Smith, Cyrus.

Cyrus Burnet Smith was born in 1839 in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the son of Cyrus Smith Senior and Julie Warner.

He attended medical school at Berkshire Medical School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, graduating in 1858.

Dr. Smith joined the 34th Massachusetts Volunteers in 1862 as Assistant Surgeon. On March 15, 1865, he accepted a commission as Surgeon in the 11th Massachusetts Volunteers, spending most of the Civil War in hospitals in Virginia and the Maryland/D. C. area. He was discharged in Washington D. C. July 31, 1865.

After his first wife Mary Hulbert died, shortly after the end of the Civil War, he married Louisa J. Aldrich in 1869. They were the parents of two children. Their son Cyrus Smith was born in 1872 and died in 1892 from hemorrhaging of the lungs. Mary was born in 1873 and graduated from Smith College in 1896. She was a prominent teacher of English and the head of the English Department at Punchard High School in Andover, Massachusetts.

Dr. Smith lived in Granby, Massachusetts for many years and was considered one of the leading citizens of the town. As his obituary states: Dr. Smith was not simply a friend of a favored few, but was as fully alive to the interest of the poor and lowly, the class upon which society too frequently frowns as to those who esteem themselves higher in the social scale. Dr. Smith died in a fire in 1879, as the result of his house being struck by lightening. He was just 40 years of age and in the prime of his life. His wife Louise Aldrich Smith died in 1923 at the age of 84 years old.

From the guide to the Colonel Cyrus Burnet Smith U. S. Civil War papers MS 411., (Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, TX)