Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 667
HON. JOE H. SMITH

Few of the early settlers in Harrison county, Iowa, entered more fully into and became more conspicuous in the warp and woof of the times in which he lived and operated, individually and historically, than did Hon. Joe H. SMITH, now deceased, for many years a well-known attorney at Logan, this county. To his memory let it be recorded here that he was a native of Pennsylvania, born in 1833 in what is now Lawrence county. He studied at Westminster College at Wilmington and later studied law at Canfield, Mahoning county. Ohio. He was admitted to the bar April 14, 1857, and at once sought the then far west, the same year arriving at and commencing to practice law in the little pioneer hamlet of Magnolia, this county then the county seat. In 1859 he returned to Pennsylvania and married Julia Ann WARRICK, to which union six children were born, Law P., Mary M., Palmer, John I., Tad L. and Thomas C.

Upon the opening of the Civil War, Mr. SMITH was a member of the board of county supervisors of Harrison county. He enlisted and went to the front. Through his zeal and patriotism, in one day, a full company of men enlisted for the Union cause. In 1858 Mr. SMITH was elected the first county school superintendent of Harrison county. In 1864 he was elected county recorder and in 1867 was elected to a seat in the Iowa Legislature, where he made an excellent record in behalf of his constituents in Shelby and Harrison counties. In 1888 he wrote a creditable history of Harrison county. He stood high at the Harrison county bar and was connected with nearly every case tried, on one side or the other, for many years. Mr. SMITH was a pleasing speaker and graphic writer. He could be mild as a woman and could also lay on right and left when necessity demanded. He was fearless and independent in all his actions and will be remembered, in and outside the legal fraternity, perhaps longer than most men, because of his peculiar personality. On January 22, 1893, he passed from the earthly courts. Peace to his ashes.

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