Ninety-nine years after the final crop failure that forced Joseph Smith, Sr. to move from Vermont to Palmyra, his granddaughter was named the first poet laureate of California. Born Josephine, daughter of Don Carlos Smith, she was only three when her father died. Without Don Carlos, her mother Agnes apostatized and little Josephine grew up, faithful to a promise made to her mother, not to discuss her Smith background. When her mother remarried and moved to California, Josephine changed her first name to Ina and took her mother’s maiden name of Coolbrith. She became a beloved poet and today a the place where her home stood when it was destroyed by the San Francisco earthquake and fire, is name Coolbrith Park.
BYU Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4, p. 448.