Andrew Jackson Smith, M. D. During his years of active practice as a physician and surgeon in Oklahoma, the services and attainments of Doctor Smith have ranked him as one of the leading medical men of the state, and he enjoys a fine practice at Pawhuska, where he has been a resident several years. Doctor Smith began to combat the difficulties of life at an early age. Many years were spent in the ranks of teachers, and he finally graduated from that profession into medicine. he has always been very progressive, and has kept himself by study and by attendance at postgraduate schools abreast of all the advancements in his science and art.

He comes of one of the oldest families in the State of Illinois, where he was born at Marion, November 21, 1855, a son of John M. and Elizabeth (Spiller) Smith. His father was born in the same general locality of Illinois in 1817, the year preceding that state’s admission to the Union, a fact which of itself is evidence of the early settlement of the family there. Grandfather John Smith at one time owned all the land upon which the present city of Abington, Virginia, is located. He was a native of Virginia, of Scotch parentage, while his wife, Barbara Rust, was a native of Germany. In 1812 these good people left their Eastern homes in Virginia and traveled all the way across country to the Territory of Illinois, the grandmother riding horseback the entire distance, using a side-saddle. They were among the very early settlers of Illinois, and both are buried near the old farm in the State of Missouri. All their children were born in Illinois. John M. Smith spent the first fifty-two years of his life within a few miles of his birthplace, and in 1868 sold out his Illinois farm and moved to Stoddard County, Southeastern Missouri, where he continued farming until his death, June 13, 1878. He married Elizabeth Spiller, who was born in Tennessee, May 28, 1823, and died in Missouri in 1886.

Doctor Smith is the sixth in a family of nine children, two of whom are still living. The first fourteen years of his life were spent on a farm, and his education up to that time had depended upon the limited facilities of district schools. He then entered the academy at Bloomfield, Missouri, of which his older brother, George W. Smith, was at that time principal. After spending two years in that academy he qualified as a teacher, and from the age of sixteen followed that as u profession for twenty years. In the meantime he had continued his education in the Cape Girardeau State Normal School of Missouri. For several years he was principal of the schools at Maiden, Missouri, and for three years was principal of one of the city schools in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In the meantime he had taken up the study of medicine, and secured a license to practice a number of years before his graduation from a regular medical college. Doctor Smith is a graduate of the Kansas Medical College in 1897, and in 1899 did post-graduate work at the Post-Graduate School of Medicine in Chicago.

On April 8, 1894, Doctor Smith, seeking a more congenial climate than that to which he had previously been exposed, located at Ponca City, Oklahoma. He practiced there a number of years with success, and in 1907 removed to Foraker in Osage County, and built there one of the finest homes in the entire county. Three years later he exchanged that home for the one he now occupies in Pawhuska. Doctor Smith has been prospered in a business way, and now owns a 1,500-acre ranch in Osage County.

He is a member of the various medical societies, a member of the Methodist Church, and is affiliated with the Masonic order, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias. On October 8, 1893, at Wichita, Kansas, he married Ida S. Auchmoody, who was born in Nebraska, a daughter of W. H. and Mary Auchmoody. Doctor Smith and wife are the parents of four children: George Auchmoody, born September 24, 1900; Wright Spiller, born January 16, 1905; Ida Elizabeth, born December 28, 1907; and Andrew J., Jr., born December 5, 1909. These children are receiving the best of advantages in the public schools. Mrs. Smith’s parents resided in their home for several years, the father dying there, and her mother being still with them.