A Wilson Family Tree
Notes for Abiel Leonard Smith
Scarsdale Inquirer, 4 May 1945 (obtained from https://news.hrvh.org/veridian/cgi-bin/senylrc?a=d&d=scarsdaleinquire19450504.2.78):
General Abiel Leonard Smith, Soldier of the United States
By Grace Pomeroy Fearon
Forty years of our military history and dim intimations of a past and glamorous age, tread the streets of our village daily in the trim figure of General Abiel Leonard Smith.
The General, who will celebrate his eighty-eighth birthday this July, has still the orderly habits of his life profession. He emerges, at just about the same time each day, from his home on Circle Road where for the last five years he has lived with his daughter, Mrs. Mason Shoup, and her family and erect, with disciplined gait, sets forth on his afternoon constitutional.
His greatest hobby, while in Scarsdale, is walking, and aside from concern for his grandsons in the service, his greatest worry is that, although he believes himself past the age for active service, his neighbors may feel that he is a “slacker.” Week-ends and the summer months, he spends at his three hundred acre farm in Carmel where, since his retirement, the inveterate cavalry officer has kept his horses and where his happiest hours have been spent teaching his grandchildren to ride in his youth his father taught him.
General Smith, to quote from the fine print of an old newspaper, “is the son of Dr. and Mrs. J. D. Smith of Saint Joseph, Missouri, and the grandson of Judge Abiel Leonard, one of the ablest and purest men who ever sat upon the supreme court bench in Missouri, and the nephew of Major Reeves Leonard, as gallant a soldier as ever went forth for the preservation of the union.” From other clippings, we learn that he is also the nephew of Bishop Abiel Leonard, then of the Episcopal diocese of Utah and Nevada. Further pursuit into the past reveals that he is a descendant of the Reverend Abiel Leonard, the famous “fighting chaplain” of General Washington’s revolutionary army.
West Pointer
In 1874, General Smith received his appointment to West Point from Judge I. C. Parker, then congressman from the Saint Joseph district.
“The wisdom exhibited in the selection was apparent to all,” applauds a time-yellowed clipping in the family scrap book. “The boy inherited the pride, the honor, the ambition of a noble ancestry, and his aim, as a boy and man has been to prove himself worthy of the stock from which he came.”
To be sure, this earlier confrere of the present reporter was getting a hitch from hindsight when he wrote that article. “The boy” had already been graduated from the Military Academy, which he had entered with the assistance—not to say connivance—of an examining officer who knew when to be a little vague about birthdays, before he had reached the required age of seventeen. Th[e] youngest boy, therefore, in a class that numbered 168 to begin with, he had learned to do “what was required” and had been graduated fortieth of the forty who finally ran the course. Moreover, he had served eleven years in the Cavalry with the honor and ambition so approvingly described.
Indian Scout
“. . . served as subaltern,” continues the fine print of the old newspaper, “and in command of ‘B’ troop, Fourth Cavalry, in scouting against Cheyennes and Coma[n]ches in Indian Territory, Kansas, and Texas, until December, 1880. * * * Served with ‘B’ troop, Fourth Cavalry, and as battalion adjutant in the removal of the Utes from Uncomphagre, in Colorado, to the White River agency, and in the operations against Apaches in Arizona in 1881. * * * Served with troop in the field in south New Mexico after renegade Apaches in 1882. * * * Served in command of his troop in the field and in post in 1883, until November 15. On leave of absence for two months from that date. * * * Promoted to First Lieutenant June 30, 1883. * * * Served in command of ‘D’ troop, Fourth Cavalry, at the Me[s]calero Indian agency from January 2 to September 5, 1884. * * * Served in command of ‘B’ troop, Fourth Cavalry from September to October 1884. * * * Then served at Jefferson Barracks until April 1886. * * * He volunteered to give up his detail at the Barracks when the Apaches in Arizona broke out in 1885, but was informed that he could not be spared.
“Hostilities continuing, however, he was relieved in 1886. * * * Served in command of ‘B’ troop, in the field in Arizona until June 27, 1886, when at his own request (and in spite of illness) he was allowed to join ‘B’ troop, Fourth Cavalry under Captain H. W. Lawton who was operating against Apaches under Chief Geronimo near Nacon, New Mexico. * * * Served under Lawton until the surrender of the Indians to that gallant officer, and afterwards escorted the renegade Apaches to San Antonio, Texas.”
For his part in that wilderness fighting against the wily Geronimo, the young Lieutenant was breveted Captain in February, 1890.
