raising as part of the Farmers Institute at the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture in Lincoln, Nebraska. By 1903, she had persuaded Will Burr, a cousin who had been working on the family farm in Somerset, to enroll in the College of Agriculture as a student. Her brother Howard had also taken a position in the Animal Husbandry Department. Both Will and Howard credited her for raising their writing skills during this period, a great boon to their subsequent professional careers.

Lena took great interest in her nieces and nephews. When she died in 1920 at age 55, "she was part owner and manager of the home farm. She requested that her share be given to her nieces and nephews for a college education."

Sources

1. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, information in this biography is taken from: Smith, Howard R. The Azariel Smiths, Michigan Pioneers, and Their Descendants. Farmington, Michigan: Privately printed, 1957. Pages 22-23.
2. ↑ https://www.olivetcollege.edu/about/our-history/
3. ↑ The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 2. New York, NY: The American Missionary Association, 1889. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16084/16084-h/16084-h.htm (search for Jonesboro).

• Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 19 July 2018), memorial page for Mary Lena Smith (19 Mar 1865–18 Aug 1920), Find A Grave Memorial no. 36068721, citing Somerset Cemetery, Hillsdale County, Michigan, USA ; Maintained by Find A Grave (contributor 8) .
• Dolliver, Louise Pearsons, Historian General. Lineage Book - National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Volume 19 ( entries 18001-19000). Harrisburg, PA: Harrisburg Publishing Company, 1905. Pages 172-173. https://books.google.com/books?id=JWwZAQAAIAAJ