Samuel Griswold Goodrich, widely known as "Peter Parley", was consul in Paris, affording an opportunity for Smith to be educated abroad.

The Goodrich house was constantly filled with terror-stricken foreigners, who found their only safety under the protection of the American flag.

Returning to the U.S., in 1856, she wrote many stories and verses for magazines, her letters during the civil war were widely read and copied.

In 1846, in Paris, she was presented at the court of Louis Philippe I and saw the throne of the "citizen king" broken and burned in the French Revolution of 1848.

For 20 hours, Alphonse de Lamartine held them by his eloquence, and Miss Goodrich stood on a balcony near when the rabble hurled down a statue and thrust him into its niche.

[1] Miss Goodrich was presented at the Court of St James's at the time of the first Great Exhibition.

The panic of 1857 drove her husband back to Woodbury, where they lived in the Smith house, which was destroyed January 2, 1885, with all its priceless treasures.

From 1873 til 1893, she was more or less connected with the newspapers, and was for two years secretary of the large correspondence association of the American.