SIR HAMILTON
LANPHERE SMITH
Scientist / Astronomer / Photographer
Knight's Templar Extraordinaire
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Astronomer
Smith returned to Yonkers, New York, where he was cared for by his granddaughters, and their mother, Mrs. Buttles Smith. Smith died on August 1, 1903, at the age of 85 years. Smith and his wife are buried in Geneva.
In The Hobart Herald, J.H. McDaniels, then Professor of Greek, wrote an affectionate remembrance of Smith:
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But Dr. Smith was an excellent specimen of that class which is not certainly on the wane – the man of scientific training plus general culture. He received that in Yale College where he was graduated in 1839, and his fondness for culture, his wide interest in the things of the mind and the spirit never deserted him. He read history, he loved literature, he had a weakness for the classical learning which he imbibed at Yale, he had a genuine interest in politics and the movements of civic life. In short, his science did not exclude that portion of science which deals with and comprehends the life and habits of man–an animal whom we are all better fitted to understand and sympathize with than any other thing in creation.
Of Smith’s relationships with his peers and students, McDaniels wrote:
I made his acquaintance within two months of his coming to Geneva and from that time forth we remained fast friends,–I might say Comrades; for though I was the youngest member of the faculty at that time and he was the oldest, he had an inextinguishable youthfulness of spirit which was one of his greatest charms, and which removed any possible barrier to his intercourse with the students and the younger instructors. He was often their confidant as well as their friend, very often secret benefactor. And this is the reason that in paying my tribute of affection, I feel that I can speak for the alumni who were so fortunate as to know him as well as for myself. His house was a perpetual fountain of simple and cordial hospitality. Those who remember the late Mrs. Smith will recall, as I do, the benevolence, the kindliness, the high and noble spirit with which she welcomed the students to the refined little home beneath the sheltering oak. That house was always open and its host would offer you with perfect simplicity, the best he had – it might be roasted chestnut and a glass of cider, it might be something more elaborate; in any case he enjoyed it himself and he enjoyed offering it to his friends, without ceremony of apologies.
Of Smith’s love of life, McDaniels wrote:
For he sipped the cup of life in the spirit of the artist or the child, without criticism and without complaint. It brought him the pleasures that come earliest and last longest. He took delight in bringing home the earliest spring flowers, in watching the birds and the little wild creatures of the wood, – he knew how to lure them and tame them with his voice and to entrance children by tales of their ways and doings. The unsullied spirit of childhoos was in his heart, which remained fresh and unsophisticated to old age. He loved excursions in the country in search of trilobites; he could enjoy picnics in search of nothing but innocent pleasure. He drank as I have said, the draught of life without questioning the mixture or the Mixer’s purpose. Yet he had known bitter griefs and disappointments which lasted long and cut him to the heart and shortened even his long term of years; but he bore them with a gallant front that made him dearer to his friends who suspected the cancer he so smilingly concealed.
And of his love for books, McDaniels wrote:
But of all the pleasures and recreations which he tooks as a good man may, nothing served him so constantly as his love for books. These indeed had been the nature of his youth and were the faithful companions of his old age. He was a great reader – a browser con amore – a book buyer and a lover of books for their outside as well as for their inside. He delighted to capture a good bargain and would show you with triump his latest folio or collection of old engravings. He loved them not with a mercenary passion, not to make his bread and butter out of them; but because they were his habit, his resource, the meat and drink of his soul.
