Jared Heber Smith

As printed in 1910

JARED HEBER SMITH.

Jared Heber Smith, an enterprising farmer of Osco township, who in addition to the cultivation of the soil is extensively engaged in raising, feeding and shipping stock, owns and occupies a farm of one hundred and sixty acres on section 23. He was born on the 9th of March, 1870, just across the road from his present home, his parents being Jared Hemingway and Mary E. (Knowles) Smith, who are represented on another page of this volume. He spent the days of his boyhood and youth upon the old home farm and in addition to the training received in the district schools benefited by two years' instruction in the high school at Cambridge and a year's study in the Geneseo Collegiate Institute and by further training in Bryant & Stratton Business College in Chicago. He had almost completed his course in the last named institution when he obtained a position as clerk in a wholesale house in that city and remained in the employ of the firm for about a year, after which he returned to his farm to assist his father. He has since given his attention to general agricultural pursuits and is a representative of that progressive spirit which has been particularly manifest in agricultural circles in the last quarter of a century. In 1896 Mr. Smith married and purchased of his father eighty acres of land, for which he paid eighty dollars an acre. He has since extended the boundaries of his farm by additional purchase and is now the owner of one hundred and sixty acres in Osco township and owns in addition three hundred and twenty acres in Wilkin county, Minnesota. That tract, like his farm in Henry county, is under a high state of cultivation.

On the 17th of June, 1896, in Grace church in Osco township, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Smith and Miss Minnie May Hadley, who was born in Osco township. May 23, 1877, and is a daughter of David and Julia (Gillett) Hadley. Her girlhood days were spent in her parents' home and during that period she acquired a good education in the public schools. Eight children have been born of this marriage: Jared Heber, born April 8, 1897; Julian David, April 28, 1898; Thorwald Hadley, November 10, 1899; Frederick George, December 10, 1901; Richard Knowles, June 17, 1903; Majorie May, January 2, 1905; Janice Minerva, October 13, 1906; and Ruth Elizabeth, July 25, 1908.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith are devoted members of Grace Episcopal church, in which Mr. Smith is serving as a vestryman. Politically he is a republican, with firm faith in the principles of the party but without desire for political office. He has served, however, as school trustee and is interested in progressive movements whereby the material, intellectual and moral advancement of the community is promoted. He enjoys pleasant relations with his brethren of the Masonic fraternity, holding membership in Cambridge Lodge, No. 49, A. F. & A. M. His has been a well spent life in which energy, industry and determination have enabled him to overcome all obstacles and difficulties in his path and work his way steadily upward. He is now numbered among the representative farmers of Osco township and as a citizen holds high rank.

As printed in History of Henry County, Illinois (1910). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.