In his youth, Smith worked at the Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) factory and traveled throughout Utah as a salesman.

Smith also gave many impromptu concerts on this sales trip, playing on harmonica and guitar with Poulton accompanying on the flute.

[2] During this journey Smith would regularly attend LDS Church services on Sundays in the towns he passed through coming north from Panaca.

[3] In 1894, after returning from serving in the church's Southern States Mission, Smith got a job as assistant to a traveling salesman at ZCMI.

[6] While surveying for a railroad as a young man, Smith's eyesight was permanently impaired by glare from the sun.

[7]: 116  After 1903, Smith found his frequent travels debilitating and began to show prominent symptoms of physical weakness.

Especially in the 1920s, Smith would regularly contact Salt Lake City businessmen to personally urge them to donate money to scouting.

Smith was an avid genealogist and family historian and was named national vice president of the Sons of the American Revolution in 1922.

In 1932, Smith found himself at odds with much of the ZCMI board over plans to cut pensions for retirees as the Great Depression caused disruption for the company.

It was several years after their marriage that the first daughter was born, with the pregnancy starting shortly after Woodruff gave Lucy a priesthood blessing to be a mother.

For much of the 1930s Smith was involved in protecting her husband, George Elliott, from charges of mail fraud connected with alleged fraudulent stock sales by the Salt Lake Mortuary in Montana.

[20] Just prior to his marriage to Lucy, Smith served as a Mutual Improvement Association (MIA) missionary throughout many areas in Southern Utah.

After returning, he was made a member of the third quorum of the seventies presiding council in Salt Lake City, which meant he had specific assignments for conducting missionary outreach in the area.

[26] Smith also served as a Sunday School teacher and then as the organization's superintendent for the 17th Ward in Salt Lake City, immediately north-west of Temple Square.

[27] For a few years leading up to 1902 Smith served as an assistant to Richard R. Lyman and Joseph F. Merrill in running the Salt Lake Stake's youth program for young men.

While presiding over the European Mission, Smith had his first airplane flight as part of a journey from Britain to Sweden.

His illnesses seem to have come on in large part as a result of many of the difficult circumstances he suffered while visiting stake conferences during the first six years he was an apostle.

This was a result of over 20 years of work on trying to get the hill coordinated between Smith and Willard Bean on the part of the church and the local landowners.

[31] In 1930, Smith invited a group of his friends who shared his interest in the history of the LDS Church to his house.

When World War II ended, Smith helped send supplies to Europe and was also known for his efforts to revitalize missionary work.

While not common knowledge among contemporary members of the LDS Church, nor even in Smith's day, it was well known to his close friends, church associates, and family members that Smith suffered from chronic depression and anxiety, which at times could be debilitating, including one nervous breakdown that left him largely bedridden from 1909 to 1912.

[7]: 124  Smith professed that these experiences helped deepen his understanding of the Gospel and personal belief in the existence of God, stating in a 1921 general conference session, "I have been in the valley of the shadow of death in recent years, so near the other side that I am sure that for the special blessing of our Heavenly Father I could not have remained here.

Grandchild George Albert Smith V suggests that his grandfather struggled with depression, feeling incompetent, and being overwhelmed.

Another granddaughter, Shauna Lucy Stewart Larsen, who lived in George Albert's home for twelve years as a child, remembers that 'when there was great, tremendous stress, mostly [of] an emotional kind, it took its toll and he would literally have to go to bed for several days.'

Grandson Robert Murray Stewart remembers, 'There were problems associated with his mental health, just maintaining control of himself.'

Given what seems to be George Albert's emotional fragility, physical illness may have been a socially acceptable way for him to retreat, rest, and regroup before tackling his responsibilities again with renewed determination.

"[7]: 124 In March 1951, Smith suffered a stroke that left him mostly paralyzed on the right side of his body, and gradually deteriorated until his death on April 4, 1951, his 81st birthday.

Smith's teachings as an apostle were the 2012 course of study in the LDS Church's Sunday Relief Society and Melchizedek priesthood classes.