Jennie Smith
The Railroad Evangelist
Jennie Smith was known for her work with “Railroad men.” She was drawn to and relied on these workers due to being paralyzed from typhoid fever. Railhands carried her gurney when she traveled in the more spacious baggage cars.
Smith was struck by their noble and generous work, yet they were often spiritually neglected. After her healing, she chose as her work to minister among “railroad people” and was made the National Superintendent of the Railroad Department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. So touched were the workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad by Smith’s tireless ministry and efforts to obtain for them a “mansion in the skies” that they sought to raise funds sufficient to purchase her an earthly home. This fund drive was limited to B&O Railroad employees and was not to exceed $1 per person.
By 1883 she became a resident of Mountain Lake Park and went on to own and operate the Jennie Smith Hotel which later became the Thoburn Inn.
She took efforts to inform others of her work by writing Ramblings in Beulah Land, volumes 1 and 2, published in 1881 and 1882, and Incidents and Experiences of a Railroad Evangelist (1920). Despite so many years physically impaired Smith continued her ministry until her death on September 3, 1924, at the age of 82.
In 1876 Smith wrote Valley of Baca, wherein she recorded her birth, youth, sufferings, and triumphs. Smith was the first child born to James and Eliza Smith on August 18, 1842, in Vienna, Ohio, west of Warren and north of Youngstown, a few miles from the Pennsylvania border.
Smith is buried in the Oakland Cemetery next to her dear friend, Maria Adelaide Sherman. They share a headstone.
Jennie Smith [1842 - 1924] Engraving from her book, Valley of Baca