Obit: Smith, Janet (Hartson)  (1912 - 2011)

Contact: Audery Roedl
Email: audery@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Smith, Hartson, Brown, Strong, Parker, Brumer

----Source: The Loyal TRG (Loyal, Clark County, WI 13 April 2011)

Smith, Janet (18 JUNE 1912-30 DEC 2011)

Janet Hartson Smith, granddaughter of early Greenwood residents Henry and Hilda Hartson, passed away on Dec. 30, 2010, at her home in Livermore, Calif. She was 98 years old. Services will be private.

Janet Hartson was born on June 18, 1912, in Greenwood, the second child of Harry Ernest Hartson, editor of the Greenwood Gleaner, and Alta Mae Brown. She also lived in Nebraska and South Dakota. As a teen, she moved with her mother and siblings to Atascadero, Calif., to join the Palms family, who, with the Booth family, had reared Alta after the deaths of her mother and sisters in an influenza epidemic in the late 1800s. Janet attended Atascadero High School and held a job. Eventually, she met William Allen Smith of Atascadero and Pittsburgh, Pa. The couple had four daughters. She lived in the same San Francisco neighborhood more than 60 years. She was active in her church and schools, chairing the Mother’s Club, the Young Ladies" Institute, the neighborhood improvement club, and establishing a cafeteria for school children. Following the death of her husband in 1963, she returned to school to gain her high school diploma and then began a successful sales career with Marshall Field Enterprises. She traveled extensively in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Survivors include her daughters, Joanna Strong, San Diego, Barbara Smith, Livermore, and Julianna Parker, Mokelumme Hill, Calif.; 13 grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild.

She was preceded in death by her husband; one daughter, Susanna Brumer, Livermore, in May 2010; two brothers, Halford and Kenneth; and one sister, Eleanor.