Home of Milton Smith
The house looks as if it was located on what is now Wooldridge (which runs between Oaklea and the summer home of Ambassador Bingham) and appears to be gone.
If anyone can help on this, please write! We also do not know yet if Milton Smith may have played any role in the Little Colonel stories, but at least we can strongly suspect that he was well known to Annie Fellows Johnston and other residents of “Lloydsboro Valley.”
A bit about him:
http://rrhistorical-2.com/lnhs/history.html
“It is appropriate here to mention L&N President Milton H. Smith, who served in that capacity for nearly 40 years, longer than any other chief executive. Smith went to work for the railroad as a local freight agent in Louisville, just after the Civil War. Within three years, he had advanced to general freight agent, eventually becoming vice president and traffic manager, and finally president in the 1880s. Under Smith, the L&N grew from a small local carrier into one of America’s major railroad systems.”
http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=R004
By 1884 the L&N was seeking a savior to restore its financial stability and public confidence. Longtime railroader Milton Hannibal Smith accepted the challenge and took over as president of the company, a move which was well received in Louisville, Nashville, and the entire southeastern region. Regarded as a “representative of the people,” Smith helped reestablish the L&N as a transportation leader through his managerial insight and dogged determination. Smith’s presidency lasted from 1884 to 1886 and from 1891 until his death on February 22, 1921. In his tenure, L&N track mileage expanded over 60 percent, mostly through developing eastern and western Kentucky as well as central and eastern Tennessee, rather than through major acquisitions. In Tennessee the L&N constructed a 94-mile line from Brentwood to Athens, Alabama, via Lewisburg and built a new line from Knoxville to Atlanta. Other Tennessee expansions included the acquisition of the Gallatin and Scottsville Railway and the Middle and East Tennessee Railway in 1906. Smith’s stubborn style proved less effective in facilitating the management-labor relations, however. In the 1890s Smith’s unwillingness to compromise with unions landed the L&N the reputation of a company unfriendly to labor.
http://www.historicrailpark.com/NEWSLETTERS/V1I3SpecialEdition.pdf
Contains anecdote about an arrest of Milton Smith in Bowling Green, KY.
From Cave Hill Cemetery Famous People
Milton Hannibal Smith (1836-1921), farmer, telegraph operator, and the self effacing head of the L & N Railroad from 1882 until his death, opened the Eastern Kentucky coal fields and built the railroad into predominance in the South. Section 1, Lot 200.
research by Donna Russell