Wellington Smith

Wellington Smith was born on December 15, 1841, to John Randolph Smith and Parthenia Caroline Yale, members of the Yale family.^[2][3][4][5] His great-grandfather was Capt. Josiah Yale, a pioneer of Lee, Massachusetts, and veteran of the American War of Independence.^[6][7][4]

Smith was named by his uncle, Senator Elizur Smith, in honor of the Duke of Wellington, and was a descendant of pilgrim Stephen Hopkins.^[8][5] His father was a paper manufacturer, in business with Senator Elizur Smith, his brother, and telegraph entrepreneur Cyrus W. Field, who founded the Atlantic Telegraph Company.^[5] The venture was in Russell, Massachusetts, under the name of John R. Smith & Company.^[5]

Smith was a cousin of Rev. Theodore Yale Gardner, and of the Mayor of Cleveland, George W. Gardner, one of the first business partners of John D. Rockefeller, patriarch of the Rockefeller family.^[5] His uncle was Charles Lester Yale, associate director of St. Paul Pioneer Press, founded by James M. Goodhue, and his granduncle was Rev. Elisha Yale of New York, who graduated from Yale.^[9][5] He was also a cousin of Rev. Cyrus Yale, Mary Yale Pitkin, wife of architect Charles Eliot, and of Yale martyr Horace Tracy Pitkin.^[5]

Smith went to public schools during his youth, and was educated by Deacon Alexander Hyde.^[4] At 15, he became a clerk in the store of Smith & Bosworth, and at 16, became the general manager of the D. C. Hull & Sons store. At 18 years old, he started a business with H. S. Hubert with a store and a watermill.^[4] He then went to New York and became a salesman in the silk industry, becoming eventually a partner in the New York store.^[4]

In 1865, Smith was associated with his cousin DeWitt Smith, and uncle Senator Elizur Smith, forming the Smith Paper Company.^[10][4] His uncle was at the time one of the largest paper manufacturer in America, and the leading manufacturer in Massachusetts.^[11][10] Smith would become the company's treasurer for over 40 years.^[3] The economic opportunity came after the American Civil War, which had caused a shortage of paper across the nation.^[12] Inventor Pagenstecher, a German railroad engineer and associate of Theodore Steinway, head of Steinway & Sons, had come to Wellington Smith in Berkshire, convincing him of the benefits of his woodpulp paper process invention.^[12]

During this period, Smith was the active head of the Smith Paper Company, and opened a factory in Berkshire for them, at a cost of $11,000, and used the cheap and abundant water power available there for this new production process.^[12] Smith's competitors laughed at the idea at first, and thought the company would go bankrupt producing this type of paper.^[12] The experiment proved successful, despite not being of the highest quality, which would change over the years as they improved the underlying technology.^[12] A unique property of this paper was its ability to absorb ink instantly.^[12]

Paper manufactured of these wood pulps was first produced in America by the Smith Paper Co. in 1865.^[13][4] It would become the first wood pulp based paper in the world, which lowered the cost of manufacturing paper, and worked in synergy with the growing newspaper industry, which needed low prices and high volume to sustain their new business model based on advertising rather than subscriptions.^[4][3]

They then added mills such as the Pleasant Valley Mill, and increased their production capacity.^[4] With this mill, they produced about fifty tons of paper per week.^[4] They would then produce 60 tons of paper per week, and later on, over 165 tons a week. They had as customers the New York Herald and other newspapers, with clients all over the country.^[4] They once received an order of 1,000 tons by James Gordon Bennett Jr., owner of the Herald.^[4] Around 1875, they acquired the plant of the Lenox Plate Company from Gov. Theodore Roosevelt of New York.^[14][4]

In 1878, Smith became the first founding vice-president of the American Paper Makers Association, and later presided the association.^[15][4] In 1880, during the reunion of the American Paper Makers Association at the Grand Union Hotel, New York, Smith became its chairman, replacing Congressman William Whiting II.^[16] He then became the head of the American paper making industry, which was the largest in the world at the time.^[4]

Over time, the Smith Paper Company focused exclusively on producing newsprints, books and manila papers under their new process, and as a result, became the largest paper manufacturer in the United States, and later, in the world.^[1][17][12] They began manufacturing tissue, lightweight paper, carbon, opaque Bible and cigarette paper, and would later be acquired under Smith's sons by the British American Tobacco Co. of James Buchanan Duke, benefactor and namesake of Duke University.^[18][15][12] They were also the first paper manufacturer to use American flax fibre in the production of cigarette paper.^[15]