Captain Raphael Cummings Smead, after serving some months with the army in Mexico, was ordered to Carlisle Barracks in 1847. He brought his wife Sarah Radcliff and their family of five children to the town, and enrolled his oldest son, John Radcliff, in the local Dickinson College. But a liberal education appears to have had few attractions for either father or son; a commission in the army or even a job as a surveyor or engineer on one of the railroads under construction in the West promised higher social rank and income. Captain Smead after considering how he might get his son an appointment to West Point, resolved to ask an old West Point classmate to use his influence.
Alexander Dallas Bache was, like Smead, a graduate of West Point in 1825. A great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, a native of Philadelphia, Bache had left the army in 1829 to become a professor in the University of Pennsylvania, and soon acquired a great reputation as a scientist and a leader in educational reform: he was founder and president of Girard College in Philadelphia in 1836 and of Philadelphia Central High School a few years later, and since 1843 he had been chief of the United States Coast Survey. He would become a president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a founder and first president of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.
The story of Bache's friendship and support of the Smead family is contained in letters preserved by Captain Smead's great-great grandson. They are reprinted here:
Raphael C. Smead to Alexander Dallas Bache
Fort Monroe, Va. Octr. 18, 1847
Dear Sir: I take the liberty of presuming so far upon our old acquaintance & companionship, as to ask your assistance in behalf of my son John R. Smead, who is now a stout lad of 17 years. I have applied to get him a cadets appointment & have received tolerably fair assurances of success, but as I cannot bring much political influence to bear & particularly as I am now on my way to Mexico for the second time, where I shall be for a long time to come & cannot give the matter my personal attention I have not much expectation of success. My objects are, first, to ask if you have any influence in that quarter, that you will exert it to procure him the appointment of cadet, & in the second place, in case that fails to ask if you cannot find a place for him on the Coast Survey, be it ever so humble, but one where he can learn the business & rise according to his merits & at the same time with a sufficient emolument to support him. He is a youth of good habits & principles, I flatter myself & believe, & has good abilities. He is now at the College in Carlisle where I shall leave my family during my absence. He learns mathematics easily & has made considerable proficiency in them. He entered this year in the Junior Class in mathematics & by the time the term is out (1st Ap[ri]l) will have acquired a pretty good knowledge of the lower branches [in the margin: that is-He has been through and understood pretty well Davis' [not identified] Algebra as far as Equations of the 2nd. Degree, has been through LeGendry [Adrien-Marie Legendre] Geometry & has a very respectable knowledge of it, surveying &c--& is now prosecuting such studies as are taught in the Junior class], but of course very far below what he would learn at West Point.
My friends could probably procure him a Situation on a Rail Road, but I would prefer the Coast Survey, as well on account of the confidence I have in your ability & willingness to forward him in the profession (for old lang syne) as on account of the permanence of the employment it will give those who devote themselves to it.
Jane Smead was the niece of my great-grandmother, Jane who married John Hays, and the daughter of Alexander Dallas Bache Smead. Far back into my youth I have memories of her fortress-like, solid brick house commanding the south -east corner of West and South Streets in Carlisle. On West Street the yard was extremely deep and guarded by a high wooden fence.
When Post Masters received letters, they listed the names in the newspapers of those to whom the letters were addressed. If the letters were not picked up by a specified date, they went to the Dead Letter Office.