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Welcome to our news and history blog!

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Re-introducing Ebenezer Smith (died 1873) and his wife, Rhoda Page and Charles E. Smith

"I was just thinking about you the other day," said Karen Fredericks, the collections manager of the Greenwich Historical Society said to me. I laughed and replied, "Good thoughts, I hope!" We enjoyed a good laugh over that one. 

The reason? This was news that made my day. 

Many years ago our grand-aunt, Miss Mildred Mead, gave the Greenwich Historical Society four small portraits on permanent loan. 

Go here to see a listing of the Smith Family Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut. 



The gravestone of Ebenezer Smith 1791-1873. Picture taken September 18, 2008.

Ebenezer Smith was the father of Caroline Mills Smith Mead, the second wife of William H. Mead whose home was where Cos Cob Elementary School is today. Smith was also the father of Greenwich Town Clerk George Jackson Smith. He was the owner of the Bush Holley House, operating it with his wife as a boarding house for railroad workers. That was in the pre-Art Colony days. 

Ebenezer Smith Portrait. Greenwich Historical Society Archives. 


Pictured above is the portrait of Ebenezer Smith. No date is marked anywhere on the front or back of the portrait. My unscientific estimate dates this to his middle-aged years, perhaps in the 1830s or 1840s. 

Though she is not interred in the Cos Cob plot, Karen showed me a similar portrait of Ebenezer's wife, Rhoda Page: 

Portrait of Rhoda Page, wife of Ebenezer Smith. Greenwich Historical Society Archives.  

Finally, we saw this portrait of Charles E. Smith. He is also not interred in the Mead plot at Cos Cob:

Portrait of Charles E. Smith. Greenwich Historical Society Archives. 

Last -but certainly not least- I saw for the first time a portrait of of Caroline Mills Smith, the second wife of William H. Mead, who made her own remarkable imprint on the history of the Mead family and the village of Cos Cob. 






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