Background
Philander Smith was the son of David Smith, whose 1801 sawmill in upstate New York gave name to the village of Smith’s Mills before it became Adams (town), New York (after former president John Adams) in 1802.
Philander Smith was the son of David Smith, whose 1801 sawmill in upstate New York gave name to the village of Smith’s Mills before it became Adams (town), New York (after former president John Adams) in 1802.
Philander Smith College is his namesake. His widow Adeline continued to give away his $125,000 fortune to a number of causes for a dozen years after his 1882 death. Her gift that year to the Methodists’ Walden Seminary in Little Rock, Arkansas resulted in its immediate renaming as Philander Smith College.
In 2003, the Historical Association of South Jefferson moved into the former Philander Smith House at 29 East Church Street in Adams, New New York
Adeline M. Smith was memorialized in The Gospel in All Lands 1895, p. 519, so she probably died that year.
The eulogy lists the many donations she made to the church.