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TYLER COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
Valerie & Tommy Crook
vfcrook@trellis.net
November 8, 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 295
Tyler
JOHN M. L. SMITH is one of the young business men
of Tyler County and has what is probably the busiest
real estate organization at Middlebourne. He has been
a practical farmer himself, and is also extensively inter-
ested in the oil and gas districts of this section.
Mr. Smith was born May 1, 1892, at Wilbur in Tyler
County, where his father John M. Smith, now in his eighty-
fourth year, is enjoying the comforts of an honorable and
well spent life on his home farm. He was born in Tyler
County in 1837 and has spent all his life there. The grand-
father was also a native of Tyler County, and became
owner of a large area of good farming land. John M.
Smith took up farm work early, pursued it diligently and
persistently through many years, and as a result provided
for his family and accumulated the competency which now
enables him to live retired. In younger years he served
as county assessor, was a member of the board of educa-
tion of his district, and is a stanch republican. As a young
man he entered the Union army with a West Virginia
regiment of infantry, and saw active service until the close
of that struggle. He has been one of the leading sup-
porters of the United Brethren Church in his community.
John M. Smith first married a Miss Morgan, a native of
Tyler County. She died leaving two daughters: Viola,
wife of LeBoy Pierpont, a farmer at Alma, West Virginia;
and Susan C., wife of Henry T. Pratt, a farmer in Tyier
County. The second wife of John M. Smith was Cordelia
A. Underwood, who was born in Tyler County in 1851,
and died at the old home at Jefferson Run in December,
1920. Of her twelve children all but one remain to do
her honor: Benjamin O., a merchant at Parkersburg;
Estella, wife of Henry C. Williamson, a farmer at Friendly
in Tyler County; Bertha, who died at the age of twenty-
five; Florence, living at Alma, widow of Arch C. Moore,
who was a farmer and merchant; Birkley J., who lives
on a part of the old homestead at Wilbur; Wilbur M.,
Phillip A. and Icy, all with their father on the farm; Orla
S., who was a soldier, spending eighteen months in France
and was on the battlefront 100 days, and is now at home;
John M. L.; Maxie and Amy, both at home.
John M. L. Smith attended the rural schools of Tyler
County, took the agricultural course in West Virginia Uni-
versity at Morgantown, and from the age of twenty-two
dill farming on his own account for two years. Since
then he has been dealing in farms and building up an ex-
tensive real estate business with headquarters at Middle-
bourne. He individually owns a number of farms in the
county and is a splendid judge of farm and land values in
general. Since 1919 he has also done a large business in
timber lands, and is financially interested in some of the.
oil and gas operations in the various West Virginia fields.
Mr. Smith is a republican, a member of Middlebourne
Lodge, No. 34, Free and Accepted Masons, and during
the war was associated with the various committees raising
funds and carrying on other patriotic enterprises.
April 25, 1913, Mr. Smith married Miss Nannie Under-
wood, daughter of Lamar and Mary E. (Seckman) Un-
derwood. the latter now deceased. Her father is a worker
in the oil fields and lives at Clarksburg.
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