William Henry Smith Jr.
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 23 Sep 1879 - White Clay Creek, New Castle, DE
Christening:
Death: 18 Aug 1942 - Carlisle, Cumberland, Pennsylvania
Burial: in Arlington Cemetery, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania
Cause of Death: Heart attack - second of two
AFN #:
Parents
Father: William Henry Sr. Smith (1830-1911)
Mother: Mary Emma Thompson (1844-1923)
Spouses and Children
1. *Bessie Mae Moore (14 May 1884-14 May 1885 - 5 Dec 1946)
Marriage: 5 Apr 1911 - philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Status:
Children:
1. Willard Smith (1912-1969)
2. Rev. Russell Drayton Smith (1919-2001)
Notes
General:
a bank executive, intense and volatile personality, died of heart attack at age 62.
He died of a heart attack while at work, in his office, though he had recently had a heart attack and had told his wife that morning that he wasn't feeling well. A coworker wrote that he died "in the harness".
My father and my godparents, friends of my father since his teens, told stories of his seriously volatile temper, which could be touched off by my father leaving the car downtown, or by my father deciding to explore teh subway system one day in Philadelphia as a teenager. According to my father, his father couldn't understand why on earth anyone would want to ride around on those dirty old subway cars. I thought this certainly explained much about my father, who was capable of throwing me around the room for thinking the wrong way on social issues, and reacted to an accidentally clipped antenna wire as though I'd dropped the sky. My godfather and others told me that at work, he was the kind of boss people were afraid to see coming, which was a typical boss in those days, but far from a universal personality type among bosses.
My godparents, close friends of my father from when he was about 16, were inside his home just once, for a birthday party. Neighbors and people who knew my father from his church described the Smiths as people who really didn't so much as say good morning to anybody. They took remarkably little interest in my father's activities and friends, even though he joined another church when he was in college, loved it, ate dinner with church members, taught church school there, and eventually went to an Episcopal Seminary and was ordained to the ministry.
Cousins of my grandmother who visited them one day soon after they went to Carlisle said they felt unwelcome and weren't in the house, nor offered a glass of water. During one of their visits in Carlisle and Philadelphia they did get inside the house; Bessie Mae took them to see her mother. They said both houses were extremely clean. They did manage to get my father and his mother to pose for pictures outside. My godparents said the house was very clean - as one of about three details they volunteered. Now, my mother had depression and hardly cleaned our house at all, which was a point of physically violent conflict between my parents.
My grandfather seemed to have a different reputation with his business contacts in teh Rotary Club and so forth. He was sociable enough there, and people thought well of him. At one point he was its president - but a current Rotary Club officer in Carlisle dismissed that with a chuckle. Everyone had to serve a term as president.
Too specific things he was involved in in Philadelphia were th e Lancaster Ave. Title and Trust Company, where he worked, and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, I've been unable to find out in what capacity. The Smiths also developed some sort of relationship with the minster of their Methodist church, who was a central figure in charity organizations in Philadelphia, on many boards and so forth. Name Rev. George Dilworth. He thought enough of the Smiths to come to Carlisle to conduct their funerals. (Their bodies were then shipped to Upper Darby to the family burial site.) I'm told that if the Smiths knew him that well they were surely involved in charity work and organizations because he made sure everyone he knew was. I heard vague stories of my grandmother taking in children for periods of time, when she was working as a social worker, which was upper class charitable activity and not the profession it is today; but I have absolutely no details about this. The only specific story I have is about a young niece my grandfather's sister took in after the death of her parents.
Rev. George Dilworth; Philadelphia Conference of Methodist-Episcopal Curch. District secretary for Atlantic office - of the American Bible Society. . HQ in Philadelphia. Trustee of Methodist Hospital. Member of Bd. City (??) (Member of alot of boards in the city?) Member of Upper Darby School Board for 25 years and lately its president. Sellers' Methodist Church in Bywood, Upper Darby. I believe it is he that died in 1/14/1966, funeral at Sellers' Mem Methodist Ch., Philadelphia. At Sellers Ave. and State Rd.
Something about the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church.
In my notes, I have that the Dunsafes and Carrie Moore also attended Sellers Church.
Drexil Hill is in Upper Darby Township.
