Son of Samuel Smith and Jennett Maria Smith

Married Frances Josephine Van Noy, 29 Dec 1881, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah

Children - Leora Van Noy Smith

Married Cora Myrtle Tall, 14 Jun 1916, Logan, Cache, Utah

History - Thomas Smith, the son of Samuel Smith and Janet (Jennett) Maria Smith, was born on 22 October 1852 in Brigham City, Box Elder, Utah. His father, a polygamist, had five wives and 52 children, 51 of record. Samuel Smith with his first wife, Mary Ann Line and their children were converted to the Gospel in England. They, together with Samuel's father and mother, Daniel and Sarah Wooding Smith, arrived in Nauvoo in April 1843, and came to Utah with the Aaron Johnson Company, arriving on September 5, 1850.

Thomas Smith's mother Janet Maria Smith was the daughter of George Smith and a niece of her husband, Samuel Smith. She and her family were also converts to the Church and sailed from Liverpool on 22 Feb 1854 on the Ship Windermere.

Thomas, as a boy enjoyed playing with his many half-brothers and sisters as well as the brothers and sister in his own immediate family. The families loved each other, and the children were as apt to stay the night in over of the other wives homes as in their own mother's home. Thomas was especially fond of his half-brother, John, the son of Samuel and Sarah Jane Ingraham. There were only five months difference in their ages, and they had many good times together.

President Lorenzo Snow was President of the box Elder Stake at that time, and Samuel Smith was chosen as one of his counselors. Consequently, Lorenzo Snow was a frequent visitor to their home and Thomas enjoyed playing with his children.

As a boy, Thomas was noted for his acrobatic tricks and frequently entertained at dances where the dances threw him pennies during intermission. When he was 12, he quit school and went to work in the woolen mills in Brigham City, Utah. He worked the carders and spinning wheels. The roar of the machinery was so loud that it was thought to have contributed to his deafness in later years. He worked in the woolen mills for about five years. Then because of a back injury his father bought some land, and Thomas worked for him on that for awhile. His father then got a contract to cut ties for the railroad that ran from Market Lake (now Roberts, Idaho) to DeBois, Idaho and Thomas worked in the hills cutting ties for the railroad. Later he was to tell many stories to his children about this period of his life.

He met and fell in love with Francis Josaphine Van Noy, daughter of William Thomas Van Noy and Catherine Hendricks. At the end of a lovely courtship, they drove in a covered lumber wagon from Riverdale, Idaho, to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they were married in the Salt Lake Temple on 29 December 1881. Thomas was then 19 years old and his bride 17. They moved to Riverdale, Idaho where their first three children were born – Thomas William on 31 July 1883; Clement Van No on 29 Jan 1885; and Catharine Jeanne (Nettle) on 31 October 1886. Thomas worked for Ed West in the sawmill for a year while living in Riverdale.

Thomas was a very powerful swimmer and often swam Bear River in Riverdale. Once when fording the river in a light spring wagon, his sister, Letitia, and her baby were washed out of the wagon. He grabbed Letitia, but she screamed at him to save the baby and fought so hard to get away from him that he had to knock her out. He got the baby out, too.

The family moved from Riverdale to Preston where the remaining five children were born – Lorain on 22 May 1890; Francis Van Noy (Frank) on 29 September 1893; Leora on 22 December 1896; Vernard on 9 October 1900; and Zina on 8 October 1903.

In Preston, he worked in Parkinson's General Store. He was also Oneida County Assessor and Collector for two years. When he was elected Assessor, he hadn't realized he had to have a bond; and when it became evident he didn't have the money for it, the councilmen met and went his bond for him.

He bought half interest in a store in Preston with his brother, James, and ran it while James was away on a mission. Later, he had his own store and farm in Preston. It was here in Preston, that sorrow came to the family with the death of ten year old Leora of diphtheria on 10 July 1907.

