Sacramento County
Biographies
EDWIN F.
SMITH
EDWIN F. SMITH, Secretary of the State Agricultural Society, and a resident of Sacramento, is a native of this city. He was born in February, 1853, the son of Captain F. C. Smith and Augusta J., nee Petrie. Captain Smith was a native of Pennsylvania, but removed in early life to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where he resided for many years; he was a pioneer on this coast, coming here in 1849. The first business enterprise which engaged the subject of this sketch was selling papers on the streets of Sacramento. Next he worked on a farm in Colusa for three years. In 1866 he was sent to the high school in San Jose, and there remained for three years, and there it was that he obtained the education which has so well fitted him for the honorable position which he has since been called upon to occupy. Upon his return to Sacramento in 1869, he entered the service of the Pacific Union Express Company, and later on was with Wells, Fargo & Company, in whose employ he continued for eight years. After a three-years experience in mercantile pursuits in this city, he became Secretary of the State Agricultural Society in 1880, and has held this position since that time; but in 1879-’80 he was Secretary of the Constitutional Convention, of which body Hon. Joseph P. Hoge was President, and was Secretary of the Senate during the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth sessions, and for the two extra sessions of 1884-’86. In 1876 he married Jeannie A. Muir, a native of California. They have two children: Halsey Genery and Elsie.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Pages 611-612. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.