Seth Smith Jr.

SMITH, LEACH

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 3/19/2007 at 00:27:47

Source: History of Monona County Iowa
Chicago National Pub. Co 1890

Seth Smith, Jr., the son of Seth and Sophia (Leach) Smith, the pioneer settlers of Grant Township, an epitome of whose life’s work it has been our honor to write in another portion of this volume, is engaged in general farming and stock-raising on his fine place of one hundred and sixty acres on section 14, Kennebec Township, eighty acres of which he owes to the beneficent homestead law of a fostering government. He was born in Lorain County, Ohio, May 29, 1844 and, while but a child eight years of age, was brought by his father to Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie County, Iowa, then known by the name of Kanesville. In the spring of 1853, the family removed to Monona County, where the father lived until his death in 1876, his wife preceding him in July, 1856.
In the district schools of this county, in his youth, our subject gathered his education and remained at home with his parents until the spring of 1858, from which time for four years he spent the most of his life on the Omaha Reservation, assisting his father, who had been appointed Government blacksmith in that part of Nebraska. There he remained until March, 1862. The toesin of Civil War resounded through the land and our youths were called upon to march forward in the defense of “The best Government the world had ever seen,” and for the integrity of the Union, and the war fever was at its greatest height. Imbued with the patriotism inherited in his nature, our subject, at the age of eighteen years, enlisted in Company H, Seventeeth Iowa Infantry, and being forwarded to the front, took a gallant and noble part in that trying and terrible ordeal for new troops, the siege and capture of Corinth, Miss. Ill health, however, set in which unfitted him for military duties and by the advice of the surgeon he was honorably discharged from the service at Corinth, October 10, 1862. Returning to his home after spending one summer in Dakota, in 1864, he settled where he now lives.