Susannah Smith

Marble Springs 2.0 screenshot of Susannah Smith

What we know

1847 - 1882
Married to Herbert Jenkins Smith, the town postmaster and general lush. Three children: (Little Nellie Smith) lived and two daughters (Janet Marian Smith and Nanette Victoria Smith) died in infancy.

Literary Society

Susannah took in the literary
papers from Denver’s Literary Society,
Boulder’s Fortnightly¹,
and a dozen extra from back East.
Never wrote them back;
paid in Rachel Cole’s name.
Read by the firelight
smoking up through choke-grasses.
Read by the sunlight
filtering down through summer aspens.

Sorted the mail
and she delivered it all
up Crystal River Valley—
she sorted the bars too, till
Ruby snapped it out
that her drunk husband
wouldn’t be found.

Met the grizzly over by Alvina’s—
and it was surmised² that her eyes
were too weak to shoot it.

The literary papers still
piled up all that year until
the dues ran out.

Footnotes

1. Ladies would form literary societies and meet every week or so to discuss books, the news of the day, and other suitable matters. Members would be expected to contribute to their literary paper. The Boulder Fortnightly was one of many literary papers, which would feature reviews, full novels, and other erudite musings to fill the time.

2. Item 2471. Adulterations. … Thus the housewife who sets about the discovery of some supposed evil may, be error or accident … do herself more injury in an hour than she would suffer from adulteration in a lifetime.
Enquire within upon Everything

Connections

Portal

Sources

Literary Societies
Graff, Gerald and Michael Warner. The Origins of Literary Studies in America. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc., 1989.

Harding, Thomas S. College Literary Societies: Their Contribution to Higher Education in the United States 1815-1876. New York: Pageant Press International Corp., 1971.

Mail
Chauncy, Thomas. Early Colorado Mails. n.d. Availableat the Western History Department, Denver PublicLibrary.

Portal caption and links

A silhouette of a grizzly bear standing on its rear legs.
Alvina Heollstar

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