Memorial Record of Western Kentucky, Volume I and Volume II, Lewis
Publishing Company, 1904, pp. 144-145.  McCracken Co.

J.R. SMITH

     J.R. Smith, wholesale grocer of Paducah, was born in Wadesboro,
Kentucky, March 26, 1837.  He began his business career, which has been a
very successful one, on very limited capital.  He was a poor man, but by
reason of industry, energy and honest business methods he succeeded in
every undertaking, and his entire business career has been crowned with
brilliant successes, and to-day he is not only among the oldest business
men of Paducah, but one of the wealthiest and most prominent of all western
Kentucky.
     He commenced his business life with his brother, Joseph Smith, in
Murray, Kentucky, in the year 1852, and there learned those business habits
and methods which have enabled him to accumulate a fortune and also rise
high in the commercial world.  Mr. Smith came to Paducah in 1870 and
embarked in the wholesale grocery business, in which he was successful from
the start and unto this day, the style of the firm now being J.R. Smith &
Son.  He has contributed much to the material welfare of the city of
Paducah, where no man is held in higher esteem than is he.
     Mr. Smith is the fifth in a family of seven children born to Andrew
and Eliza (Curd) Smith, who were early settlers of Calloway county,
Kentucky, where they lived many years and were universally respected by all
who knew them.  In Calloway county Mr. Smith married Mary E. Orr, who was
born in Pointe Coupee, Louisiana.

Smith Curd Orr
=
Calloway-KY LA

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/mccracken/smith.jr.txt