CHARLES W. SMITH.

CHARLES W. SMITH, one of the foremost young farmers of Elm township, whose unquestioned reputation has been established in Allen county in the past twenty years, was born in Peoria county, Illinois, October 18, 1853. He was reared on the farm of his father, Samuel W. Smith, who died in Allen county, Kansas, in 1886, at the age of sixty-three years. The latter was born in Pennsylvania, came to Illinois early in life and was married there to Sarah H. Bodine. Mrs. Smith was born in New Jersey in 1831 and is a resident of LaHarpe, Allen county, Kansas. Her children are: Josephine, wife of Charles Cole, of Iola, Charles W., our subject; Addie, wife of W. H. Baker, of Cherryvale, Kansas; Henry B. Smith, of Moran, Kansas; George C., of LaHarpe, and Luella May, wife of Andrew Smith, of Wichita, Kansas.

Charles W. Smith was married at twenty-one years and started in life as a farmer. He came to Kansas about that date and, with a small amount of capital, purchased eighty acres of land northeast of LaHarpe and began its improvement and cultivation by degrees. He worked by the day near Moran for Peter McGlashan who paid him twenty-five cents more for a day's work than any one else was getting, and he earned good wages with Vandegrift and Paske who paid hands in proportion to what they were worth. By this method he acquired the means with which he sustained himself and family while the initial strokes of farm improvement were being made. When be got some land broken and a shanty erected our subject was well on his way toward independence, and when he had accumulated a small bunch of cattle and gotten his income to exceed his expenses by some fold prosperity had really set in. Since he made his first crop of twenty acres of broom corn his farm could be relied upon to produce sufficient for the family needs.

Mr. Smith's energy is not the kind that would permit him to go backward instead of forward. Whatever he planted he reaped a crop from, if weather conditions did not interfere, and if his crop was small one year he retrenched just as much in proportion to bring the yearly balance on the right side. He is the owner of a fertile one hundred and sixty acres.

Beyond his father, little is at hand as to the Smith ancestry. Samuel W. Smith was an only son and his widowed mother married an Aby, and two of their their children survive: G. H. Aby, of Harper county, Kansas, and Rebecca, wife of Nelson Milles, of McDonough county, Illinois.

March 23, 1879, Charles W. Smith was married to Louisa, a daughter

of Jonas Johnson, deceased, of Knox county, Illinois. The latter reared eight children, six of the surviving ones being in Illinois. Our subject's children are: Herschel W., Claire H., Helen Marie and Nola Belle.

Mr. Smith is a Republican without compromise or apology. He has given his services in a modest way to party affairs in Allen county and is a delegate to nearly every County convention held. He looks back over his modest political history and feels gratified in the belief that he has never been on the wrong side in a national campaign.

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