William Custer Smith: Harland Smith

JACOB SMITH > WILLIAM CUSTER SMITH m Mary Ann Munson > HARLAND SMITH

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Harland Smith was the third child born to William Custer Smith and Mary Ann Munson. He was born
02 Nov 1861 in Grant County, Wisconsin and came with his parents to a farm two miles west of Plainfield, in neighboring Butler County, Iowa in the fall of 1865.

Harland and Fannie
Photos from Tom Rasmussen

On 12 Aug 1881, he married Miss Fannie Stout Magoon, daughter of Lowell Magoon and Rebecca Davis in Plainfield. She was born on 14 Jan 1863 in Fayette County, Iowa.

Information I recently found about Harland comes from the reminisces of Alyce Smith, Tom Rasmussen's mother and granddaughter of Harland.  Tom has posted much of this information. I'll transcribe portions below and you can see the original page 1 document here.

Page 1 of Alyce Smith Rasmussen Memories
Courtesy Tom Rasmussen

"My grandfather, Harland Smith, and his father, William Custer Smith, raced horses. Wm. Smith owned a farm 2 miles west of Plainfield, Ia. There was a race track on this farm. They went all around the mid-west to harness races - fairs as well as regular racing events.

By, the way, Wm C got his middle name, Custer, because George Custer's family (ed note: Emanuel Custer was George's father and Jacob Smith's neighbor) of the Smith's when they lived in Belmont County, Ohio.

After Mary Munson Smith died, Wm C. married again and shortly thereafter, died. His widow and her children got that farm and Harland and Fannie Magoon Smith, his wife, were left without anything but a couple of horses and sulkies and some paraphenalia.* My dad, William Lowell Smith, and his father now could only race occasionally and much to their chagrin, unsuccessfully. It was in their blood, however, so they had a difficult time of letting go and finding gainful employment. I think maybe my grandfather never did. I know my grandmother Fannie was the one who earned a living to make ends meet.*"

This does explain why I had difficulty figuring out what exactly Harland did for a living. Alyce goes on to discuss her father and then I discovered Harland was a one-eyed man!

"As a young girl, I remember Harland only from him telling about his artificial eye and how he got it while chopping wood and a piece flying into his eye cutting his eyeball. I also remember his dying. He had asthma very often and very seriously. He died from it. We went to his bedside to tell him goodbye. His breathing was something I can still hear - and the smell of something steaming on the stove - tincture of benzine (?) - to help him breathe."

Harland and Fannie had four children:

Percy & Edna Smith Corey

1. Orrin Smith, born 1882 and died in 1889.

2. Edna Mae Smith, born 05 Jul 1885 outside of Plainfield. She married Percy Corey on 02 Jun 1934
in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Percy was born 09 Feb 1892. After living in Minnesota for many years, they moved to southern California, not too far from sister Leona Smith Spurgeon. Edna died 09 Jan 1959 in Long Beach and Percy on 04 Nov 1955 in Los Angeles County. They had no children.

3. William Lowell Smith was born 18 Feb 1890 outside of Plainfield. He married, Hazel Parks 12 Jul 1916 in Nashua. Hazel was born 10 Dec 1891 in Nashua, the daughter of Fred Parks and Minnie Alice Hicok. They had two children, Burton and Alyce (the author of the above letter). I'll write more about WL Smith in a later post.

4. Leona Smith was born 26 Apr 1895 outside of Plainfield. She married Walter Kermit Spurgeon, son of a local grocer/pastor on 27 Dec 1916 in Polk County. I have written about them before here and here. They had one child, Richard Kermit Spurgeon (1920-2000). After leaving Iowa, they settle for several years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Walter was in real estate sales.He had a sister living there as well and his asthma demanded a change in weather. When they moved to California, he worked as a grocery clerk.  He died on 20 Jul 1961 in Los Angeles County and she on 09 May 1976 in San Diego County

Harland died of complications of asthma and a cerebral hemorrhage on 21 Nov 1933 at home. Fannie would suffer a stroke in 1942 and would live until 31 Mar 1944.

This certainly clears up a lot about William Custer Smith as well. Thanks to Alyce Rasmussen (1924-2012), may she always rest in peace, for having the foresight to jot things like this down and to Tom Rasmussen for sharing his family history.

* Please see the new, updated information regarding the property of William Custer Smith after his death, here.

Walter Kermit Spurgeon Gets Robbed

Jacob Smith > William Custer Smith > Harland Smith > Leone Smith married Walter Spurgeon

Leone Smith was the youngest child of Harland Smith and Fannie McGoon. Harland was the third child of William Custer Smith and Mary Ann Munson. Leone was born in 1895 in Plainfield, Bremer County, Iowa.

She married Walter Kermit Spurgeon, son of Sidney Adam Spurgeon and Sarah Carlton. After their
marriage, the Spurgeon's moved around a bit, landing sometime in the 1920s in Del Rio, Bernalillo, New Mexico where he was in real estate sales. They later they moved to Long Beach, California. During the war years, Long Beach was booming and shipyards were churning out ship repairs and transporting cargo like crazy to aid the war effort.

Walter Kermit Spurgeon and Leone Smith Spurgeon

Walter got a job as a checker in a local grocery store and they settled in not too far from Leone's sister, Edna Smith Corey and her husband Percy.

While not the Long Beach location,
this is an example of what the Mayfair
stores looked like in  the era

On September 11, 1952, two masked robbers entered the market through the rear door and after having the snack bar clerk clean out her register, they ordered, at gunpoint, 50-year-old Walter, who was having his coffee at the snack bar, to open the rest of the registers and cleaned out all the store's money. It was the second time in less than a month the store had been robbed. The robbers in the earlier robbery had pistol-whipped two employees. This time, no one was injured. The robbers got away with $5,000 in cash and checks. It had to be terrifying for the clerks, including Walter.

It took a bit of time and not before there was a total of 17 market robberies totaling $40,000 in losses, but the police finally got their men.  Three suspects accepted a plea deal to lesser charges. The fourth, William Ellhamer, chose to go to trial. Despite being fingered by the three other gang members, Ellhamer refused to answer questions when being arrested and at trial, presented an alibi witness. He was convicted of three of the nine counts of armed robbery and received a sentence of 10 years to life and initially served his time at Chino Men's prison. His wife divorced him. As of 1962, he was still imprisoned, now at San Quentin, a recent appeal having been denied. Ellhamer, a WWII US Navy veteran, died in 2010 in Orange County alone, with no survivors.

Walter Spurgeon died at 64 in Long Beach in 1961. Leone lived many more years, dying in 1976 in Spring Valley, San Diego County, near where her only child, Richard Kermit Spurgeon resided. Leone's sister Edna died in 1959.