The Methodist church the Smiths attended in Carlisle had lost their records around 1952 in a fire, and reconstructed them from memory. They remembered Bessie Mae Smith, 146 W Louther, d 2/5/1946, her son Percy Smith, attending a thoelogical school in Boston and studying for the ministry.
My father told stories of eating a bowl of cereal for supper because an aunt had told him he ought to have something in his stomach and then going off to bed. Now, there was a short period during the Depression when my grandfather was unemployed and the family was strapped for money, but I doubted this would be why my father didn't eat with the family. His second cousin, who oftne visited with her mother and was close to his more outgoing older brother who was the family scapegoat, said that my father didn't want to come to dinner nor play with others because he was always withdrawn into some book. She also said that dinners in the Smith household were a very formal affair. Children didn't do much speaking, for instance.
My father wrote that as well. "Dinner in the dining room featured a linen cloth on the table, linen napkins in personalized rings, a glass of water at each place. Some of my friends had long sessions of chatting at the dinner table where their family gathered. I liked that, but we were a quiet family. There were many favorite dishes" - steam cherry pudding was one.
My father writes that his father apparently shared his handyman and carpentry abilities and liking for flowers in the front lawn. The family apparently valued books; my father said he liked to lie on the floor at home and read books he'd found on the family book cases. He said his father built flower gardens with borders, shrubs, and a rock garden, and a birdbath, and he built lattices over the rear entrances to the house where they lived. He made another gardening masterpiece of their house in Carlisle. My father always had a flower bed in front of the rectory where we lived in Bolton Landing, and he had planted some nice what he said were English flowers - actually, forget me nots, as well as tulips adn daffodils. Also around a bird bath. As a teenager I took over teh flower gardening.
He lists having lived at 5631 Washington Avenue in West Philadelphia, his parents' first home, 823 Childs Avenue in the Aronomink section of Drexel Hill from 1928 424 Walnut Street in Philadelphia from 1934. He describes teh homes as pleasant, comfortable and modern, and nicer than houses he had lived in more recently. My father writes that he had actual friends in Philadelphia, such as John Schultz, that he got into Boy Scouts, and went on overnight camping trips and to summer scout camp. He also mentions an active outdoor life with wagon, roller skates, and a bicycle. That is in some contrast to his cramped social life in Carlisle.
My father says that the Dunsafe's house in Drexel Hill, which they built, was a duplicate of his family's beloved home, but ruend at 90 degrees from teh street. On Irvington Road off School Lane in Drexel Hlls.
My father wrote that his two aunts with their husbands and his family often visited each other, and they all often sat around the dining table or on the porch visiting on Sunday afternoon.
My father wrote of Dr. GEorge Dilworth and their church. "The fmaily found a Methoidst church in the Bywood Park area that they joined, and attended faithfully. The minister became a close family friend, Dr. George Dilworth. He and my father often played golf together. We drove the two or three miles east on State Road, attended our various classes and sitting together in church. The sermons were quite good. I may have been impressed simply by the gifted vouice; a distinct accent and good delivery. I did listen and got quite familiar with the sequence of teh service and its timing."
My father writes that "The Great Depression came along; my father's bank closed, leaving him without a job but with a mortgage. On occasion he drove me around my paper route on the running board of the yellow DeSoto roadster (???? - a change from the earlier buick). The few dollars I had in a small coin safe was needed. He worked in life insurance, and then with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. He looked into other job openings until he found the job in Carlisle. " My father wrote that "It appeared for a while that all the love and work and dreams put into the home at Drexil Hill would be lost."
My father writes that his father made homemade beer, of two sorts. He said that when he came home from work he liked to open a bottle - a habit my father inherited until his doctor decided prescription antianxiety medication would be a sounder idea. His father practiced baseball with him, and when he was 14, he and Willard taught my father to drive.
He says that the family liked to assemble picture puzzles and play card games, and listen to radio programs. His father put up a long wire antenna for enhanced radio reception. "Our floor model radios were equipped to bring in signals from all over teh world." This is another interest my father inherited; he loved to put together citizen's band and ham radio kits and color TV set kits.
My father writes that atleast one reason why his father continued to work at the bank in poor health was that he had no pension nor social security to fall back on.