SMITH, Mary Prudence Wells, author, born in Attica, New York, 30 July, 1840. She was graduated at the Greenville, Massachusetts, high-school in 1857, and at Hartford female seminary in 1859, taught in Greenville in 1859-'61, and in 1864-'72 was a clerk in Franklin savings institution, being the first woman employed in a bank in Massachusetts. She was secretary of the Greenville freedmen's aid society in 1865-'6, and school commissioner in 1874. She married Judge Fayette Smith, of Cincinnati, in the latter year, and since 188l has been president of the Cincinnati branch of the Woman's auxiliary conference of the Unitarian church. She has published many magazine articles under the pen-name of "P. Thorne," and "Jolly Good Times, or Child Life on a Farm" (Boston, 1875); "Jolly Good Times at School" (1877) ; "The Browns" (1884); and "Miss Ellis's Mission " (1886).