In celebration of Women’s History Month, this article documents the life and contributions of Flora Smith, one of the first women to live in Edmonds. Although her name is not as well known as some of the other early settlers, she was a major force in shaping Edmonds in its earliest days.

Her life history is best documented in an article Memories of Mother, written by her daughter Ethel Smith Mowat in 1948. Excerpts from that memoir are woven throughout this article.

Flora Arabella Brown was born in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania on Sept. 17, 1852.  She was the fourth of five children. An older sister had died at the age of 10, before Flora was born. Two years after her birth, her parents welcomed a son into the family. Tragically her mother did not survive childbirth. Flora, her two older sisters and infant brother were left to a loving but stern father.

Her father remarried two years later. Flora’s stepmother apparently was very strict and Flora clung to her two older sisters, Clara and Sarah, 10 and 8 years older respectively, as they provided a buffer between her and her stepmother.

In Memories of Mother, Ethel stated that her mother remembered her father as “having black heavy hair, steely blue eyes and a manner that forbade any nonsense.” Flora apparently inherited her father’s discipline but not his sternness. Her daughter recounted that Flora was gentle and kind to every living thing, but when she spoke, “we obeyed.”

As time passed, Flora grew up, received a good education, and prepared herself for teaching school. By all accounts, Flora was a “born teacher,” having a special way with children, and she taught elementary school in Pennsylvania for six years.

During her teaching years, Flora enjoyed the company of a number of young men at local dances, but one tall, dark and handsome man with wavy black hair and an aristocratic nose finally caught her attention. His name was Wellington Frelinghison Smith. At first, Flora questioned whether she as a “Brown” should marry a “Smith,” but love won out and they were married when she was 24 years of age.

During their courtship, the couple went through an event together that drastically changed the course of their lives.  They were both converted in a Methodist Church and that conversion was a strong guide to the rest of their lives.

After their marriage, Wellington went to work in the Pennsylvania oil fields. Flora followed her husband from oil field to oil field until she returned home in September 1878 to give birth to their first child, Ethel. Ethel arrived on Sept. 16, one day before her mother’s 26th birthday.

Wellington Smith was somewhat of a dreamer, and he and his family bounced around the oil fields of Pennsylvania until 1883. By then Flora had given birth to their second child, a son named Allen.

One day Wellington burst into their home and announced that he and his friend Frank Armstrong had decided that they were never going to make enough money in Pennsylvania. The only way to make a lot of money to retire on was to head to the far northwest.

“Washington is the place to go! Puget Sound! Wonderful advantages there. All kinds of land to be homesteaded. We can make a fortune, and then come back home and live in comfort”, Wellington expounded. “We will go out first and spy the land.” 

Flora was dubious, but was always supportive of her husband’s dreams.

In June 1883, Wellington and Frank Armstrong headed west while Flora and her two young children went back home to Pennsylvania, where they stayed with relatives.

Upon Wellington and Armstrong’s arrival in Seattle, they ran into George Brackett, who stated they should not settle in Seattle, but instead make their homes in the small town of Edmonds that he had just established 17 miles north.

“Mr. Brackett had homesteaded the land there on the Sound, and had part of it laid out into lots, city lots in a wilderness of trees! He had built a good house there, but being the shrewd business man that he was, he had not included his home in the townsite. Well, the long and short of it was that Father and Mr. Armstrong bought the first two lots in the townsite of Edmonds.

Armstrong and father cleared enough space to put up a house, and as soon it was inhabitable they sent for us. This was to be our house.  They would build Armstrong’s next.” — From Memories of Mother

“When we first arrived Mr. Brackett had a small general store at the head of the dock. There was a path cleared, leading to our home which stood on what is now the corner of Third and Main Street. Mr. Armstrong built next door. It was three blocks from the water which we could not see because of the trees and brush. That was soon remedied by clearing out some of the trees and undergrowth.” — From Memories of Mother

Soon after Flora and her two children had settled into their new house, Flora opened her home to the three Deiner children, who were attending grade school classes in the back room of Brackett’s feed store.

Edmonds’ first school had opened the year before, in 1884 with six students.  The Deiner children lived with their mother and stepfather John Lund in Meadowdale, which was four miles north of Edmonds. Their stepfather rowed the children down to Edmonds in his boat on Sunday afternoons, and they boarded with the Smith family during the week. Mr. Lund then rowed down and picked the children up Friday afternoons, taking them home for the weekend. You can read more about Edmonds’ early schools here.

Due to the lack of work opportunities in the earliest days, Wellington and Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong had to leave and work away from their homes for lengthy periods of time. This left Flora and the children basically alone in the wilderness. The Bracketts lived about a quarter of a mile away, but they could not see the Brackett home through the dense trees.

As Ethel recounted: “One morning we were getting breakfast, and the door was open.  We happened to look up, and there was a big Indian.  While mother knew the Indians were perfectly harmless, we were terrified. He said, ‘Can me borrow fish line, lady? We bring you big fish tomorrow.’ Of course he got the line and mother never expected to see it again. But next morning there he was with the line and a big rock cod. He had even cleaned it for us. He told us his name was “Bob”, “Indian Bob” as he was called. He lived with his mother, “Old Julie” and she became a great friend of ours. Julie was a good old soul…who thought the world of mother. She made a lovely basket for mother, which sets by my desk, good as when she made it, sixty three years ago.”

