People
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- Mary Anna "Minnie" (Laird) Smith
- She was born in Ohio to Joseph A. Laird. Her father was a farmer. In her marriage record, her mother is given as Elizabeth Kitchen. Her mother died in 1868, when Minnie was eight years old. US Census records show her father remarried to a woman named Sarah. The 1880 US Census shows Minnie teaching school at the age of nineteen. She married Franklin R. Smith in 1884. in 1892, she moved with her husband Franklin R. Smith to Colorado Springs, Colorado because he suffered from tuberculosis. They moved to Grand Junction in 1895, and lived in several locations. In her home next to a saloon on Main Street, she once had to forcibly remove a drunken man from the floor who had climbed into her apartment through the window. They lived in the Crawford Addition, in a location near the Masonic Temple, and finally at 1130 Chipeta Avenue. She was a seamstress, and took in sewing until her husband could get his medical practice established. She helped her husband with an apple orchard that he had established in Fruitridge, and was very particular about how the apples were packed. When her husband’s health failed, they moved to a ranch in Imperial Valley, California. She moved back to Grand Junction after he died. She was a member of the Congregational Church in Grand Junction and a very religious woman. She believed that the rapture would happen in her lifetime, and that she would be given a kingdom to rule over, because she had lived an exemplary life. When she found out she was dying, she discarded all of her religious beliefs and would not let a minister see her on her death bed. Grandmother of Lina Mae (Smith) Biggs and Silmon L. Smith.