Smith C. Ferguson

Smith C. Ferguson is credited as a co-author of The Golden Gems of Life; Or, Gathered Jewels for the Home Circle, a substantial conduct book published in Cincinnati by Central Publishing House in 1880, with later editions including an 1884 printing. The book was written with Emory Adams Allen and focuses on everyday virtues, self-discipline, family life, and spiritual reflection.

Reliable biographical details about Ferguson himself are scarce in the sources available online. Library and book-catalog records consistently connect the name with The Golden Gems of Life, and Project Gutenberg also lists that title under Ferguson’s name, but I could not confirm further personal information such as birth and death dates, place of origin, or a fuller life history.

That means Ferguson is remembered mainly through the work rather than through a well-preserved public biography. Even so, the book’s long afterlife in library catalogs, reprints, and digital archives suggests it continued to find readers well beyond its original era.