NOTES:
Adult life spent in a variety of service or catering positions. Appears to have worked for the family of Samuel Clemens at least in 1901, perhaps longer. Started a catering business [and restaurant?] called The Creamery in Santa Cruz, Cal. ca. 1910; the establishment lasted quite a long time, but he and family had returned to N.J. by 1912. (First two children, born 1905 and 6, were born in N.J. The third was born in 1910 in California; fourth in 1912 back in N.J., and the following year twins were born in N.Y.--Staten Island, I think--but somebody correct me if that's wrong--have I not asked my aunt Dolly such a simple question as where she was born?) In the years near 1920 J. A. Smith worked for the prominent Trowbridge family in Leete's Island, CT. The 1920 census lists his profession as "Private Butler," but in that year the family lived at #11 Roff Street, Staten Island. A momentary guess to replace my faulty memory until I track it down in the notes again (because I'm sure Charlotte and Dolly have explained this to me) is that the family established a permanent residence in Staten Island, from which his job or jobs would take him away for periods of time.
His children vaguely remember talk of a summer at Lake Saranac, in New York, with Mark Twain and family, and a yacht cruise. In the summer of 1901 the Clemens family was at their Lake Saranac log cabin ("The Lair"), definitely with servants, and Twain sailed to Nova Scotia that August with a gentlemen's party aboard Henry Rogers' yacht. There was a similar outing to the West Indies the following April. Twain's logs for these cruises make it fairly obvious that servants are aboard, but they remain nameless and faceless throughout.
Mark Twain signed a book for Avery Smith in 1905 with the quote (quoting himself): "Taking the pledge will not make bad liquor good, but it will improve it." This remains in the possession of Ethelyn Sawyer Patti, the lone remnant of what several of Smith's children recall as a "full set," which, according to Charlotte, her brother Robert "gave away to his girlfriends."
Joe obtained information that he and Kathleen were married in Washington D.C. by a Rev. Ernest Stires, who is remembered to have commented, "This will be a happy marriage."
His grave, with those of his wife and parents, are in Elizabeth, NJ, in the cemetery behind Kean College.