Leon Elton Smith

Leon Elton Smith, eldest of the three children of Vivian Blanche Martin and Ray Burnette Smith, was born 11 June 1911 in Martintown, Green County, WI, the village founded by his great-grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. Leon was his own third cousin. His mother and father were second cousins. Leon was along two different lines of descent a great-great-grandson of John Hart and Ruth Brown, a couple who had settled in the late 1840s at Cadiz, a tiny hamlet that no longer exists, but while it did, was located a mile or so north of the spot where Martintown would rise. Additionally, on the Martin and Smith sides, his parents’ marriage and his birth marked the merging of two families who had lived as neighbors for generations over a century and a half, ever since the colonial days of Guilford County, NC. Some of the Smith land in Green County was a parcel acquired in 1870 by Ray’s grandfather Miles Smith from Nathaniel Martin.

Vivian and Ray lost a baby when Leon was an infant. In 1913, his younger brother Lyle was born. This completed the family. Leon and Lyle were close during boyhood. They could be often be found out on countless fishing expeditions along Honey Creek, sliding down makeshift mud ramps into the Pecatonica River, skating on the river’s ice in winter, or zooming down snowy or muddy hillsides on skis made of salvaged barrel staves.

Brother Lyle would later write of what an idyllic childhood it had seemed to be, but the period was stressful for the boys’ parents. By the 1910s, Martintown’s heyday had already passed it by. An increasing global economy was making it impossible for the village’s cottage industries to remain competitive, and farming -- the livelihood Ray Smith attempted to pursue at first -- generated minimal rewards. Ray grew dissatisfied and began seeking out other ventures, one of which involved a move to Winslow, Stephenson County, IL -- Martintown’s sister village. Winslow wasn’t very big, but it was at least double the size of Martintown and there were more employment opportunities.

In 1923, Ray’s parents Chester Smith and Diana (aka Diena) Brown Smith, who had long been a Green County farming couple themselves, chose to retire to Winslow. By that point, both Chester and Diana were in their seventies and Chester was an invalid. He had lost part of a leg in a hay mower accident years before and had given up getting around on his wooden leg, turning to full-time use of his wheelchair. (The couple are shown at right in front of their Winslow residence.) Ray pointed out to his wife and sons that it would make sense to move in with his parents and help take care of them. They had already combined forces in that way earlier in the decade on the Green County farm. (Ray, Vivian, and the boys are shown in the 1920 census as part of Chester and Diana’s household, Ray’s stint as a manufacturer’s sales representative having fizzled out.) The living arrangement had the fringe benefit of cutting down on the immediate family expenses. Leon and Lyle were called upon regularly to help shift their grandfather from bed to wheelchair or bathroom as needed, and help roll him along on outdoor excursions. During the 1920s their other grandfather -- actually step-grandfather -- Elwood Bucher was also an invalid living in Winslow, but Leon and Lyle were seldom if ever called upon to help with his care, because Elwood’s debilitation was apparently caused by something Vivian felt the boys shouldn’t be exposed to.

When not in school or helping with Chester, Leon and Lyle were able to earn pocket change hunting and fishing. Fish could be sold to housewives in Martintown or Winslow on the way back from the streams. Rabbits, quail, and pheasant, typically hunted in the autumn after the weather had progressed into nightly hard frosts, could be cleaned and hung from the porch rails in the evening to freeze overnight, and be sold over the course of the week. The boys also hunted otter, muskrat, fox, possum, and even skunk and made additional cash from the sale of the pelts they cured. Earlier in their boyhoods had used the tactic of skunk-hunting as a means to skip school. They would show up reeking of the previous evening’s prey and the teacher would send them home rather than put up with the stench in her classroom all day. Leon’s habit of playing hookey meant he was set back a grade in elementary school and then had to repeat his senior year of high school. He ended up graduating from Winslow High School as part of the Class of 1931 rather than the Class of 1929. He was one of only fifteen seniors that year. Two of the others were his second cousins Leah Merle Hastings and Barbara Anna Hastings. (Three other second cousins, Max Martin, Alice Martin, and Ray Bucher, had been in the Class of 1930, the one Leon had been part of when he first entered Winslow High.) The photograph at left was scanned from Leah’s copy of the 1931 Win-Nel, the Winslow High yearbook. His uncle Nathaniel Martin served on the board of directors of Winslow High for all of the years Leon was a student.

Grandma Diana passed away in early 1927. In 1930, Elwood Bucher also perished and Leon’s maternal grandmother Laura Hart Martin Bucher chose to leave Winslow in favor of Orangeville, farther east in Stephenson County. Various other relatives had been abandoning the community throughout Leon’s lifetime and now it came time for Leon to do so as well. Leon went to Colfax, Whitman County, WA, where Vivian’s brother Clark Fuller Martin had gone as a young man in 1922, in order to work at a creamery with Elwood’s younger brother Charles Benedict Bucher, who had migrated to Colfax in the 1910s. Lyle, who would make his own such relocation at the end of the decade, accompanied his big brother on the trip west (or at least, one of the trips west). The brothers set out in a decrepit Model T Ford. Going over the Rockies, the differential gave out. The Smith boys hitch-hiked fifty miles back to civilization, obtained parts to attempt a repair, and did the work themselves, being too poor to have the job done by professionals. The Ford only made it a fraction of a mile before the diffential broke down again. This time Leon and Lyle simply abandoned the car by the roadside.

Leon would stay in the Pacific Northwest for good. It was not a long period of time. By the time he left Winslow, he had only a short fraction of his life left to him. The problem was that he was driven to desperation by migraines. The headaches were so intense that Lyle would later speculate his brother had become afflicted with a brain tumor. Finally Leon decided he could not bear to continue living with such pain. He committed suicide 7 February 1936 in Colfax. He had never married and had not produced children. Leon is therefore part of a rare sub-category among the sixty great-grandchildren of Nathaniel and Hannah. Almost all of that generation who survived to adulthood proceeded to live to advanced ages. Leon is one of only three who did not.

Shown here is the 1930/31 Winslow High School basketball team along with their coach, Clarence C. Clarno, as pictured in the 1931 Win-Nel, the school yearbook. Leon -- who as it happens was the Athletics editor of that edition of the Win-Nel -- is second from the right in the back row, next to Coach Clarno. He played guard and forward. His brother Lyle is on the far left of the same row, his arm nearly at the edge of the image. Leon’s nickname on the team was “Smitty” while Lyle was “Smith Brother.”

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