The James M. Smith family collection (121 items) contains letters and other materials related to James Murdock Smith of northern New York. The Correspondence series (114 items) includes Smith's correspondence from 1834-1889. Smith received 33 letters from his father, H. D. Smith, whose letters often pertain to politics, railroad construction and finance, and economic conditions in New York State. Among other subjects, he mentioned improvements to the town of Gouverneur (September 3, 1856), "unusually frequent" bankruptcies in Ogdensburg (January 3, 1854), Democratic Party factions, the Know-Nothings, and slavery and abolitionists. Smith's professional correspondence includes letters from New York Congressman Solomon G. Haven, who discussed the Dred Scott case (January 13, 1857), and from philanthropist Philo Parsons, who wrote about his plans to build a large park in Detroit, Michigan (December 8, 1873).
The series also contains personal letters that Smith received from family members, including his mother, Harriet Smith; his sisters, Esther M. Thrall and Louisa L. Anthony; and his aunt, Esther Doty. The Smith family reported news of Gouverneur, New York, and Doty commented on life in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the 1850s, where she encountered mixed-race Native Americans (December 3, 1851). Many of the later letters concern James M. Smith's interest in genealogy. Smith also wrote 6 letters to his wife, Margaret, mentioning a cholera epidemic (August 28, 1852) and travel in southern Wisconsin (November 16, 1862), among other topics.
The Genealogy, Writings, and Ephemera series (7 items) includes 3 essays about the family of H. D. Smith, a political speech, and a newspaper clipping and printed advertisement regarding a historical work by R.W. Judson.
James Murdock Smith was born in East Poultney, Vermont, on August 23, 1816, the son of Harvey Douglass Smith (1789-1864) and Harriet Murdock. Around 1824, the family moved to Gouverneur, New York, where H. D. Smith continued his political career, serving in the New York state legislature in 1829. James M. Smith studied law with the firm Bishop & Thompson of Granville, New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1837. The following year, he moved to Buffalo, New York, where he established a law firm with Henry W. Rogers and John J. Leonard; his subsequent legal partners included Solomon G. Haven. Smith had a brief career as a bank cashier in the mid- to late 1850s and returned to legal practice in the early 1860s. In 1873, he became a judge of the superior court of Buffalo, and he served until his retirement in 1887. Smith and his first wife, Martha Washington Bradley (d. 1841) married in June 1840 and had one son, who died young. Smith married his second wife, Margaret Louisa Sherwood, in June 1845; they had two surviving children, Margaret L. (m. Robert P. Wilson) and Philip Sherwood (b. 1863). James Murdock Smith died on November 27, 1899.
