Lydia Hamilton Smith

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lydia Hamilton Smith

Lydia Hamilton Smith (1815–1884) was born in Adams County, Pennsylvania, USA in February 1815. Lydia Hamilton Smith was one quarter African American. Her mother was a free biracial woman of Caucasian and African American descent and her father was Caucasian of Irish descent. Smith married a free black man, Jacob Smith, with whom she had two sons. He died in 1852. She moved to Gettysburg and worked as a housekeeper to lawyer, later congressman, Thaddeus Stevens. She continued to work for him until his death in 1868.[1][2][3]

Smith was described as "giving great attention to her appearance" and that in later years Smith had her clothes made to resemble those of Mary Lincoln.[4]Carl Sandburg described Smith as "a comely quadroon with Caucasian features and a skin of light-gold tint, a Roman Catholic communicant with Irish eyes ... quiet, discreet, retiring, reputed for poise and personal dignity."[5] Smith had two sons, William and Isaac, by her late husband, Jacob Smith, and she and Stevens raised the latter's nephews, whom he adopted in the 1840s.[6] On April 2, 1861 Smith's oldest son, William Smith, fatally shot himself in the presence of his mother while handling a pistol at the home of Thaddeus Stevens. William Smith was 26 years old and working as a shoemaker in Lancaster, Pennsylvania when he shot himself.[7]

While Smith was private about her personal life, during her time with Stevens, neighbors considered her his common law wife,[8][9] and opposition newspapers claimed she was frequently called "Mrs. Stevens" by people who knew her.[10] According to Sandburg,[5] she invested in real estate and other businesses and owned a prosperous boarding house.[2] But no evidence exists as to the exact nature of the relationship between Stevens and Smith. In the one brief surviving letter from Stevens to her, he addresses her as "Mrs. Smith". Family members also asked Stevens to be remembered to "Mrs. Smith".[11] Smith was at Stevens's bedside when he died in 1868, along with his nephews Simon and Thaddeus Stevens, Jr., two African American nuns, and several other individuals.[12] Under Stevens's will, Smith was allowed to choose between a lump sum of $5,000 or a $500 annual allowance; she was also allowed to take any furniture in his house.[13] With the inheritance, she purchased Stevens's house, where she had lived for many years, and the adjoining lot.[14] She died in 1884.

In popular culture

In Steven Spielberg's 2012 film Lincoln, Smith was portrayed by actress S. Epatha Merkerson.

Notes and references

  1. ↑ John B. Sanford, A Book of American Women (University of Illinois, 1995), pages 48
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Who was Lydia Hamilton Smith? | Stevens & Smith Historical Site". Stevensandsmith.org. Retrieved 2013-02-08. 
  3. ↑ "Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith | Stevens & Smith Historical Site". Stevensandsmith.org. Retrieved 2013-02-08. 
  4. ↑ Thomas Frederick Woodley, The Great Leveler: Thaddeus Stevens. Stackpole Sons; (1937), pages 149
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years (Houghton Mifflin, 2002), page 274
  6. ↑ Zeitz, Joshua (November 12, 2012). "Fact-Checking 'Lincoln': Lincoln's Mostly Realistic; His Advisers Aren't". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 12, 2012. 
  7. ↑ Brubaker, Jack (March 15, 2013). "Lydia Smith's son shot himself". Intelligencer Journal Lancaster New Era. Retrieved April 1, 2013. 
  8. ↑ Richard Nelson Current, Thaddeus Stevens: The Man and the Politician (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1939), page 122
  9. ↑ Thomas Frederick Woodley, The Great Leveler: Thaddeus Stevens. Stackpole Sons; (1937), pages 149
  10. ↑ Thomas Frederick Woodley, The Great Leveler: Thaddeus Stevens. Stackpole Sons; (1937), pages 149
  11. ↑ Beverly Wilson Palmer, ed., Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, 1997, page 219
  12. ↑ James Albert Woodburn, The Life of Thaddeus Stevens (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1913), page 584
  13. ↑ Hans Louis Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), page 244
  14. ↑ Sherene Baugher and Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, editors, Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes (Springer, 2010), pages 120–121
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.