Geronimo Surrenders
It was a good story in 1896 when the Kansas City paper of Sunday, October 18, carried it in full under the heading, “Geronimo Surrenders” and the subhead, “Captain A. L. Smith, USA, Tells of the Campaign Which Resulted in the Wily Old Apache Chief’s Suppression.”
The story is still good, if the General can be persuaded to tell it—the story of that dogged pursuit by the determined young Lieutenant serving under his good friend Captain Lawton, of the most cunning of the Indian Medicine Men. For Geronimo was not a warrior-chief, explains the General. Natchez was the Chief, a bewildered victim of Geronimo’s vicious scheming. There was the ride over strange wild trails in the black of night, to make the connection that would insure the troop’s supply line, when the Lieutenant, walking for a while to rest his horse, would be driven to the comparative safety of its back again to escape the rattlers he heard signalling in the brush.
In June, 1890, Lieutenant Smith married Miss Florence Compton, daughter of Colonel Charles E. Compton, “one of the best and bravest soldiers in the United States service,” says another of the clippings in the Smith scrap book.
Headed, “A Military Wedding,” that article in the Walla Walla (Washington) Statesman, carried the following subhead: “Bravery and Beauty Joined in Holy Wedlock. Beautiful Flower Decorations and a Fashionable Assemblage.”
A gem of reporting, the article described the wedding in astonishing detail and once more set forth the exploits of the groom in the Indian uprisings, and revealed that the young couple’s wedding trip would be combined with the Lieutenant’s assignment to travel in Germany, France, England and Italy for the purpose of studying military science. The combination worked very well indeed, and the young couple remained in France until their first son was born.
In the Philippines
But the Lieutenant’s career had only begun. He was made Captain of Cavalry in May, 1892 and Captain of Commissary in June of the same year. On the eleventh of March, 1898, he became Major of Commissary (Spanish War) and Lieutenant Colonel in 1901. In 1905 he was a Colonel of Commissary serving in the Philippines.
At that time, the General tells of being sent up into the Manchuoko territory incognito, to “observe” the goings-on of the Japs there. He traveled as an American merchant with his two sons, driving a cart, inquiring at strategic moments for certain produce of the country. He got into trouble with the Japs, however, quite frequently when his poking about became a little too assiduous, and each time that happened, he found himself presenting his faked credentials to the same little Jap officer.
The Jap never seemed to doubt the “merchant’s” word, but the inevitable happened, and he was finally requested to leave the country. Indeed—he was escorted to the ship by the same little Jap officer. The Jap was courteous in his farewells, and just as he was about to go ashore, he clicked his heels, drew himself up in a smart military salute and said, “Goodbye, Colonel.”
“I never fooled him for a moment,” chuckled the General. “And I made a report to headquarters saying that it was useless to send a white man on a job of that sort.”
It was while he was stationed in the Philippines that the General made one of his most acceptable contributions to the life of the armies. He conceived the idea of buying fresh food for the Commissary and traveled to Australia to make the necessary arrangements for the shipment of fresh meat and fruits and even vegetables. That was the first time Commissary officers had thought of supplies except in terms of tin cans, says the General.
Back to Carmel
On September 21, 1916, he became a Brigadier General in the Quartermaster Corps, serving until January 3, 1918, when at his own request he was retired after more than forty years of service in five different conflicts—for he was also in Mexico with General Pershing just before the first World War. His next “station” was his own farm in Carmel where it has been his pleasure and his pride to teach each of his grandchildren to ride a horse as a horse should be ridden.
The reporter was interested to find among the clippings in the family scrap book, a long, and in the fashion of the times, flowery account of the wedding of the General’s sister, Miss Medora Smith, and Wynkoop Kiersted. Their son, Wynkoop Kiersted, and his family, live in Scarsdale on Westminster Road.
The General Smiths had four children. The oldest son was A. Leonard Smith, Jr., whose widow lives on Rodney Road. Dorothy, now Mrs. Mason Shoup, lives on Circle Road. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Compton Smith, USA, is retired now because of disability in the line of duty, and Mrs. John C. Hawkins lives in Lake Forest, Illinois. There are ten grandchildren, five girls and five boys. All five of the boys are in the service, and Charles Compton Smith, Jr., of the AAF, has given his life for his country in the present war.
Years and events, changing customs and emphases, lie between the Indian fighter of 1886 and the flyer of 1941 who died in the performance of his duty, but all along the line, of the General and of his progeny, the words of that reporter of 1880, who has long since written his last story, are still pertinent. The Smiths have, indeed, “inherited the pride, the honor, and ambition of a noble ancestry . . . and their aim has always been to prove themselves worthy of the stock from which they came.”
Note: Some of the information in these pages is uncertain. Please let me know of errors or omissions using the email link above. ...Mike Wilson
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