“Preacher Smith of Deadwood Gulch”

‘Deadwood’s Sky Pilot,' Henry Weston Smith, was born in Ellington, Connecticut, January 10, 1828. At 23 he became a Methodist exhorter. This led to ordination in the Methodist Episcopal church and he served various communities in New England. In 1862 he enlisted in the Union Army. Caring for the wounded may have turned his mind to healing, for he studied the practice of medicine and was licensed in 1867.

In 1876 he joined the great rush to these Black Hills - - not to mine gold but to claim lives for God. Reading and writing poetry eased his loneliness. During the week he performed manual labor to send savings to his family in Kentucky and to sustain himself as he preached on Deadwood’s main street.

On Sunday, August 20, 1876, after service in Deadwood, he tacked a note on his cabin door saying he had gone to Crook City to preach. On the way he was shot. In his pocket were the notes, now blood-stained, for the undelivered sermon. His Bible lay unopened. The Society of Black Hills Pioneers erected this monument in 1914 where he was killed.

Today his body lies in Mt. Moriah Cemetery overlooking Deadwood.

Lawrence County, Hwy 85 -2 miles north of Deadwood (2003)