- "Those having torches
will pass
- them on to others." Upon her death,
Aubust 11, 1959, Elizabeth Smelser, '00, retired school teacher, left the bulk of her
estimated $125,000 estate towards establishing a scholarship fund for the needy Richmond
high school students desiring to attend Earlham College. The Smelser, a prominent
pioneer family of Wayne and Union Counties, have sent over 50 of its own members to
Earlham.
- In 1788m the Peter Smelser and Nicholas Smith
families emigrated from Maryland and Pennsylvania to Kentucky. Peter Smith married
Margaret Smelser in 1807 and Jacob Smelser married Elizabeth Smith in 1811: sister and
brother of one family to sister and borther of the other family. The Peter Smiths
came to Indiana in 1820 and settled in Wayne County three springs later.
- Two granchildren of Jacob
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- Smelser were graduated from Earlham in 1868: Isham
Sedfwick and Eliza Kate Smelser. Isham married Josephine Beeson (Earlham 1877-1881)
and his brother, richard married Marcia Sutton (Earlham 1877-1881). Kate Smelser
(born six months after the opening of Friends Boarding school in 1847) was a teacher for
over 40 years, and the oldest living woman graduate of Earlham before her death in 1942,
at the age of ninety-five.
- Winfield Smelser, a third
grandchild of Jacob and elizabeth, attended Earlham 1869-70. He married Mary E.
Bulla. Two of their five children are Earlhamites - India Smelser Druley (1904-1905)
and Elizabeth (1900) who was graduated with a Ph. B. in Foreign Languages.
- Elizabeth Smelser was one
of those who lived in a house on top of a hill, and whose view from her window was a poem.
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