Wellington C. Smith

As printed in 1909

WELLINGTON C. SMITH.

Wellington C. Smith, attorney-at-law, practicing as a member of the firm of Van Deman, Burkhart & Smith at Dayton, was born in Lytle, Warren county, Ohio, July 15, 1874, and was one of the family of five children, three sons and two daughters, whose parents were Mr. and Mrs. Joel E. Smith. The father was born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1833, and died July 11, 1907, in Warren county, Ohio, at the old home which he had so long occupied. He made a splendid record by his service as a soldier in the Civil war, becoming one of the boys in blue of Company B, One Hundred and Eightieth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in which he served for one year. He participated in the battle of Five Forks and in other engagements and joined General Sherman at Goldsboro, North Carolina, after which he continued northward with the Union troops to Washington, D. C., where he participated in the grand review which was the closing pageant of the war. At that time thousands of people lined the streets of the capital city and cheered the returning soldiers while across Pennsylvania avenue swung a banner bearing the words, “The only debt which our country cannot pay is the debt which she owes to her soldiers.”

Wellington C. Smith spent his youthful days in his native town to the age of fifteen years when the family removed to Dayton. In 1891, however, his parents returned to their old home in Warren county. Mr. Smith of this review supplemented his early education by a high school course in Waynesville, Ohio, and then took his initial step in the business world as an employe of the Big Four Railroad Company, being employed by that line in the Union Depot at Dayton as telegraph operator from 1895 until 1898. Subsequently he entered a college preparatory school at Dayton, where he pursued his studies for a year that he might thus qualify for a more advanced course. In the meantime he had determined to make the practice of law his life work and to this end entered the law department of the Ohio State University, where he devoted three years to study. He was then admitted to the bar June 13, 1901, and in 1902 entered the employ of the National Cash Register Company in the legal department, where he continued for three years. In 1905 he became assistant in the law office of Van Deman, Burkhart & Shea and a year later succeeded Mr. Shea as the third partner in the firm. He is thus now engaged in the practice of law, and, being devotedly attached to his profession, systematic and methodical in habit and conscientious in the discharge of every duty he is making a creditable record and steady progress as a member of the Dayton bar.

On the 31st of December, 1902, Mr. Smith was married in Springfield, Ohio, to Miss Gertrude Stephenson and they have one son, Everett Hale Smith. Mr. Smith gives his political allegiance to the republican party and as every true American citizen should do keeps well informed on the questions and. issues of the day. Socially he is connected with the Tribe of Ben Hur and he belongs to the Reformed church. As the years have gone by and his acquaintance has grown the circle of his friends has also increased and substantial qualities of manhood, of citizenship and of legal ability promise well for his continued advancement in public regard and in his chosen field of labor.

As printed in History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio (1909). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.