My Genealogy Hound

KILBOURN W. SMITH, one of the progressive young business men of Louisville, Ky., was born in Cincinnati, O., April 28, 1841, and is a son of C. J. W. and Elizabeth (L’horton) Smith, natives of Pennsylvania and of English and French extraction. His grandfather, on his mother’s side, was born in Nantes, France, and was an officer in the French army under Napoleon Bonaparte. Mr. Smith’s father settled in Cincinnati, O., in 1830; soon after removed to Louisville, Ky., and engaged in business with R. & J. Atkinson, until 1834, when he removed to Cincinnati and engaged on his own account in the mercantile business. In 1850 he was elected by the Democrats Sheriff of Hamilton County, Ohio, and about this period occurred one of the most characteristic incidents of his career, for although not legally responsible to the creditors with whom he had settled by passing through bankruptcy in the panic of 1849 that swept through the country, he, with that delicate sense of honor squarely found, took upon himself the payment of dollar for dollar of all the deficiencies, and that from the earnings of years of frugality and unremitting labor. He was a prominent Odd Fellow and Mason from 1835, being the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Odd Fellows in 1838, and made out the Seventh Charter of the Grand Lodge of Ohio. In 1874 he was elected President of the Farmers and Mechanics Fire Insurance Company, also appointed Fire Commissioner. He died in May, 1883, leaving a comfortable estate and honorable record to his family. His son, K. W. Smith, was educated in the public schools of Cincinnati, O., and graduated with high honors at the Hughes High School, June 24, 1859, after which he engaged as clerk with the commission house of Perin, Gould & Co., with whom he remained two years, leaving them to enter the wholesale grocery business with Robert Hosea & Co. and Charles L. Moore & Co., as salesman and manager. After a successful career with them, he was induced, in the winter of 1866, to take the State agency for Kentucky of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company, of Newark, then as now, one of the oldest and best managed Life Insurance Companies in the United States. February, 1867, he removed to Louisville, Ky., and assumed the State Agency, and by his industry has built up the largest and most lucrative life insurance business in the State. He has always taken an active and personal interest in the prosperity and advancement of Louisville, having responded liberally with his means to all public enterprises for the advancement of the city’s interest. He has been a member of the Board of Trade since its organization; a director in the Third National Bank of Louisville, Ky., for many years. He is also a prominent Odd Fellow and Mason, having attained to the thirty-third degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, a degree which is conferred upon very few, and then for meritorious service only; has twice been elected Master of the Louisville Lodge, No. 400, F. & A. M. He has been twice married, first to Miss Delia Wakefield, of Hamilton County, O., in 1861. Her death occurred in 1862, and he was next married to Mrs. Heasley Maxon, in February, 1873. He has shown his continued interest in the prosperity of Louisville, the city of his adoption, by erecting one of the most elegant houses on Third avenue, which is greatly admired not only for its exterior attractions, but its interior costly decoration and arrangement.