HISTORICAL NOTE

The Mary Byers Smith papers are chiefly concerned with her grandfather John Smith, 1796-1886, who came to America from Brechin, Scotland in 1816 with a shilling, a Bible and his mother’s blessing and prospered mightily in Andover as a manufacturer of linen twine for shoe making and sail making. They also include material by his brother, Peter Smith, 1802-1880. 

John and peter were the children of Peter and Janet Middleton Smith of Brechin, Scotland. The death of their father, a sawyer and carpenter, in 1810 when John was thirteen, sent him out into the world to earn his living as a cotton weaver. In 1816 he came to America, in 1824 settled in Andover, in 1829 imported a bride from Scotland. His initial work and prosperity came in cotton weaving, but when John Dove, also of Brechin, Scotland and Smith’s younger brother, Peter arrived in 1824 they set up a company, Smith and Dove, which manufactured linen twine for shoemakers and others. 

John and Agnes Ferguson Smith had five children: John Middleton, 1830-1851; Joseph Warren b. 1931; Helen Gavin b. 1835, who married G.W. Coburn; George Thompson, 1837-1839 and Janet Middleton, born and died 1839. After Agne’s death in 1860 he married a second time to Sarah Gleason but had no children. Joseph Warren, who seems to have been the only son to marry, wed Frances (Fannie) Smart Donald, the daughter of other Scottish immigrants. They had nine children: Helen Ferguson, who died at one and a half; George Ferguson; William Donald; Agnes Gleason, who married Markham W. Stackpole; John Duke. 1876-1941; Joseph Warren Jr., 1879-1900;Winifred; Mary Byers, 1885-1983 and Norman, b. 1887. Joseph Warren did not manage the mill; his first cousin, son of a third Smith brother, James did that. Eventually, however it was managed by Joseph Warren’s son George Ferguson Smith. Of Joseph Warren’s children the only ones who appear in this collection are Joseph Warren Jr. and Mary Byers Smith. Joe drowned at the age of twenty-one, just as he was beginning Harvard Dental School. His family gave $10,000 to the school in his memory in 1909-10. Mary Byers, the next to youngest was the family chronicler and donor of these papers. 

“Boss John” tried to create in Andover a Scottish utopia. John’s personality was strictly Calvinist, moralistic, teetotal, abolitionist, tempered with a passionate interest in education and emancipation of all types. His drive took him from a barely literate, penniless boy to a millionaire. He was convinced that the Lord was responsible and that he had a mission to give opportunities to children and the oppressed in America and Scotland so that they might do likewise. Smith and Dove was a model factory. The Free Christian Church, founded by John and other passionate abolitionists in 1846, was also in the Scottish Independent tradition. (John’s brother Peter who married two Yankees in succession and was more assimilated to America than John, did not go over to the Free Church, but stayed with the West Parish Church.) John gave money to build a library “Brechin Hall” at Andover Theological Seminary and a school “The tenement School, now “Andover Hall” at Bechin. He was also responsible for most of the funding for the library in Andover’s (Civil War) Memorial Hall. Since he lived to be ninety, a model patriarch, anniversary notices and expressions of appreciation were copious. He himself presided over a mammoth celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his arrival in America. 

The next generation, Joseph Warren Smith and the son of the third partner in Smith and Dove, George W. Dove, got into financial problems. They used money from John’s estate to speculate with other Bostonians. In 1889 the Pacific Guano Company, the linchpin of a complicated collection of companies, failed. A great deal of money was lost. Neither Joseph Warren Smith nor George W.W. Dove were trusted with finances again and both settled down to live pleasant country squire lives. Joseph hunted in the southern United States. George, whose papers are collected in Ms S 158, traveled. Joseph wrote amusing short pieces for newspapers, which were collected into books. 

Information on the Smiths has been gleaned from the following sources: John Smith’s diary of the trip to Scotland, 1826-27 in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, April 1970 and Peter Smith’s autobiography in Memorials of Peter Smith (1881). There is an unfinished biography of John by F.B. Makepeace, minister of the Free Christian Church in this collection. In the family Vertical File under “Mary Byers Smith”, there is a typed collection of stories written in 1930 dealing with her family. 

SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE 

The material consists chiefly of correspondence, journals, addresses, historical sketches and newspaper clippings. It has been divided into eight sections, called sub-groups, six for family members, one for the Smith and Dove Company and one for the Pacific Guano Company. 

The first section consists of three letters by Janet Middleton Smith, 1752-1839, written to her son John Smith in Glasgow when hw was leaving for America. 

John Smith’s own material, which makes up the second section, is much more extensive. The first item is a letter from Halifax, Nova Scotia to his brother James in Glasgow, describing his sea voyage. (He soon left Halifax for Boston.) Next chronologically are transcribed (typed) letters to his mother and sister written between 1818 and 1824, which, with some commentary, were bound as “Early Letters from John Smith to His Mother”. Between 1848 and 1854 John wrote to his daughter Helen at Bradford Academy and his son Joseph. Twenty-one originals are gathered here: there are twenty-two typed letters. The extra one describes what turned out to be the fatal illness of John Middleton Smith, his oldest son. There follows a typed copy of the journal which he kept on his first visit to Scotland in 1826-7 which was printed in the Essex Institute Historical Collections in 1970. (Mary Byers Smith was sure that the original diary had been destroyed when the first typed copy was made in 1887, intended for Makepeace’s biography of John Smith.) There is a manuscript of “Addresses of John Smith>>> 1866 on the Fiftieth Anniversary of His Landing in the United States.” This original also contains addresses of Peter Smith and John Dove, which a typed copy found with the original does not. There follow clippings concerning the celebration of this fiftieth anniversary, his appointment as a Burgess of Brechin in 1871 and his eightieth birthday in 1876. The original 1871 resolution by the town of Brechin and the 1876 letters from the Andover theological Seminary and Memorial Library are filled with the clippings. There are also notices, resolutions and clippings from the time of his death in 1886. There is also the unfinished manuscript biography by F. B. Makepeace. Last in this John Smith material in one volume of the Bible, given to him by Agnes Gleason in Glasgow, 12 August 1816 when he left for America. 

The third section consists of material by John Smith’s children. John Middleton Smith, 1830-1851 and Helen Gavin, b. 1835 wrote to their father in Andover from Saco, Maine, where they were spending the summers in 1845 and 1847. Three of these, from 1845, are typed copies: the 1847 letter is original. 

Joseph Warren Smith, b. 1831 married Fannie S. Donald in 1865. Their marriage certificate has been preserved. Fannie saved memoranda on the family: a notebook and clippings. There is also the copy of an address at her funeral in 1929. 

The fourth section consists of material on their children. There are correspondence and clippings concerning the memorial to Joseph Warren Smith, Junior and a badge from the 1896 250^th anniversary of the town, worn by Mary Byers Smith, then a pupil at Miss Slason’s school. 

The fifth section consists of a thirty-four page manuscript autobiography by Peter Smith, which was later incorporated into a memorial volume. 

Fannie Donald Smith saved a few items concerning her parents: a poem and clippings from their Golden Wedding and a resolution on the death of her father William C. Donald, by the free Christian Church in 1907. These make up the sixth sub-group. 

The seventh consists of material on Smith and Dove Company. There is a typed copy of an anonymous “Historical Facts, including Addresses on the Tariff Question by Mr. John Smith, Delivered in Andover, Mass., 1828”. Following that is another historical article on “Smith and Dove Manufacturing Company - John Smith – John Dove”, which exists in the original typed form and a more modern typed copy. Both these items date from the 1880s. 

The last sub-group consists of photocopies of clippings from Boston newspapers concerning the failure of the Pacific Guano Company in 1889. 

Separated from these manuscripts and cataloged separately are one hundred and thirty-six photographs and eight daguerreotypes. Printed books and off prints of articles have been separated from the manuscripts. 

Processed by Mary F. Morgan, February 1983.