My Genealogy Hound

Richard Smith, teacher at Mount Pleasant, was born, in 1843, in Pennington, Lancashire, England, and is the eldest of the eleven children of Henry and Sarah Ann Smith, natives of West Leigh, England, from which place they moved to Golborne, where the father was game-keeper for Col. John W. Lee, of Lyme Hall, Cheshire, for nearly twenty years. At the present time he is game-keeper for Thomas Stone, Esq., of Newtonle-Willows, Lancashire. Mrs. Smith died in 1881, aged fifty-six years. Mr. Smith is still living, at the age of sixty-three, and is a son of James and Nancy Smith, the former a son of Henry and Ann (Horrocks) Smith. The Smiths were stanch Royalists. Mrs. Sarah Ann Smith was a daughter of Richard and Phoebe (Leathers) Smith. Her father was a civil engineer of Manchester, England. Richard Smith, the subject of the present sketch, began weaving silk at the age of eleven, and continued at the same occupation until seventeen, when, for the following three years, he worked in cotton mills and coal mines. He next went to Liverpool and worked for the London & North-Western Railroad Company as delivery clerk for nearly five years. At twenty-five years of age, on Christmas Day, 1868, he was married to Mary Ann Caldwell, of Golborne, Lancashire, England, and in May, of the following year, he and his wife set sail for America, landing in New York on the 18th of May, 1869. They first located for a few months in Wayne County, Mich., but removed thence to the State of Missouri, where Mr. Smith was employed by the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad Company as watchman for nearly a year. He, later, was occupied for about one year in clerking for E. J. Roberts, of Robertsville. In 1871 he taught school, then again worked for Mr. Roberts a short time, and afterward engaged in school teaching, at which, in connection with farming, he has since continued. He resides on a well-improved farm of 215 acres. Mr. and Mrs. Smith have six children, namely: William C, Sarah A., John E., Walter, Mary A. and Richard. In politics he is a Republican, and was elected justice of the peace in 1882, being re-elected in the fall of 1887. He is a Master Mason, and has served for several years as Worshipful Master of the lodge at Robertsville, and is at present Secretary of the same.