Thomas sold his store and farm and moved to Driggs, Idaho where he had a 640 acre farm run by his sons-in-law, George Swainston (Nettie's husband) and Clive Beckstead (Lorain's husband). He and his wife bought a home from Leslie Crandall. They had only been in Driggs about two weeks when Thomas ran a sliver in his finger. It became infected and the doctor in Driggs suggested he go to the hospital in Logan, Utah, to have it treated. Francis had been feeling ill for some time so it was decided to take her to the hospital with him. Francis became worse, and on 11 January 1913 she passed away in the Logan Hospital. On 13 January 1913 her grief-stricken family buried her in Preston.

After his wife's death, Thomas returned to the house in Driggs to Mr. Crandall and divided the furniture among the married children. The two youngest children, Zina and Vernard, stayed with their married sister, Nettie. Thomas went to Rexburg and stayed with his niece, Ada Parkinson, and ran the Farmers' Equity and Produce Company. The company sold sacks, twins, and all sorts of produce to farmers. Thomas made trips to buy produce. He would buy fruit in Brigham City and send it on boxcars on the train to Rexburg and other cities enroute. He also made many trips to King Hill, Idaho to buy watermelons by the train carload.

While working for the Farmers' Equity and Produce House, he met Cora Myrtle Tall (Jones) who was living on the Fred Parkinson dry farm where she supported herself and young daughter Mabel, by cooking and keeping house. In November 1914, Thomas decided to move back to Driggs and asked Cora to go to Driggs and keep house for him. This she did. Zina Frank, and Mabel lived at home with them, Vernard having stayed with Nettie and George Swainston on the farm. Tom had graduated from the George Washington Law School and was county Attorney at Rexburg. Clem and his wife, Sibyl Jensen, moved up from Rexburg, and Clem helped his father run a produce and then later a general store in Driggs.

When his term as County Attorney was over, Thom and his wife, Naomi Nesley, also moved to Driggs to help in the store. Lorain and husband, Clive Beckstead, helped Nettie and George run the farm.

On 14 June 1916, at the age of 53, Thomas married Cora Myrtle Tall, daughter of John Tall and Matilda Ball, in the Temple at Logan, Cache, Utah. Thomas often told his children later that the three and a half years that he spent as a widower were the saddest years he ever had. He was very much a family man and said, ""he Lord knew what He was saying when He said that it was not good that man should live alone."

Thomas built a nice home in Driggs and a daughter, Elva, was born to them on 24 August 1917. Thomas was really too soft-hearted to be a businessman. He could never refuse anyone credit and soon he became over-extended. The depression of 1917 – 19 hit and when he could not collect the thousands of dollars owed to him, he turned over his property to his creditors in order to meet his obligations.

His business, farm and home gone, the family moved to Smithfield, Utah where they bought his mother's home and remodeled it. Thomas worked for the sugar factory. Vernard and Zina went to Logan to High School on the streetcar, and Mabel went to grade school in Smithfield. On 4 April 1920, a son John Lyle was born to them.

When John was six weeks old, the family again moved – this time to Rexburg, Idaho, where Thomas went into business with Mr. Beesley running a Produce House. While living here, Zina went to Ricks College and then to Nurses' Training in LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City and Vernard married Willamelia Coleman. However, the produce house ran into debt and Thomas turned over his share of the business to Mr. Beesley with the provision that he used it to pay all the bills the business owed.

At 62 years of age, health beginning to fail, and broke again, he leased a farm in Teton City, Idaho (called the Bird place after the former owners) with the option of buying it. He needed $1,000.00 for the down payment. The first year they made $500.00 and put the money in the Farmer's Bank in Rexburg. The pigs were sold for an addition $500.00, and he was ready to deposit that in the bank also and make the down payment on the farm when he read in one paper that the Farmers' Bank, along with banks all over the nation had gone closed. The first $500.00 was gone, so they were unable to buy the farm. Instead, they leased it for another year, but their option on buying it had expired and someone else purchased it.

