In matters of heredity, Sophia Smith was fortunate. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Morton, was an extraordinary woman. After the death of her husband, she became the legal guardian of her six sons, all young, cared for a large farm, and trained her boys to be useful and respected in the community.
Sophia Smith was born in Hatfield, August 27, 1796; just six months before Mary Lyon was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, about seventeen miles distant. Sophia remembered her grandmother and said: "I looked up to my grandmother with great love and reverence. She, more than once, put her hands on my head and said, 'I want you should grow up, and be a good woman, and try to make the world better.'" And her mother was equally religious, efficient, kind to the poor, sympathetic but not impulsive. Sophia lived in a country farmhouse near the Connecticut River for sixty-eight years. She was sadly hampered physically. One of the historians of Hatfield writes me:
Her infirmity of deafness was troublesome to some extent when she was young, making her shy and retiring. At forty she was absolutely incapable of hearing conversation. She also was lame in one foot and had a withered hand. In spite of this, I think she was an active and spirited girl, about like other girls. She was very fond of social intercourse, especially later in life when my father knew her, but this intercourse was confined to a small circle. Doctor Greene speaks of her timidity also. I know of no traditions about her girlhood. As an example of the thrift of the Smiths, or perhaps I should say, their exactness in all business dealings, my father says that Austin Smith never asked his sisters to sew a button or do repairs on his clothing without paying them a small sum for it, and he always received six cents for doing chores or running errands. No doubt this was a practice maintained from early youth, for when Sophia Smith was born, in 1796, the family was in very moderate circumstances. The whole community was poor for some time after the Revolution, and everyone saved pennies.
As to her education, she used to sit on the doorsteps of the schoolhouse and hear the privileged boys recite their lessons. She also had four or five months of instruction in the schoolhouse, and was a student in Hopkins Academy for a short time and, when fourteen years old, attended school at Hartford, Connecticut, for a term of twelve weeks.
SOPHIA SMITH
Then a long, uneventful, almost shut-in life, and in 1861 her brother Austin left her an estate of about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Hon. George W. Hubbard of Hatfield was her financial adviser. He advised her to found an academy for Hatfield, which she did; and after Doctor Greene had caused her to decide on a college for women, Mr. Hubbard insisted on having it placed at Northampton, Massachusetts, instead of Hatfield, Massachusetts. With her usual modesty, she objected to giving her full name to the college, as it would look as if she were seeking fame for herself. She gave thirty thousand dollars to endow a professorship in the Andover Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts.
She grew old gracefully, never soured by her infirmities, always denying herself to help others and make the world better for her living in it.