The Smelser Endowment
to Earlham College
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Legacy of an angel
     "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
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.
Mrs M. S. Pollock, who wrote the above article for the Earlhamite, is writing a book about the Smelser.   Anyone knowing about the family may reach her at 2901 Oakridge Drive, Dayton, Ohio.

This came from Polly Pollock's book.

"Asters at Dusk"

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