Henry Weston Smith (Preacher Smith) - Deadwood, SD - Graves Mentioning a Cause of Death on Waymarking.com

Preacher Smith, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Potato Creek Johnny are the four "celebrity" burials at Mt. Moriah Cemetery, with an honorable mention going to Seth Bullock, who rests outside the cemetery at a higher elevation.

Preacher Smith is buried just a little west of the final resting places of the other members of the "Big Four". There's a "Preacher Smith" sign to flag your attention, and his final resting place is one of the stops on the cemetery's self-guided tour. There is an open book atop his gray, granite headstone -- easily to be considered a Bible -- as well as a bronze "United Methodist Minister" medallion. The inscription reads:

Preacher Smith

In Memory of
Rev. Henry
Weston Smith
Conn. 1827
Dak. 1876

The plinth is of red granite, and it notes his fate without identifying any assailant:

Erected by Friends

Rev. Henry Weston Smith
A minister of the M.E. Church
The pioneer preacher in the
Blackhills killed Aug. 20, 1876
while on his way from Deadwood
to Crook City to preach.

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Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are the big draws to the cemetery, and while there are no signs of it beyond this grave marker, Preacher Smith's final resting place has attracted its share of photo seekers. Just as Wild Bill's final resting place had a slightly larger-than-life statue of the legend -- what you see today is actually the third sculpture -- so did Preacher Smith. In 1891, a life-sized statue of him delivering a sermon was dedicated to mark the grave site, and it indicated that he was "killed by Indians". Vandals and souvenir seekers did their work on the statues, and in Preacher Bill's case, it was a common stunt to climb behind the statue after its head had fallen off, with the poseur replacing the preacher's head with their own for a photo. The last stunt of this nature took place in 1948, when the statue collapsed during the pose, and only the base remained until the current headstone was placed in 1987.

There is a memorial to Preacher Smith some miles north of Deadwood along US85, placed in 1914 not far from where he was murdered. It indicates that he was "Killed off by Indians", but like the headstone at Mt. Moriah, the South Dakota Historical Marker there does not identify his assassin(s): That he had not been robbed raises questions. He certainly may have been on the receiving end of senseless violence and left for dead, while some believe his murder was premeditated and carried out by someone in Deadwood who perceived him as a threat to the city's rough-and-tumble businesses. We're probably never going to know.

Type of Death Listed: Murder Cause of death inscription on headstone: Killed Website (if available): [Web Link]

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