Smith, G. Hubert (George Hubert), 1908-1972

Author.

From the description of G. Hubert Smith papers, 1935-1937. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 70980530

George Hubert Smith was born on January 11, 1908 in Miller, South Dakota, son of Daniel H. Smith. His family later moved to Minneapolis, where he attended the University of Minnesota.

During the 1930s and 1940s Smith was involved in a variety of federally funded projects. Under the National Park Service (NPS) he was assistant supervisor at both the Grand Portage and Fort Ridgely excavations (1936), and senior foreman and archaeologist in charge of excavation and restoration at Fort Ridgely (1937-1938). While attending the University of Chicago graduate school (1939-1941), he spent summers as an NPS excavation crew supervisor at Fort Laramie National Monument in Wyoming. He also served in the WPA as Minnesota Statewide Archaeology and Historic Research Survey assistant supervisor (1941), and as the Minnesota Art Project museum unit supervisor (January 1942).

In late January 1942 he was inducted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the Medical Department. He served in hospitals in Denver and Charleston (South Carolina), and in the Atlantic on board the hospital ship Acadia . He was released in October 1945 with the rank of sergeant.

He was appointed Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) museum curator in January 1946, a position he held until 1949. During 1950-1951 he again worked for the NPS, undertaking a research project about the LaVérendryes, a family of French-Canadian fur traders and explorers.

In 1951 he began his 17-year career with the Smithsonian Institution's River Basin Surveys, attached to the Missouri Basin Project based in Lincoln, Nebraska. His career revolved mainly around salvage archaeology excavating historic sites before the flooding caused by construction of the various Missouri River reservoirs. He spent winters in the Lincoln office and most summers supervising field work at such sites as forts Stevenson, Berthold, Pierre II, George, Defiance, Sully, and Manuel; Regis Loisel's trading post; and the Red Cloud Agency.

For a short time in 1953-1954, while Smith was separated from the MBP (due to staff reductions), he worked for the MHS Grand Portage Committee conducting an excavation near that site.

In 1955 he was "loaned" to the U.S. Department of Justice to prepare an ethno-historical sketch of the Omaha People and present it before the Indian Claims Commission. On several occasions he was also "loaned" to other NPS regions, including Georgetown (D.C.), Fort McHenry National Monument and Historical Shrine (Baltimore), the Chattahoochie River Basin (Alabama-Georgia), and Yorktown (Virginia). Smith retired from the MBP in August 1968.

An accomplished author and researcher, Smith both presented and published numerous papers dealing with archaeology, ethnology, ethno-history, folklore, history, and photographs as historical documents. He was also a collector of stereographs documenting Minnesota and upper Missouri River history and culture.

He died unexpectedly of a brain tumor on March 25, 1972, in Lincoln.

Biographical data was taken from the collection.

From the guide to the G. Hubert Smith papers., 1900, 1930-1986., (Minnesota Historical Society)