It was during this troubled period that his last child, Karma Mae, was born on 27 May 1925. She was ill, and they had to move back to Rexburg during her first critical months to be near a doctor.

Then they heard about an 80-acre farm at Moody Creek, Madison County, Idaho (about a mile from the Bird place) being for sale for $5,000.00. The down payment was only $200.00, but their money was so depleted through purchase of necessary plows, harrows, hay rack, wagon, horses, cows and other necessities needed to run a farm, that they had to borrow $120.00 from Cora's nephews, Asael and Aldon Tall, to help make the down payment. Asael and Aldon had saved the money to go to the University of Idaho to school, so before school started that fall, Thomas and Cora scraped enough together to repay the loan.

With the sale of a bunch of pigs they had raised and their share of the crop (Jake Nelson, who had lost the farm to the mortgage company originally, was still farming it for a share), they made the first big payment of $800.00 that fall. After that, payments were $500.00 a year. With that and milk from the cows, butter which they sold for 30 cents a pound and eggs that sold for 10 cents a dozen, they continued to make the farm payments. They scrimped and saved and made do without for many years in order to accomplish three goals they had set for themselves – pay off the farm, build a new home, and educate the three children who were now living at home; Zina having gone to California where she later married Lawrence Price and Mable having married Charles Valentine and moved to Salem, Idaho; thus leaving just the three youngest children at home.
A new home was badly needed. The first two years they lived in a two-bedroom red brick home on an adjoining farm, but later moved to a small two room log house that was on their own property. John slept on a cot in the kitchen, Karma and Elva in a double bed with Thomas and Cora in another double bed in the bedroom. Everything they owned was jammed into those two small rooms – including hundreds of bottles of fruit and vegetables Cora canned during the summer which were put in boxed under the beds for storage. A Monarch coal stove was used both for cooking and for heating the kitchen.

The logs of the house were chinked with a clay-like substance, and in the winter it got so cold that rags had to be stuffed around all the cracks in the windows and doors and in the midst of the winter if the wind changed directions and blew from the south, the whole family had to move into the bedroom where an old pot-bellied stove helped keep them from freezing. Water for general use was carried in buckets from the nearby canal, but the drinking water was hauled from a pump nearly one-fourth mile from the house. When the water was turned out of the canal in the winter, Thomas loaded milk cans on a sleigh and pulled them through drifts and blizzards to the pump where he would have to work sometimes an hour to thaw out the pump before he could fill the cans and trudge on home through the freezing cold. The bathroom was a "two seater" adjoining the chicken coop.

Thomas was now in his 70s and plagued by stomach trouble and arthritis. His hands and feet were gnarled and painful, and one winter he was crippled up to the extent he was continued to a rocking chair. Cora and the children took over all the chores, and pulled him from place to place in the house in the rocker. After a bad bout with pneumonia he became almost totally deaf. He had been quite active in church affairs, having served in the superintendency of the Sunday School at one time and as Ward Clerk for many years. He was a High Priest and always had a strong Testimony of the Gospel, which he did his best to instill into all his children. After he became deaf, it embarrassed him to go anywhere; but he read constantly from the Standard Works of the church, and encouraged his wife and children to attend their meetings.

His pleasures were simple, and he was content with his family. Winter evening were spent playing cribbage, blackjack, and checkers with his children. In the summers he still worked hard. Indeed the whole family worked in the fields, plowing, harrowing, thinning and hoeing beets, weeding potatoes, bunching and stacking hay, harvesting beets and potatoes, shocking grain, milking cows, and caring for the livestock. Frugality was the rule and going to a show was an event that only occurred every year or two. But the long, arduous hours on the farm finally paid of and the mortgage was paid and a more comfortable home was built. But the work went on. Thomas had a favorite horse,"Tom". Tom had been caught in a barn cave-in and was easily startled into running away. Nearly every year he ran away with Thomas at least once and as a rule, with the mowing machine. Several times, Thomas was nearly killed, and Cora and his children dreaded the haying season and tensely listened for the sound of the mower. He also had some narrow escapes from mean bulls, once being tossed through a barbed wire fence.