In 1887, two and a half years after the Smiths had settled, Flora’s sister Clara and her husband Mathew Hyner arrived. The Hyners built a large house a block away, and Mathew Hyner bought the general store from George Brackett and became a successful merchant and Edmonds’ second postmaster.

With the town’s growth, the number of children attending school and around the Smith household increased. In Memories of Mother, Ethel recounts:

“One of my earliest recollections is of mother telling us Bible stories and later reading them to us. She had brought her Bible story book and I almost knew it backward, as I had heard it so much, and yet never tired of hearing it read.

Whenever mother could get other children to come, she would gather them around and read Bible stories and talk to us about them, especially the ‘Jesus’ stories. Every Sunday afternoon she would collect all the children around her and we finally had a little Sunday school.”

According to various accounts,Flora prayed that the Lord would send the town a Methodist minister, to watch over Edmonds’ growing flock of believers. By the time a minister did arrive, Flora had over a dozen children regularly in her Sunday school. The minister, Rev. Green, was not a Methodist, but instead a minister from the Congregational Church in Seattle. Seeing what Flora had already accomplished, he established a formal Sunday school with Flora as superintendent, and he arranged for a minister to come to Edmonds every other week to preach on Sunday.

Edmonds was growing slowly but steadily. In 1888, Rev. Green decided to establish the first church in Edmonds. The Edmonds Congregational Church was founded with five initial members; three Methodists, one Baptist and one Presbyterian. Flora’s husband Wellington was named as a deacon and the only male member to begin the church.

Over the next year several revival meetings were held and the church membership grew steadily. Rev. Fowler became its first full-time minister and it was decided that a church building needed to be erected.

Building the church was a struggle, as most people were “as poor as a church mouse.” Flora, her husband and many others donated hundreds of dollars worth of labor and the church was completed in 1889.

During the church’s construction, Flora continued to build the Sunday school by reaching out to all the newcomers in the area. By some estimates there were close to 100 children and adults attending the church’s Sunday school prior to the church’s completion and dedication.

Flora’s role as a leader at home and in the church expanded her undertakings into areas that she had never participated in before.

“Besides all the gratuitous labor, mother helped meet our cost of living by many kinds of work. Keeping boarders mainly, but she also canvassed for books door-to-door. In those days, there was no library, and people had very little reading material.  So mother did real well selling books.  She loved doing it, while I hated it. I would say ‘I will do all the house work and get the meals, but don’t ask me to peddle books.’ So that was the way we arranged it.

She loved visiting people and loved talking to them about church and tried to get recruits to her Sunday school.” — From Memories of Mother

Flora also ended up being the person who tended to all the births and deaths. She had no previous experience in regards to being a midwife or being involved in hospice care, but she later said “someone had to do it.”

As the years passed, Flora’s Sunday school continued to grow and prosper. In many ways she was the driving force behind the church and its outreach into the community.

In late summer of 1898, Flora’s husband Wellington became seriously ill and suffered terribly through the autumn. He was taken to a hospital in Seattle where he lived for another 10 weeks, dying on Jan. 25, 1899, at 54 years of age. Throughout his illness Flora was constantly at his side.

According to Ethel’s account, her mother was heartbroken but was surprisingly calm due to her deep faith. Flora, when asked about her calmness, quoted Isaiah 26:3, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee” as the basis for her faith.

After her husband’s death, Flora faithfully went on with her work in the community and in the church. By 1903, the church had grown to the point that it was able to build a parsonage alongside the church for the resident pastor.

Then in 1908, nine years after her husband’s death, Flora unexpectedly suffered a severe stroke.  Daughter Ethel attended to her day and night. Ethel eventually was able to move her mother into her own home in Port Ludlow. There she cared for Flora for eight more years, until Flora passed away after her fourth stroke, on Dec. 6, 1916.

Although Flora had been away from Edmonds and the church for nine years, her funeral services drew an overflow crowd of well wishers and admirers. Her obituary, which was published in the Dec. 15, 1916 Edmonds Tribune-Review, provides a glimpse into Flora’s life and its positive influences.

Flora Smith had found herself as a young mother, being somewhat isolated in a small town that had been just formed. While raising her two children, Flora became the guiding light in many ways to the growing community. From opening her doors to the earliest of students, to being the founder and 20-year superintendent of the first Sunday school, to acting as a midwife and respite care nurse, Flora touched the lives of many.

According to her daughter’s final recollection, “mother was the most gentle and caring person I ever met. Heaven, alone, can record the good that her life accomplished.”

This article was researched and written by Byron Wilkes. Thanks go to the Edmonds Historical Museum and their aforementioned oral history, and the Sno-Isle Genealogical Society for their help in the research of this article. The entire Memories of Mother memoir resides at the Edmonds Historical Museum.