John Smith c 1873 from the Wells Smith Album

John Smith c 1873 from the Wells Smith Album

Year: 1873

Photograph of John Smith, circa 1873, holding one of his young children, likely his first son, Lewis Nolan Smith, born in June 1871. John Smith was born in Missouri in 1831 and came west with his parents and extended family by way of the Elliott Cutoff in 1853, sometimes referred to as the Lost Wagon Train of 1853. The journey through the Cascades was brutal, with no real trail through the mountains, and members of the wagon train were eventually rescued in scattered groups as they emerged from the rugged forest on foot, many of them barefoot. By the early 1870s, Smith had married Esther Wells and was beginning his family in Douglas County, Oregon, near Yoncalla and Rice Hill. This photograph shows him about twenty years after that overland journey, no longer a young emigrant but a husband, father, and farmer in early Oregon. The photograph is approximately 153 years old.