Lydia Hamilton Smith

Who was Lydia Hamilton Smith?

Lydia Hamilton Smith was born in Adams County, Pennsylvania, USA in February 1815. Lydia Hamilton Smith was one quarter African American. Her mother was a free biracial woman of Caucasian and African American descent and her father was Caucasian of Irish descent. Smith married a free black man, Jacob Smith, with whom she had two sons. He died in 1852. She moved to Gettysburg and worked as a housekeeper to lawyer, later congressman, Thaddeus Stevens. She continued to work for him until his death in 1868.

Smith was described as "giving great attention to her appearance" and that in later years Smith had her clothes made to resemble those of Mary Lincoln.Carl Sandburg described Smith as "a comely quadroon with Caucasian features and a skin of light-gold tint, a Roman Catholic communicant with Irish eyes ... quiet, discreet, retiring, reputed for poise and personal dignity." Smith had two sons, William and Isaac, by her late husband, Jacob Smith, and she and Stevens raised the latter's nephews, whom he adopted in the 1840s. On April 2, 1861 Smith's oldest son, William Smith, fatally shot himself in the presence of his mother while handling a pistol at the home of Thaddeus Stevens. William Smith was 26 years old and working as a shoemaker in Lancaster, Pennsylvania when he shot himself.