Harry H. Smith

As printed in 1905

HARRY H. SMITH, M. D.

Butler county has its full quota of able representatives of the medical profession, and among its successful and popular practitioners is Dr. Smith, who has been established in practice at Reily since 1886 and who controls a large and representative business, being known as a thoroughly skilled physician and surgeon.

Dr. Smith is a native of Butler county, having been born on the parental homestead farm, in Reily township, on the 16th of January, 1862, a son of John W. and Catherine (Warfield) Smith, and a son of one of the early pioneer families of the county, whither his paternal great-grandfather came from Pennsylvania as early as 1790; the family being of stanch German lineage. Both the father and the grandfather of the Doctor were born in Butler county, and the name has been long and prominently identified with its history and with the record of its agricultural development. John W. Smith was one of the prosperous and highly honored citizens of Reily township, where he was the owner of a fine farm of about five hundred acres, and there he continued to reside until his death, in 1893, at the age of seventy-six years; his wife is still living at the age of eighty-five years. Mr. Smith was a man of influence in the community and was for many years an active worker in the ranks of the Democratic party, while both he and his wife were devoted members of the Baptist church. They became the parents of six sons and six daughters, and four of the sons and four of the daughters are yet living, the subject of this review having been the youngest of the children. __ '

"" Dr. Smith was reared on the ancestral homestead, and attended the public schools of the locality until he had attained the age of fourteen years, when he entered the high school at New London, where he continued his studies for two years, after which he was for an equal period a student in Miami University. In 1879 he began reading medicine under the preceptorship of Dr. James Robinson, of Reily, and thus continued until the fall of 1880, when he entered the Ohio Medical College, in Cincinnati, being graduated in this excellent institution in the spring of 1883. (Shortly afterward the Doctor located in Okeaija, Butler county, where he was in practice one year, after which he returned to Cincinnati, where he was engaged in professional work for one and one-half years, at the expiration of which, in i88ffi,he took up his residence in Reily, where he has ever since maintained his home and where he has built up a very satisfactory practice, his success and personal popularity tending to set at naught the scriptural adage that “a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.” In politics Dr. Smith is an unswerving advocate of the principles of the Democratic party, a.pd fraternally he is identified with St. Charles Lodge, No. 315, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, at Reily, of which he is past grand; and of Oxford Lodge, No. 67, Free and Accepted Masons. He is a member of the Butler County Medical Society and the District Medical Association, while he is also local medical examiner for several of the leading life-insurance companies. The Doctor moved to Oxford on September 15, 190 and has entered into the practice of his profession, and is meeting with encouraging and satisfactory results.

On the 24th of August, 1887, Dr. Smith was united in marriage to Miss Louise Gillespie, who was born and reared in Reily township, this county, being a daughter of Robert and Caroline (Balser) Gillespie. Dr. and Mrs. Smith have one son, Parke, who was born on the 13th of August, 1890, and who is a graduate of the public schools and is now a student in the Miami University at Oxford.

As printed in Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio (1905). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.