San Benito-Los Angeles County CA Archives Biographies.....Smith, Sarah Bixby 
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Ila L. Wakley iwakley@msn.com July 11, 2010, 1:40 am

Source: California and Californians, Vol. IV, Published 1932, Pages 52 - 53
Author: The Lewis Publishing Company

     SARAH BIXBY SMITH was born and reared in California, is a representative 
of one of its honored pioneer families, and her influence is felt as a 
cultured gentlewoman, as an author and as a woman deeply concerned in civic 
affairs. Mrs. Smith, wife of Paul Jordan Smith, is the author of three volumes 
that have met with uniform popular approval being Adobe Days, My Sage Brush 
Garden, and Pasear. The following extracts from Adobe Days pertain to her 
early life:

     "I was born on a sheep ranch in California, the San Justo, near San Juan 
Bautista, an old mission town of the Spanish padres, which stands in the 
lovely San Benito Valley, over the hills from Monterey and about a hundred 
miles south of San Francisco. The gold days were gone and the time of fruit 
and small farms had not yet come. On the rolling hills the sheep went slowly, 
and in vacant valleys cropped the lush verdure of the springtime, or, in the 
summer, sought a scanty sustenance in the sun-dried grasses  I am a child of 
California, and grandchild of Maine, and a great-grandchild of Massachusetts. 
Fashions in ancestry change. When I chose mine straight American was still 
very correct; so I might as well admit at once that I am of American Colonial 
stock, Massachusetts variety."

     Mrs. Smith is a daughter of Llewellyn Bixby and Mary (Hathaway) Bixby, 
both natives of Maine. The Bixby family was early founded in the old Pine Tree 
State, and there was solemnized the marriage of the parents of Mrs. Smith. 
Llewellyn Bixby was twenty-five years of age when he came to California, in 
company with his brother, Amasa, Jr., and his cousin, Dr. Thomas Flint.

     In her childhood Mrs. Smith attended school in Los Angeles, where her 
advantages included those of the Los Angeles Academy, on Main Street, the 
public and high schools, old Field Seminary at Oakland and Pomona College 
Preparatory School, Claremont.  To the ancestral State of Massachusetts Mrs. 
Smith repaired for advanced education along academic lines, and there she was 
graduated from Wellesley College as a member of the class of 1894. After her 
marriage Mrs. Smith and her husband were absent from California during a term 
of years, with varying intervals of residence in Michigan, Chicago, Honolulu 
and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and after returning to California the home was 
maintained at Claremont, Los Angeles County, until 1926, since which year it 
has been established in Los Angeles. Mrs. Smith has been president of the 
Friday Morning Club and is a member of the Board of Trustees of Scripps 
College. While a resident of Claremont she there served three terms as a 
member of the Board of Education, besides having been a member of the 
Claremont Planning Commission. She is a valued and appreciative member of 
Southern California Historical Society, and in her home city has membership in 
the Woman's Athletic Club and the Woman's University Club. Mrs. Smith is a 
woman of fine social and intellectual poise and is a gracious figure in the 
representative social and cultural activities of the Los Angeles metropolitan 
area. Mrs. Smith is the mother of four sons and one daughter.

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