John Lewis Smith copy c 1870. From the Wells Smith Family Album

John Lewis Smith copy c 1870. From the Wells Smith Family Album

Year: 1870

This entry documents a photograph of John Smith preserved in the Wells Smith Family Album (page 9), alongside portraits of his wife Esther Smith and their infant son, Lewis Nolan Smith. The photograph is visibly degraded and appears to be a copied image rather than a first-generation print. Most notably, the eyes have been carefully reinforced by hand, a detail that varies across surviving copies. All known copies of this photograph were produced in Texas, including two examples now held by the Oregon Historical Society. No direct connection between John Smith and Texas is currently known, making the geographic origin of these copies an unresolved aspect of the image’s history. John Smith arrived in Oregon in 1853 via the Elliott Cutoff, often referred to as the “Last Wagon Train of 1853,” one of the most difficult overland journeys of the period. After arrival, the Smith family settled in Douglas County within a network of early Oregon pioneer families. Smith’s brother Robert Smith had traveled west with the Applegates in 1843 and later married a daughter of Charles Applegate, establishing close family and land-based connections in the Umpqua Valley. This photograph survives not a