Biographies
JOHN
JOSEPH SMITH
JOHN JOSEPH SMITH—Prominent among the best known public officials in northern
California, famous alike for his wide experience, his developed efficiency, and
the attributes of his character which have made him of real and lasting service
to unfortunate humanity, is John Joseph Smith, the popular warden at the Folsom
State Prison, in Represa, twenty-seven and a quarter
miles east of Sacramento, and a mile and one-half above Folsom, on the famous
American River. He was born on July 27, 1868, on his father’s ranch near Hangtown Crossing, on the American River, one and one-half
miles from the present site of Mills Station, in Sacramento County. His father
was Martin Leonard Smith, a native of Michigan, where he was born on May 13,
1826, near the state line and a few miles from Elkhart, Ind., where he was also
reared and served an apprenticeship at the shoemaker’s trade, beginning with
his seventeenth year. In the early fifties, Martin Leonard Smith, as one of a
party of friends, crossed the Great Plains with ox-teams, and arrived at Hangtown, now Placerville, in the spring of 1853, eager to
try his luck as a gold-seeker. He engaged in placer mining, and it is known
that he made and lost three fortunes as a prospector; Dame Fortune smiled on
him thrice, but he was eager to realize more, and accordingly reinvested in
mines and claims, and invariably lost each time. His richest returns were
realized in Teachers’ Diggins, in Eldorado
County.
Early in 1860, he bought a ranch of 240 acres, for which he paid the remarkable
price of seven dollars per acre, and embarked in farming; but he was at first
compelled to clear the land, as it was heavily wooded. With what he received by
the sale of the wood, he just about paid for the expense of clearing the land.
He married Miss Sarah Jane Flanagan, a native of Ireland, who had left her
native shores of Erin as a girl of fourteen, taking passage on a small sailing
vessel, upon which she was buffeted about for three months in a passage to San
Francisco by way of Cape Horn. She was a most attractive woman of lovely
character, and her death, which our subject was only thirteen years old, came
as a severe shock to both her devoted husband and her dependent nine children,
among whom John Joseph was the third eldest son and the sixth child.
John Joseph Smith attended the Kinney district school, where his father had
served for years as a trustee, and at the age of fifteen took up farming on the
home place, assisting his father and remaining with him at home until he was
twenty-one years old. By that time, however, he had grown to dislike
agricultural pursuits, which was largely due to the poor returns, even when
there was a market for the produce, for the farmer’s prospect in those days was
dark. When he became of age, therefore, John decided to leave home and the
farm, for almost anything else he was able to try; and on August 15, 1889, he
entered the employ of the Folsom State Prison as a guard, at first doing night
duty on the inside, and for the following ten years the story of his life would
be the interesting record of a young man trying his level best to make good,
for it is worth remembering that he was the youngest guard, at the time of his
appointment, in any state prison in California, and he was looked upon by the
older guards as a young man over-zealous. It was during the administration of
Warden Charles Aull that he was given duty as a
substitute officer shortly before he made formal application for a transfer, in
1899, to San Quentin; after entering that institution as a guard,
he soon made rapid advancement in promotion. First, he became a policeman in
the jute mill, then chief of the first guards, and then captain of guards at
San Quentin.
In 1909, he was transferred to Folsom Prison as lieutenant of yards, and also
property clerk, and a year later he entered upon his duties as captain of
guards. On November 15, 1913, he was appointed by the California State Prison
Board to the office of Warden at Folsom Prison, and by his efficient
administration have been made possible much prison reform and other incidental
improvements which, it may be safe to say, have been without precedent in any
state institution of the kind. Without excessive expenditure of funds, Warden
Smith has added many new departments, all of which were badly needed at Folsom
where the total absence of prison factories has made the problem of prison
employment difficult to solve; but by introducing agriculture in its various
forms—horticulture, dairying, animal husbandry, poultry—and hog raising—and
persistently and wisely developing these features, he has induced the state
recently to add some 800 acres of wooded hillside lands adjoining, and this
area is in line for further development into orchards, vineyards, hayfields and
dairies. All the work is done by convict labor under the direction of guards,
who are well qualified in the specific branches represented on the farm. The
produce thus harvested, while not entirely supplying the commissary at Represa, is gradually rendering the prison self-supporting
and already the inmates supply by their labor all the milk, cream and butter
used by them.
