Smith S. Littlejohn
The subjective qualities that beget popular confidence and respect are not lacking in the character of the present treasurer of Lawrence County, and the mere fact that he has been called to the important fiscal office of which he is the valued incumbent shows significantly the estimate placed upon him in the county of which he is a representative citizen and in which be stands exponent of most loyal and liberal citizenship. Mr. Littlejohn is a scion of a family whose name has been closely and worthily linked with the history of Ohio during virtually an entire century, and his ancestral record in the Buckeye State is one of which he may well be proud, even as may he also of the more remote genealogical history in both the agnatic and maternal lines.
Mr. Littlejohn was born at Jackson, the judicial center of Jackson Comity, Ohio, and the date of his nativity was June 18, 1858. He is a son of James and Cynthia (Smith) Littlejohn, the former of whom was born in Scioto County, Ohio, in the year 1820. and the latter of whom was born in Greenup County, Kentucky, in 1824. The Littlejohn family was founded in Ohio within a short time after the admission of the State to the Union, and its representatives in the various generations have proved sterling citizens of industrious habits and definite loyalty to all that makes for civic and material development and progress. James Littlejohn devoted the major part of his active career to agricultural pursuits and was a man who ever commanded inviolable place in popular confidence and esteem. He was originally a whig and later a republican in politics and he was sixty-five years of age at the time of his death, in 1885. His widow attained to the venerable age of eighty-seven years and was summoned to the life eternal in 1911, her memory being revered by all who came within the compass of her gentle influence. They became the parents of ten children, two of whom died in infancy. Those who attained to years of maturity are here designated by name and in order of nativity: William H., Alice, James I., Louis C, Smith S., Margaret E., Mary, and Marion E.
Smith S. Littlejohn was reared to adult age in Scioto County and there was afforded the advantages of the public schools of Wheelersburg, after wheh he attended the National Normal University, at Lebanon, this State, until he had attained to the age of twenty years. Through this effective discipline he admirably fortified himself for the pedagogic profession, and for seven years he was numbered among the representative teachers in the schools of Scioto County. After his retirement from this line of professional endeavor he rented a farm in the same county, and for two years he devoted his attention to agricultural pursuits, he then, in 1879, removed to Lawrence County, where he located in the little village of Steece, in Elizabeth Township, and assumed the position of manager of the general store of the firm of E. B. Willard & Company, with which firm he continued for fifteen years and one month—a period within which he gained wide acquaintanceship through the county and made for himself a host of loyal friends. In 1901 he removed to Ironton, the county seat, where he remained one year, and for the ensuing nine years he had charge of the Hanging Rock Furnace property, with residence and headquarters at Pine Grove. He was thus prominently concerned with the great iron industry of this section of the State and at the expiration of the period noted he was transferred to the charge of the firm's general store at Hanging Rock, where he remained thus engaged for three years. Thereafter he was assistant secretary of the Union Furnace Company until 1913, when lie was elected county treasurer, the duties of which position he has since discharged with characteristic zeal and ability and to the distinct benefit of the county and its people. He is a man of fine administrative ability and marked capacity for detail, so that the business of the treasurer's office is found at all times in the best of order, the while he is punctilious in doing all in his power to subserve the financial prosperity of the county through the effective management of its fiscal affairs. While a resident of Scioto County Mr. Littlejohn served six years as justice of the peace, and incidentally he gained comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the principles of law. He has proved worthy of the implicit trust reposed in him by others and has had much to do with the management of estates and properties of important order.
In polities Mr. Littlejohn has been found a stalwart supporter of the principles and policies for which the republican party has ever stood sponsor in a basic way, and he holds membership in the Baptist Church. He is actively affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, including its adjunct organization, the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. His interests center in his home, and the family residence, an attractive property owned by him, is made a center of generous and refined hospitality, with his wife and daughter as its popular chatelaines.
On the 30th of August, 1881, at the home of the bride's parents. William and Augusta Raushahous, of Portsmouth, Ohio, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Littlejohn to Miss Amelia Raushahous, and the only child of this union is Miss Addie A., who remains at the parental home.
From "A Standing History of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio" by Eugene B. Willard, Daniel W. Williams, George O. Newman and Charles B. Taylor. Published by Lewis Publishing Company, 1916