Wapello County IA Archives Biographies.....Smith, Uriah B. 1840 - 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 July 6, 2013, 2:45 pm

Source: See Below
Author: S. J. Clarke, Publisher

REV. URIAH B. SMITH.

Rev. Uriah B. Smith, founder, promoter and superintendent of the American Home
Finding Association of Ottumwa, was born March 13, 1840, in the mountains of
Pennsylvania. He says that in school he was generally at one end of his class
and remembers that once that end was the head. His parents with their large
family removed to Illinois in 1851. When the boy Uriah was eleven years of age,
an old Dunkard, who had a contract for carrying the United States mail overland
a distance of ninety-five miles, and whose wife was taken suddenly ill, went to
Daniel Smith to ask if his boy could go with the mail in his stead. Consent was
given. It was midwinter. The boy started on an old horse that knew the way, the
mail sack thrown across the saddle. The first day he fell behind, the cold
chafed his legs, which rubbed against the saddle skirts until they bled. People
along the route were indignant that the man Kerr should have sent such a little
boy in his stead in such weather. The next day he crossed fifteen miles of
prairie, on which was not a house, and secured his dinner two hours after the
regular mealtime, the roads being too rough to travel fast with a fourteen year
old horse. At dark the second evening he was still fourteen miles from the end
of his journey. A good farmer came to his relief and gave him a ride, so that he
arrived at his destination at 10 P. M. At daylight he started on the return
trip. When within eight miles of home the second day the poor old horse gave out
and lay down in the road. It was very dark. The boy could find nothing wrong so
whipped the horse and started on. At length he saw a light at a farm house
ahead, and there remained until morning. He arrived at the postoffice seventeen
hours late and found a crowd of angry men waiting to see if the boy would show
up or be found on the way frozen to death, in which case threats of lynching had
been made for the man whose place he was filling.

Some time afterward Uriah B. Smith with his brother David was employed for two
years by a liberal-minded farmer. Later his father took a contract to furnish
the rock for culverts on a railroad ten miles out of Galesburg, and the boy was
one of the teamsters employed in filling the contract. Late in the fall of that
year, 1854, the family removed to Iowa save the older brother, David, who became
overseer on the farm where the brothers had previously been employed for two
years. He followed the family to Iowa the following spring and is well known in
Ottumwa, being the Rev. D. C. Smith, now seventy-six years of age. He was a
member of the Iowa conference of the Methodist Episcopal church for forty-nine
years and was twice presiding elder. The next important event in the life of U.
B. Smith was his conversion together with that of thirteen other boys and young
men, five of whom afterward became ministers of the gospel. It will be
remembered that a great revival swept over the country as though the Creator was
preparing his people for the awful conflict which was soon to follow. About that
time Henry Ward Beecher sold by auction the beautiful white slave girl with
negro blood in her veins to three thousand of his hearers in Plymouth church at
Brooklyn, New York, in his desperation to show up slavery. Men needed much
religion to maintain civility toward each other. The big giant, Lincoln, and the
little giant, Douglas, in the middle west were arguing hotly the issues of the
day with the intensity of the two natures. Their subjects were pointed and the
discussions ofttimes waxed hot. Then followed the four-cornered election for
president. It seemed that Providence had chosen its instrument in the
rail-splitter of Illinois. Then came secession and the clash of swords, war
cries, and the sound of fife and drum. Who would go? Two from the township
responded; then six, and U. B. Smith was one of the six. By a sacred agreement
he was to become the husband of Miss Harriet Newell Riley three weeks later, but
they hastened the wedding and were married that evening, August 13, 1861. After
taking his oath as a soldier and in the presence of five comrades, Mr. Smith
spoke the marriage vows and entered into a sacred bond that has remained for
fifty-three years.

When disability forced his return from the front, Mr. Smith was elected captain
of militia. For three days he held orders from Governor Kirkwood to be ready on
call to march to South English, where Tallyrand had been shot while making a war
speech, as it seemed, against the public good. It is to be hoped that Christian
light and the treaties of ten great nations for arbitration will soon make war
impossible. There always will be conflicts, however, and Mr. Smith did not
escape. The next difficult one which he had to settle individually was that of
preaching the gospel. After seven years he took a pastorate at Springfield,
Iowa, and continued preaching for thirty years, during which time he served
churches in the following places: Peoria, Bellefontaine New Sharon, Pella,
Marengo, Wilton, Oxford, Burlington (Grace church), Danville, Letts, West
Liberty, Fort Madison (First church) and Williamsburg. The subject of this
sketch was one of four hundred appointed from Iowa to the World's Conference of
Religions which met in Chicago in 1893 as a part of the world's great fair.

In 1895 he gave up his pastorate and engaged in child-saving work with the Iowa
Children's Home Society. In the first year he was advanced to the position of
assistant superintendent and so continued until 1899, when he organized the
American Home Finding Association. He also served as assistant general
superintendent of the National Association, with headquarters in Chicago, and he
was also a member of its board of general managers. Later he became its general
superintendent. At the same time he continues to fill the position of state
superintendent of the Iowa organization, refusing always to give up the work
here where his interests have so long been centered. After filling both places
for four and a half months he yielded up the greater for the lesser and still
remains at the head of the Iowa organization. He is yet a member of the Iowa
conference of the Methodist Episcopal church and has the honor of being the
senior member with the record of answering roll call for forty-seven years
without a break.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:
HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY IOWA
ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME II
CHICAGO
THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1914


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