Joseph Smithyman was born in Ohio in 1825 and served in the Mexican War as a member of the 2^nd Ohio Infantry. After the war he moved to Minnesota and became a farmer. At the outbreak of the Civil War, in April of 1861, he enlisted as a Corporal in Company D , 1^st Minnesota Infantry. Prior to Gettysburg Corp. Smithyman and the 1^st Minnesota had been in action at Bull Run, The 7 Days, South Mountain, Antietam , and Chancellorsville. Promoted to Sergeant, he was one of the 47 men left standing after the regiments’ charge of July 2^nd, and on July 3^rd Sgt. Smithyman and the remnants of his regiment were ordered to strike the flank of Picketts’ Charge at the copse of trees. Here they engaged the 28^th Virginia in brutal hand-to-hand combat, and here Sgt. Smithyman was shot at close range in the left lung. After a 4 month convalescence he tried to return to his regiment in late 1863 but, unable to carry out the duties of a soldier, he was discharged for disability in early 1864. He returned to Minnesota and applied for a pension, as he was unable to perform the manual labor necessary for being a farmer. He came to California for the first time in 1872, and moved here permanently in 1876, hoping that the climate would improve his health. He lived in Santa Ana, San Juan Capistrano, and Newport Beach, where he died in 1897 from an infected bladder. He is buried at Santa Ana Cemetery.

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