STORY OF ELIAS SMITH
LED STRENUOUS LIFE
Many Accidents and Hair Breadth Escapes—Army  Experience at Clarinda and Sidney

No other Shenandoah citizen has led the strenuous life to compare with Elias Smith, often referred to as California Smith or Mule Smith. He is now hale and hearty at seventy-five years of age, able to do more work than the average man. He has fought his way through life with an impetuosity of action and speech that indicated absolute fearlessness and brooked no opposition. He has always expressed his opinions openly and with the abandon of freedom that sometimes shocked his hearers, and yet we must say for him that he is a "Diamond in the Rough," a man with a tender heart, of sterling honesty and with many admirable traits of character.

Elias Smith came of Puritan New England stock, slightly tinged with German blood. His mother was a native of Connecticut, and his grandfather on his father's side was a full blooded Yankee. The father of Elias lost his eyesight when only four weeks old and therefore never had any conscious knowledge of the light of day, but he was a marvel to work, being able to accomplish most kinds of work upon the farm where they lived in New York as well as a man who could see.

Elias was born about thirty miles from Utica, N. Y., in 1837, one of a family of six children, having two brothers and three sisters. Both brothers served in the civil war and both traveled with Barnum's show for many years after the war, both now dead. The three sisters are living, one in Chicago, one in Milwaukee and one in Delevan, Wis., which was the parental home for many years.

One brother traveled with Barnum for thirty-five years and was head hostler, having charge of all the horses. He lost his life in a railroad accident. The other brother drove Barnum's forty horse team with his band and probably has been seen in Council Bluffs and elsewhere in the west by the older citizens here. He was taken sick while with Barnum's show in England and was brought home and died at the Barnum headquarters at Bridgeport, Conn.

Young Elias was not more than six years old when he began to show a taste for horses that has remained with him to this day. He would harness a team when he had to climb on a box or bucket to do so, and while still a child he drove a team from the farm to Utica and Rome thirty and forty miles, taking loads of shingles or lumber.   That was before the days of railroads in that locality and all traffic was by team or along the old Black river canal which connected with the Erie canal at Rome. Elias continued this work of teaming for two or three years and then moved with his parents to Delevan, Wis., when he was thirteen or fourteen years old. This is fifty miles due west of Milwaukee and ninety miles from Chicago. Young Smith engaged in teaming, hauling wheat, oats, barley and dressed hogs to Milwaukee, keeping up this work for three or four years. When twenty years old in 1857 he ran away from home and hired out to work on a farm not far from Delevan and worked on the farm three years. During this time he drove a bunch of twenty steers to Chicago, on foot and alone, taking four days for the trip and he had a time with those steers, at the cross roads and in the villages and especially when he struck the suburbs of Chicago but he finally rounded them up and delivered them at the old Bulls Head market.

In the early spring or 1860 Elias started out for the great west to make his fortune, going first to St. Joseph, Mo., where he bought a yoke of oxen and wagon, joined a caravan and drove across the country to Denver, Colo., reaching there May 5. The wagon train included about forty wagons and Smith seemed to enjoy the experience. The country was wild, Indians numerous but friendly and they saw millions of buffalo. Smith says he saw buffalos along the valleys far as the eye could reach.

From Denver he went to Central City and bought a gold mine claim and began prospecting for gold. He found some gold, but not knowing how to get the gold out profitably most of it was wasted, and he wisely traded off his gold mine for a mule team. This was his first experience with mules and from that time on he and mules were almost inseparable. He tells us he liked horses but he liked mules better, and this is perhaps how the cognomen, "Mule Smith," started. A lady laughed at the reporter the other day for using the expression, "elegant mules," but the term was written just after we finished interviewing Elias Smith.

