ELIAS JAMES SMITH
This is a copy of photo which hung for many years in Lodge Room of
Odd Fellows hall in Hopeville. Elias Smith was one of first Noble
Ghands of that Lodge
Elias James Smith was born 1821 in Virginia, and died June 23, 1894, at Hopeville, Iowa. The funeral was so large no church could accommodate the throngs of people, so they had it in the Hopeville park with over 500 people in attendance. Elias Smith left Virginia at an early age, working his way to Indiana where he met his wife and married her in 1846, and they came soon after their marriage by covered wagon to Hopeville and built the first log cabin, later building a frame house still standing which became the Deacon Yetts place.
He was united in marriage March 16, 1846 in Crawfordsville, Indiana to Jane Eleanor Rhea, born July 13, 1831, in Rockbridge County, Virginia. She died June 7, 1912, at the home of her daughter Carrie Clark in Osceola, Iowa. Both are buried in Hopeville Cemetery. They became the parents of twelve children:
James William b. Aug. 13, 1847; Catherine Priscilla b. June 22, 1849; Mary Jane b. Oct. 8, 1851; Isaac Newton b. May 10, 1854; Alfretta b. Mar. 28, 1856; Charles Monroe b. May 3, 1858; Emma Junietta Clark b. July 9, 1860; Edmond Loren b. Oct. 16, 1862; Virgil Otis b. Dec. 26, 1856; Carolyle Morton b. June 27, 1867; Viola Virginia b. June 7, 1869; Frederick Rhea b. Oct. 3, 1872.
Elias Smith was the first blacksmith in Hopeville, coming to this state in 1852.
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Last revised November 12, 2013