OBITUARIES.

CHARLES KILGORE SMITH, the first secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society, to whom the formation of the society was due more than to anyone else among its founders, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, February 15th, 1799.

The following sketch of his life and work is abridged from an address given by Dr. George R. Metcalf, of this society, president of the Masonic Veteran Association of Minnesota, at its fifth annual reunion, in St. Paul, January 13th, 1897, as published in the Proceedings of that Association, with the accompanying portrait, which also is kindly supplied by Dr. Metcalf for the present publication.

In 1805 his father removed with his family to a farm near Hamilton, Butler county, Ohio. In the crude schools of the vicinity he received his first educational training, and then he was sent to a grammar school at Oxford, Ohio, out of which institution has since evolved Miami University. Three years of discipline in this school fitted him to become, in 1815, assistant to the clerk of the supreme and common pleas courts of Butler county. This position he held until 1821, when he was elected recorder of Butler county, to the duties of which were added in 1827 those of treasurer. Both of these offices he filled until he resigned them in 1835, to become the cashier of the Bank of Hamilton. He was admitted to the bar in 1840, and in 1842 his connection with the bank terminated and he entered actively upon the duties of his profession. March, 1848, he was elected an Associate Judge. He resigned from the bench on his appointment by President Taylor to the position of Territorial Secretary of Minnesota.

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We gain a clear conception of the man by following the enterprises for the advancement of Minnesota in which he was a moving spirit. He was the founder and organizer of the first Masonic Lodge in the Territory. As an Odd Fellow, also, he was a charter member of the first lodge established in St. Paul. He was the originator of the public school system of

the Territory, culminating in the Territorial University, of which he was appointed one of the first Board of Regents. Furthermore, it was largely through his efforts that two of the churches of St. Paul had their beginnings.

He joined with others in the organization of the Minnesota Historical Society, and mainly through his exertions it was incorporated by the first territorial legislature. The first and second numbers of its Annals (32 and 184 pages, respectively) were issued under his supervision in 1850 and 1851, and were widely distributed by him, as secretary both of the territory and of the society, to induce an interest among the people of the older states in the history, condition, and undeveloped resources of the new territory, and to attract immigrants to it.

But in a new country where a certain pliancy of disposition and a large measure of political finesse were necessary to insure success in life, it may be easily understood that a man who always said what he thought, and acted up to the level of his convictions, found many ready to antagonize his schemes of building up the varied interests of the infant commonwealth. The newspapers of the time fairly bristle with items aimed at the Territorial Secretary, and from the same sources it may be readily proved that he paid back his tormentors in their own coin with more than legal interest. Careful inquiry has failed to find a reasonable explanation of these contests, for no two informants agree as to the causes.

Mr. Smith resigned his secretaryship in 1851 and returned to Hamilton, Ohio, where he purchased the old homestead of his father in Butler county. The remainder of his life was devoted to the cultivation of his farm, with very little attention to public affairs. Apoplexy was the cause of his death September 28th, 1866, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

An old and life-long friend said of him after his death: "He was a man of intensified character and most strongly marked individuality, though far less selfish than such men are apt to be. There was very little of compromise in his disposition. What he was, he was decidedly. His friends were unqualifiedly such, and his enemies, for such a man could not well be without enemies, were equally pronounced. His friendship was strong and enduring, while his remembrance of