Smith's War Record

Smith drove that mule team across the country back to Omaha, where he secured employment teaming and for a time worked in Council Bluffs, living at the home of Gen. G. H. Dodge, during this period he had his only experience in warfare. Word came to Council Bluffs that the confederates were marching up from Missouri to capture the new towns of Sidney and Clarinda.   A company of soldiers was hastily organized in Council Bluffs, with Dodge as captain, and Elias enlisted to drive the artillery and help to repel the invaders. The army marched south through Glenwood and Tabor to Sidney and thence across the country to Clarinda, passing through Manti, which was then the principal settlement between Sidney and Clarinda. The army had two cannon and Smith had charge of one of them with a four horse team. The soldiers lived off the country and impressed what farm teams they could find into the service to haul the soldiers. They threw out picket lines and skirmishers and moved with great caution but found no enemy and met with no casualties, though Smith says a few of them nearly died of fright when a false alarm was given the second night at Clarinda. Smith and the driver of the other cannon got past the guard line the evening before and went down to the drug store in Clarinda and got a quart of whiskey, contrary to the law and constitution, the name of the accommodating druggist having slipped his memory. And when the alarm came that the enemy was coming Smith was asleep under his cannon and it took a deal of punching to awaken him. When he finally aroused enough to know what was doing there was a petty officer on each side of him punching him in the ribs with their sabers and yelling at him to get up as the rebels were coming. Instead of getting up he passed them the bottle and then they let him sleep in peace.

On the return march they tried to make Smith drill with the infantry but he mutinied right then and there saying that he belonged to the artillery branch of the government and that he would not carry a gun and they might go to —. He was the only man who could or would handle the four horse team and they had to humor him. At Glenwood he took his horses to the livery barn and went himself with the officers to the best hotel and made the government pay the bills, refusing to haul the cannon otherwise. He says his army experience from Council Bluffs to Clarinda and return made a democrat of him and he has stuck to it ever since.

Shot in the Back

Although Smith's army experience was free from casualties, he was shot in the back while living in Council Bluffs. He and two other young men were walking peacefully along the street, Smith in the middle, when a bullet fired from the upper story of a building nearby struck him in the back near the shoulder and ranged downward, passing entirely through the body and lodged, just under the skin in front. For some unaccountable reason he never had the bullet cut out but has carried it there for more than fifty years, where any person can feel it now by placing their fingers on his body. A woman fired the shot but it was a case of mistaken identity on her part and Smith never prosecuted her.

Soon after this Smith entered the employ of Ben Halliday and drove stage on the overland line from Atchison to San Francisco.    This work took him along the Platte river and as far west as Salt Lake. Those stages were drawn by four and six horse teams, each team going ten or twelve miles and  return   but the drivers changing teams and making 30 to 60 miles per day.   The salary was $40 to $75 per month.   He continued in this work for three or four years and was never held up by robbers or Indians, though such holdups  were common  and  Smith saw many of the results of such raids. He buried with his own hands one poor fellow who had been killed and mutilated by the Indians shortly before he came along.   It may well be understood that Smith went prepared for fight. He was a regular walking arsenal at those times and if necessary he would have put up a stiff fight.

In 1865 Smith began work freighting for himself from Julesberg west to Salt Lake.   As fast as he could
the money he invested them in mules and had at one time thirty actually engaged in hauling freight. This, of course, was before the transcontinental railroads had been built. The Indians were hostile all the time watching for a chance to surprise and pick off the white men. The freight wagons always went in caravans. Smith usually in dangerous localities rode between the wagons and the foot hills, far enough away to give the alarm and to ride in while the teams rapidly formed a corrall. He helped lay the track for the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads, principally on the line from Cheyenne to Denver; that is he hauled the ties and bridge timber for the track layers. During this time he met with one of his narrow escapes. The railroad company furnished the men a car in which to sleep, it being pushed along to the end of the line each day. The mules were herded out with a man to watch them. The regular herder being absent Smith stayed with the mules one night and during the night the car with sleeping men was telescoped and all of them killed, about thirty in all.

During the time he was employed in Wyoming Mr. Smith ran a hotel in Cheyenne and he says it was full all the time and the meals were two dollars each. Gen. Dodge and other western prospectors stopped there. Probably a whole chapter might be written about that hotel. Smith made about $5000 while there but his partner cheated him out of it and then Smith went south and entered the employ of the government as a
freighter at Fort Sill in what is now Oklahoma. This was in 1869 or 1870 and there he met the worst accident of his life. He was driving a six horse mule team and the ground was slippery and the load heavy. The lead mule, a big animal sharp shod on the hind feet, hung back a little and Smith walked up and struck her. Quick as a flash she jumped and kicked back, striking him in the face and knocking him clear to the rear of the wagon. He was left for dead and for months lay in the hospital hovering between life and death. The scars left by that mule's foot he will bear to the end.

