Shaver, F. A., Arthur P. Rose, R. F. Steele, and A. E. Adams, compilers. "An Illustrated History of Central Oregon." ("Embracing Wasco, Sherman, Gilliam, Wheeler, Crook, Lake, & Klamath Counties") Spokane, WA: Western Historical Publishing Co., 1905. p. 469. JOHN W. SMITH an enterprising merchant and influential, progressive citizen of Rufus, Sherman county, was born in Berrien county, Michigan. March 19, 1848. He is the son of John R. and Mary A, (Miller) Smith, the former a native of Pennsylvania, the latter of Indiana, but both descended from old Pennsylvania Dutch families. It was in Michigan that our subject was reared until he was three years old, when his family removed to Iowa. Here he attended the public schools where he obtained a good business education, and worked on the farm with his parents until he was fifteen years old. Evidently he was a very patriotic youth, for at that early age, he enlisted in Company F, Ninth Iowa Infantry. Captain James W. Gwin. The colonel of our subject's regiment was David Henderson, who subsequently became "Speaker of the House of Representatives" at Washington. Mr. Smith began his life as a soldier with the Chattanooga campaign in the spring of 1864, with General Sherman. He was in the Fifteenth Army Corps, then commanded by General John A. Logan (Black Jack), of Illinois, who was subsequently candidate for vice president on the ticket with James G. Blaine. For eighteen months our subject remained with his regiment with the exception of three months, which he passed in the hospital owing to serious illness. July 25, 1865, he was mustered out at Louisville, Kentucky. After the close of the war he was engaged in farming in Missouri and Kansas, and also in railroad work and various other employments. In 1880 Mr. Smith went to Colorado where he remained four years as clerk in a store and engaging in carpenter work. Thence he went to Seattle, Washington, and worked at bridge-building four years, and in the fall of 1888 he took up general merchandising in Grant, Sherman county. In 1894 a disastrous flood carried off the building and much of the stock. He at once erected another building twenty-eight by seventy feet at Murray Springs and engaged in the same line of business, and in 1895 removed the building to Rufus. He carries about four thousand five hundred dollars worth of stock and has a good trade. Our subject is single. He has three brothers and two sisters living; Benjamin F., a farmer in Douglas county; Jacob R., in Fort Scott, Kansas; Thurston S., proprietor of a saloon in Wasco; Hattie, wife of Frank Vennum, of Coffeeville, Kansas; and Emma, wife of John Harris, also of Fort Scott. Politically, he is affiliated with the Republican party, but is not what might be termed an active partisan. In the community in which he resides he is very popular and has won the esteem of a wide circle of friends. ******************* Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in November 2010 by Diana Smith. Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned above.