Information Sheet

 

 

R         Smith, E. Herbert, 1865-1956.

184                  Autobiography, 1954.

                                    One folder, photocopies.

 

 

 

This is a thirteen-page autobiography by a newspaper publisher and editor of south­eastern Missouri.  At one time or another during his sixty-year career, Smith was associated with the Ben­ton Record, the Charleston Democrat and Enterprise, the Sikeston Star, and the Clarkton News.

 

E. Herbert Smith was born in Garrard County, Kentucky, in 1865.  His father, Harry Ack­er­man Smith, was a teacher and Methodist minister who held pulpits in several southern states.  He was also a veteran of the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  His Civil War letters to his family are in­cluded in the holdings of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection-Columbia.  Harry A. Smith moved to Cape Girardeau in 1883, where his son secured his first newspaper employment as a printer’s assistant with the Cape Girardeau News.  With the exception of a few short gaps, it was the beginning of a newspaper career which lasted until his retirement in 1940.

 

Smith’s autobiography, written in 1954, contains the chronological details of his career and anecdotes connected with it.  He was proud of his newspapers, and considered them to be decent, respectable testimonials for the communities in which they were published.  A strong temperance advocate, Smith fought against two local option campaigns in Scott and Missis­sippi counties.  He commented in his autobiography on these campaigns, and on his policy of refusing to accept ad­vertisements for alcoholic beverages in his newspapers.

 

Appended to the autobiography are two items concerning Smith which were added by the do­nor, Benjamin Bird Moore, who is Smith’s grandson.  The first is a testimonial to Smith given in 1948 at the Clarkton Methodist Fellowship by John H. James.  Following it is a letter from Mrs. E. Herbert Smith at Charleston, Missouri, to Myrtle Goodin, written in 1915.  The do­nor’s typed in­troduction to Smith’s autobiography includes notes on the individuals mentioned in the letter.

 

 

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