As time took its toll, the work became just too hard for Thomas and Cora both. Elva graduated from the University of Idaho and married Melbourne H. Jansen and moved to Twin Falls. John married Jean Tucker and bought the 80—acre farm adjoining the original farm which he later increased to include 580 acres. Karma was attending school at the University of Idaho. Thomas' arthritis was bad and in spite of liberal doses of bicarbonate of soda and "Currier tablets", his stomach trouble became worse. The severe winters made it a battle to fight through the blizzards to care for the livestock.

The decision was reached to sell the farm to John, and in December 1943, they moved to 400 Elm St., Twin Falls, Idaho to be near their daughter, Elva, whose husband at the time was overseas in Puerto Rico serving in World War II. The days here were contented days with his wife caring for him and his daughter dropping in to see him. For a man his age, he was exceptionally strong and still worked hard raising a huge garden, which he cared for himself.

However, his stomach trouble increased, and he was taken to the hospital in Idaho Falls, Idaho, where the decision to operate was reached. On July 5, 1946 he was operated on by Asael and Aldon Tall. Even during this severe illness his concern was of his family and he insisted that Karma go ahead with her plans to be married. He related to her how at the time of his marriage to Francis Josaphine Van Noy her father had insisted they go ahead and be married although at the time he was having a leg amputated. Thomas talked often in those last few days of his earlier life and seemed content with the life he had led in spite of hardships and disappointments that had befell him.

In accordance with his wishes, his last child, Karma, was married 10 July 1946 to Amos Kay Belnap. He said he was glad to have lived to see all his children married and passed away on 14 July 1946 at the age of 83. His funeral was held in Teton City, Idaho and he was buried at Preston, Idaho on 18 July 1946.

When asked for a few comments about her father, Zina Smith Price wrote: "One of the outstanding impressions to me was the confidence he place in me. The confidence of knowing I would do the right thing. Perhaps having lost my mother, this in the following years to come, was like a star keeping me from the by-paths. In asking him about a course of action or decision, he would always say. "This is the way I would do it," but would leave me free to choose. Naturally, I would take his way since he had not forced it upon me.

"My friends love him as though he were their dad. It was a natural thing for a friend to be on one knee and me on the other. Often they would say, "Oh, if my parents would have the trust in me that your father has in you." I could not help but be good.

"All the children in the neighborhood would come to Dad to 'charm their warts away.'" One day I was so proud to show him one on my hand and asked him to do the same for mine and also just what he said to do it. He only smiled and told me the next time I looked unconsciously at it I wouldn't find it. It took three days for mine to go as I was always consciously gazing at it. Then when I did forget about, it also forgot me. No Wart!"

I suppose he meant so much to me because after mother going, he was both mother and dad to me. I was only eight years old and was really a spoiled, pampered child. Up to six years, he had to rock me to sleep every night."

Karma Mae Smith Belnap says – "Although Father was deaf by the time I was born, his eyes were so good he never wore anything except dime store spectacles and only those when he wanted to read, which he did by the hours. All children loved him whether they were his own or his neighbors. We all enjoyed sitting on his lap. He was good and kind to us. I can never remember being scolded by him and certainly never spanked. When we got too rowdy in the house, he merely looked at us over the top of his spectacles, as he sat reading, and that quieted us down. However, h3e did have a temper and nothing made him madder than stubbing a toe or the cows breaking through the fences.

"Father was of medium build and fairly short for a man (about 5'7"); but he held himself proudly erect all the days of his life. He wore a mustache and his gray hair curled at the temples. He was a strong man and worked hard all his life. He was a fine man and a good father. I am very proud to be his daughter. - By his daughter, Karma Smith Belnap