Smith Comes to Iowa

After his recovery at Fort Sill Smith came to Iowa and bought a farm west of Shenandoah, the village just then starting. The farm was the one recently owned by Eli Oppenheimer. Smith improved it and kept it until about ten years ago. For the past forty years Smith has resided in this vicinity and has prospered. He has given away and lost much but still owns a section of land and several houses and lots in Shenandoah. Although called "California" Smith, he was never in California in his life. He has been in Alaska and Old Mexico and traveled much in nearly all parts of the country, except the locality for which his neighbors named him when he came to Fremont county to distinguish him from other Smiths.

Soon after going on the farm in Fremont county Mr. Smith married a girl named Johnson from Atlantic. They lived happily together for thirteen years when she died in 1884, leaving him three sons and one daughter. He has remained' faithful to her memory, saying that there is no other woman in the world good enough to take :her place. Of the four children one son resides in Texas, one in Dakota, one in Montana and the daughter is in Denver. Mr. Smith resides alone in Shenandoah doing his own housework and apparently contented with the world and asking no favors of anyone.

Many Accidents

Mr. Smith's life has been unique in more ways than one. No man in this community has gone through so many accidents and had so many thrilling experiences or so many hair breadth escapes. He has been bruised and broken and cut and marred times without number, many of his injuries due no doubt to his reckless courage and foolhardy disregard of his personal safety. Besides the accidents above mentioned several others come to mind.

Thirty years ago he lost most of the fingers on one hand in a corn sheller. He was shelling corn to haul to Farragut and sell for 12% cents per bushel when something got the matter with the gearing of the machine and the corn kept getting in it. He jerked the corn out several times, but he reached for the corn once too often. The gearing caught his leather mitten and drew his hand into it.

A few years ago he,was on the way to Chicago with a train load of cattle that he and John Chandler
were shipping over the Northwestern. Near Cedar Rapids the train went through a bridge into the river below, fourteen cars tumbling one over the other and Smith was in the bottom of the wreck. He felt himself
going down, down, down. Just at the surface of the water he plunged into a hole in the wreck just about
big enough to protect him from the tangled timbers and irons and the struggling cattle above. He was just
high enough to escape drowning and he crawled out, cut and bruised all over, while nearly all the cattle were killed or drowned. 

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Another time, not many years ago he set a ladder on the roof of his porch at his farm home and climbed up to fix a screen on an upstairs window. The ladder slipped out and Smith broke a few ribs. Just a few days ago he was standing up in a wagon when someone struck the team a blow and they jumped forward so quickly that Smith was hurled out backwards, striking the frozen ground with the back of his head. Think of that for a man seventy-five years old. With him it was only an incident, scarcely worth mentioning.

Sense of Humor

In spite of the vicissitudes of his life Elias Smith dearly loves fun and a good joke. One of these incidents has been told in this paper before but is worth repeating. In 1896 during the McKinley-Bryan campaign Mr. Smith was an ardent supporter of Bryan. He drove a big team of "elegant" mules that he had named McKinley and Mark Hanna and he delighted to use the whip on thern and express the opinion of them in the hearing of the republicans when he drove to town. He invited Editor Marvin to take a ride behind the mules several times but Marvin was suspicious and always had some excuse. But one day he invited T. H. Read to ride with him, and Read being guileless and unsuspecting accepted the offer. Read was one of the leaders of the McKinley forces at that time and the way Smith went after those poor mules was a caution. They went down Sheridan avenue on the dead run. There was no paving then and each crossing was a few inches higher than the rest of the street and when the wagon went over the crossings Smith and Read shot up into the air about four feet. That was just good exercise for Smith but it was very thrilling for Read and his friends expected him to be killed.

That ride will never be forgotten by the bank president and that may be what made him a "progressive."