Maurice Tindall Smick

Born In Narberth Station When It Was Called Elm

M. T. Smick remembers the day in 1892 when they took down the sign “Elm Station” and replaced it with a new sign reading “Narberth.”

He was born in the station—on January 1, 1876.

His mother was the station agent, and passenger traffic wasn’t so heavy but what she couldn’t attend to her household duties and rear children while selling tickets, handling the mail and keeping the potbelly stove hot in the wintertime. Dad Smick was employed at the North Philadelphia station.

The only buildings in the vicinity were a spring house and a 20-room boarding house kept by Mrs. William Furey.

The only time things were busy around the station was during the racing season at Belmont Driving Park, when the sporting fraternity and harness horse fans from Philadelphia unloaded at Elm Station.

Mr. Smick’s two brothers and a sister were also born in the station. A younger brother, Richard, born in 1878, is a State employee. William J., Jr., born in 1872, and Margaret, born in the year of the blizzard, 1888, are dead.

Their father and mother came to Elm before 1870, when a section of Narberth was swamp land and there was a lake where the Playground is now located, The Pennsylvania Railroad had but two tracks.

Mr. Smick lived in Narberth until the time of the Spanish War [1898], then went to Pittsburgh to work for Pressed Steel. He is now retired and lives at 6200 Wayne Ave., Germantown.

Source: unidentified clipping at the Lower Merion Historical Society, possibly The Main Line Chronicle 1948–1960

Updated June 3, 2025.