G.W. Smaile is a retired farmer and one of those old veterans of the Civil war that never tires of relating army lore. He enlisted August 15, 1862, at the age of eighteen years in Company B, One Hundred and Fortieth Pennsylvania Volunteers, under T.B. Rogers and Colonel R.P. Roberts, serving until May 11, 1865. He entered as a private and was promoted to sergeant. He received a slight wound in the hand June 2, 1864, at the battle of Cold Harbor, which disabled him until the following February. He was in the battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristow Station, Mine Run campaign, Todd's Tavern, Spottsylvania Court House, Lone Pine, Petersburg, Five Forks and at the surrender of Appomattox and was mustered out at Alexandria, Virginia. His company distinguished themselves and lost the heaviest of any in the state.

After the war Mr. Smaile emigrated to Iowa when that state was new, and six years later emigrated to Kansas, where he homesteaded land in Ottawa, just over the line from Cloud county, and ten miles southeast of Glasco, where they suffered many trials during the drouth and grasshopper years. He sold this farm two years later and after several removals located in Delphos in 1897, and in 1893 bought a residence property in Glasco, where he has since resided.

Mr. Smaile is a native of the "Keystone" state, born in September, 1843. He is from a race of farmers. His father was Henry Smaile. The family four generations removed were from Germany. His paternal grandfather was a Revolutionary soldier and died of smallpox on Lake Erie. Mr. Smaile's mother was Sophronia McKessick, of Scotch-Irish origin. She was a native of Maine but reared in the state of Pennsylvania. His parents died at the age of eighty years, respectively.

Mr. Smaile went home from the war and began the battle of life with the woman who had prayed for his safe return. He was married in March, 1866, to Vallie Hutton, a daughter of John Grant, who was an own cousin of General Grant. Her maternal grandfather was a farmer, and died in Delphos, Kansas, in December, 1892, at the age of one hundred and two years. He had received his second eyesight, was a remarkably well preserved man, possessed of a clear mind. Mrs. Smaile has his autograph written at the age of one hundred years. Her mother died April, 1901, at the age of eighty years.

Mr. and Mrs. Smaile are the parents of four children: Minnie, wife of James Cobb, a farmer near Glasco; Nellie, an excellent dressmaker; Ida, wife of John Teasley, a farmer near Glasco, and Frank, who is interested in farming. Mr. Smaile votes the Republican ticket and is a justice of the peace. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic post of Glasco. The family are members and active workers in the Christian church.