In the book's own words, not ours, with obvious scanning errors fixed. Families often supplied these stories to the publisher, so check key dates.
Born 1860
From Past and present of Randolph County, Indiana : with biographical sketches of representative citizens and genealogical records of many of the old families (1914)
JOHN LAWRENCE SMITH.
John Lawrence Smith, a native of New England, was born November 30, 1860. His father was a native American and his mother a daughter of Erin. At the outbreak of the Civil war, the father enlisted and was in the Union army a year or more when he was transferred to the navy. He was, killed by an explosion on the flag-ship of the fleet sometime in the latter part of the war. The widow, then left with three small children — the subject of this sketch aged five, Kate three, and Minnie one — found herself penniless and homeless in the streets of New York City. Sickness and exhaustion had overtaken her, and she was lifted to an ambulance in Bleeker street one autumn day and taken to Bellevue Hospital to die. Her three fatherless children were transported up the Hudson to Randall's Island, and consigned to the House of Refuge. Here, after a few months, Minnie sickened and died. In May, 1867, John and Kate were given over along with thirty other children from Randall's Island, to Charles Loring Brace, at the head of the Children's Aid Society at that time, nd when taken across the river, found themselves a portion of two passenger coach loads of orphan children and waifs gathered up in the city, preparatory to finding homes for them in the West.
As printed in Past and present of Randolph County, Indiana : with biographical sketches of representative citizens and genealogical records of many of the old families (1914). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.
The printed record stops around 1914. We trace your line from there down to you, with every source cited.