Albert Franklin Smith is one of the family lines I have been tracing across the American interior. The records I reviewed place him as the son of John Isaac Smith and Ruanna Hamilton, with the family connected to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, and Kansas. One of the most interesting parts of this branch is how it shows a family spreading westward through multiple states while leaving behind a paper trail in census listings, memorial pages, and obituary records.
Albert Franklin Smith is associated with Mattoon, Illinois, and later with Hutchinson, Kansas, where his obituary says he had lived for 33 years and worked for Wiley’s for 18 years before retiring. He was later buried at Fairlawn Burial Park in Hutchinson. The records also show a birth-year conflict, with some family material giving 1862 while other evidence, including his obituary and age at death, points more strongly to 1867. That kind of mismatch is one reason genealogy is not just about collecting names, but about weighing records carefully.
This line also connects to a larger Smith family network. Material I reviewed links Albert to siblings including Rosa Ann Smith and William H. Smith, showing how one family branch can lead into many others. What makes this line especially worth preserving is that it combines migration, work history, burial records, and family relationships into a story that is larger than one person. Full sources are listed below so anyone interested can review the records and follow the trail further on j03.page.
Sources to list on the website
- Find a Grave memorial for John Isaac Smith
- Find a Grave memorial for Albert Franklin Smith
- Albert Franklin Smith obituary from The Hutchinson News Herald
- 1870 census entry showing Albert F. Smith in East Nelson Township, Moultrie County, Illinois
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