Her last name changed several times as she married three men in succession: from her birth surname of Bennett she became Smith, then Jefferson, and finally Gagliardini.

[5] As the niece of the widower Kentucky Governor James B. McCreary, she served as the hostess of gatherings at the executive mansion at Frankfort.

[6] She also served as the chairman of the promotion committee for the "Woman's Shop" at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville in September 1915.

[7] After her first husband died, she moved with her two children (Elise was 30 and Thomas 15) to a high society neighborhood of the St. James–Belgravia Historic District in Louisville, Kentucky, renting an apartment at Saint James Court.

[9] Elise Bennett Smith, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution,[10] was elected President of Federation of Women's Clubs in Kentucky.

[17] As KERA president she recruited Senator Thomas A. Combs of Lexington to introduce a full suffrage bill in the Kentucky Senate; and, working from the McClure Building in Frankfort, Kentucky together with former KERA president Madeline McDowell Breckinridge she managed the distribution of literature to legislators on suffrage.

[20] Smith was meanwhile elected state chairman of the Political Science Department of the Federation of Women's Clubs of Kentucky.

When she moved back to Kentucky, she stayed active in organizing the woman suffrage campaign by serving as the KERA corresponding secretary.

[33] At the age of 66 and with her brother Warfield C. Bennett as a witness, she married an Italian investment broker, Alessandro Gagliardini, on January 15, 1938, in Manhattan, New York; and, he petitioned for his naturalization papers that day.