The inside of the prison has also changed for the better in proportion to the outside
development, much attention having been given to the problems of sanitation,
and health conditions never were better there than they are today. Year by year
witnesses the completion of added buildings, the assembly hall, 50 by 125 feet,
having been finished in 1922. This will also be used as a school, and at times
for entertainment, such as moving pictures, so that it will well serve more
than one good purpose, and so fill a long-felt want. According to the program
of Warden Smith, Folsom State Prison will assuredly in time become more than
ever an ideal place of both detention and reform, realizing his ambition, to
use his own words, of being an institution “to employ the inmates busily, and
as far as possible fit them for work at which they may find employment when
released.” It is not surprising, therefore, that Warden John Joseph Smith is
widely known as a man of conservative personality, well posted as to human
nature. He has an unusual reserve supply of nervous energy and is a man of
great native ability, not so much as a public man, but rather as an executive.
His economical and efficient administration at Folsom Prison is now a matter of
state public record.
How important it is that such a man of great responsibility should rise to his
enviable position in state and national prison affairs, and reform by a
well-planned and most careful and conscientious discharge of his duties as
prison warden, may be judged from an official record as to state prisons in the
biennial report filed with Governor William D. Stephens by the State Board of
Prison Directors, showing a marked increase in the population of both the San
Quentin and Folsom prisons, resulting from a decided increase of crime among
first-offenders. Since 1909, the report shows, the population at Folsom has
increased 155, while that at San Quentin is 684 greater. Since that year, there
were on June 30, 1919, in San Quentin, 1,932 prisoners, in Folsom, 989; on June
30, 1920, in San Quentin, 1,924 prisoners, in Folsom, 988; on June 30, 1921, in
San Quentin, 2,188 in Folsom 1,050; and on June 30, 1922, in San Quentin,
2,616, in Folsom, 1,144. Relative to second-term convicts, the report says:
“Since 1917, all prisoners with previous criminal records, that is, repeaters,
have been incarcerated in the prison at Folsom. The figures relating to
population reveal the fact that there has been no very great increase in the
population at Folsom, indicating no unusual number of commitments of
repeaters—those who served terms previously—and this would be gratifying were
it not unhappily the fact that the figures relating to population at San
Quentin show very decided increase in the number committed as first –timers. We
believe that in course of time this plan will prove beneficial in weaning from
crime and criminal tendencies those serving their first term, thus decreasing
the percentage of repeaters.”
Referring again to conditions existing and imperative, and such as make it a
subject of congratulation to the citizens of the state that such a man as
Warden Smith is at the helm, the report continues: “Examination of the
prisoners at the time of entering show many not only physically defective but
mentally backward—ignorance and disease, combined, having contributed to
crime”; and it concludes: “There is no doubt in our minds about the wisdom and
efficacy of granting paroles in cases where the facts and the records indicate
that parole will be an important factor in rehabilitation of the individual and
not incompatible with the interest of society.”
Mr. Smith was married the first time in 1899, to Miss Rose Schmidt, who passed
away in 1910. His second marriage united him with Miss Muriel Swain, the
daughter of Daniel Webster and Emma Alice (Brown) Swain. Daniel Swain came as
an early sea captain and settled in San Francisco in 1850. Mrs. Smith’s
half-brother, H. B. Titcomb, is president of the Southern
Pacific of Mexico. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were married on November 14, 1913, and
three children have blessed their union: Lucile, Jacquelyn and John Joseph,
Jr., the eldest two being in school. Warden Smith’s home was formerly in the
administration building, but the warden’s residence was completed in 1915 at Represa. It is an imposing structure of sixteen rooms,
costing $11,000. The work of erecting the edifice was done entirely by convict
labor. The beautiful gardens and flowers at Represa,
again the fruit of convict skill and labor, add very much to the attractiveness
of the place. He is a popular member of the B.P.O. Elks, Lodge No. 1108 at San
Rafael. His hobby in outdoor recreations has been duck hunting, and it is said
that in this sport but few ever excel him, for he is a “dead shot.”
It is worthy of interest, in view of the warden’s early repugnance to
agricultural pursuits—notwithstanding that his experience in that field has
undoubtedly enabled him to render a real service to the state in helping to
solve the vexed problems of prison employment—that he has once more taken up
farming, owning eighty acres of rich land in Sutter Basin, a short distance
from Knight’s Landing, which he devotes to general farming. He also recently
bought sixty-four acres of rough wooded land on Alder Creek, where he has
commenced to develop a vineyard, planting there the Thompson seedless grapes,
said to be best adapted to that soil.
California may well be proud of such a native son as John Joseph Smith, who has
contributed much in his life and work to making the Folsom State Prison famed
beyond the confines of the Golden State; and Sacramento County will ever be
grateful for his devotion to an idea, whereby, when it was found advisable to
locate such a penal institution within its borders, he did so much to make it a
credit rather than a blemish to the otherwise attractive section.
Transcribed
by Gloria Wiegner Lane.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County,
California With Biographical Sketches, Pages 434-437. Historic Record Company,
© 2007 Gloria Wiegner
Lane.