Charlotte Odlum Smith

Charlotte Odlum Smith (1840 – 1917) was an American reformer, regarded as the foremost authority on women’s working conditions. At labor conventions, she was sometimes the only female delegate, and was partly responsible for the mandatory listing of ingredients on food labels. Smith was also a magazine editor, active in gaining recognition of women inventors.

Charlotte Smith was born Charlotte Odlum in or near the village of Waddington in upstate New York, in 1840. She was the oldest child of Irish immigrants, Richard Odlum and his wife Catherine. Richard is listed as "engaged in agriculture" in the 1840 census. After a difficult childhood (three siblings dying as infants, father soon absent, mother supporting Charlotte and her three surviving brothers by keeping boarders, frequent moves interrupting her education), she became the head of the household after Richard's death in the mid-1850s. During this period the Odlums traveled to New Orleans, then to New York City, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, and Montreal, Canada. These journeys were made partly in search of medical care for Catherine Odlum, who was suffering from a diseased tooth.

Before she was twenty, Charlotte was running her own shop in St. Louis, Missouri, while her mother ran a boardinghouse. In 1860 Charlotte, her mother and two of her brothers traveled to Cuba, returning to New Orleans from Havana on March 21, 1861, the same day Louisiana ratified the Confederate Constitution. When Charlotte's brother David enlisted under-age in the Civil War, the family tried to bring him back, but were trapped in occupied Memphis, Tennessee for the rest of the conflict. David, serving under the name "Charles Rogers" in the 8th Missouri Volunteer Infantry, disappeared after the Battle of Shiloh; it was never known whether he had been killed, captured or had deserted. Charlotte, however, ran the Union blockade across the Ohio River, and evidently made thousands of dollars doing so. At the same time, she and her mother were providing milk, butter, and nursing services to Union soldiers in Memphis. On April 4, 1864, the Odlums' house in Memphis was torn down by Union troops to clear an artillery firing path.

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