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People Names and Dates


Full Name	J. Lewis Smith
AKA Full Name	Jacob Lewis Smith, Jr.
People ID	686477
Title
First Name	J.
AKA First Name	Jacob
Nickname
Middle Name	Lewis
AKA Middle	Lewis
Patronymic/Matronymic
Priorsurnames
Surname	Smith
AKA Surname	Smith
Father's Surname	Smith
Mother's Surname	Hetzel
Suffix	Jr
Gender	Male
Full Birth Date If Known	1906-05-24
Birth Year	1906
Birth Month	5
Birth Day	24
Full Death Date If Known	1964-09-12
Death Year	1964
Death Month	9
Death Day	12

Events, Dates and Places

Event	Date	Geo Top Level	Geo 2nd Level	Geo 3rd Level	Geo 4th Level	Geo 5th Level	Notes
Birth	1906/05/24	USA	Ohio
Death	1964/09/12	USA	California	Los Angeles	Culver City

Relationships

Relationship	Related To	Relative's People ID	Relative's Birth Year	Relative's Death Year	Other Date (typically Marriage Date)
Son of	Jacob Lewis Smith	686481	1877	1940

Military Service

No military service added for this person

Rank If Known Or Highest Or Final Rank	Branch of Service	Beginning Date if Known	End Date if Known

Military Actions Served During

No military actions added for this person

Interment, Inurnment or Memorialization Information


Cemetery	Not Known
Address
City/Town	N/A
County/District	N/A
State/Province	N/A
Postal/Zip Code
Country/Principality	N/A





Organization
Property Type
Has Marker
No Marker
Is Cenotaph
GPS/LatLong Coordinates
End of Interment Record	If there are additional interments or cenotaphs for this person they will appear below

Inscription Information

No inscriptions added for this person yet

Other Information

Biographical or other information about the person

https://mills-sfv.com/Genealogy/GLS/People/Text/686477.txt

The Find A Grave memorial for this guy places him in Forest Lawn Glendale, but I have some pretty serious doubts about that proposition.

One reason I don't think that J. Lewis Smith is buried at Forest Lawn Glendale is because the marker photo posted on his memorial is for Lewis James Smith, who is a different person.

Let me count the ways I can prove to you they are different people. First, the plot location purportedly for J. Lewis Smith is Vesperland Lot 1292 (it was originally recorded on the memorial as Lot 1291 but it has been changed in the last two years). Well, he's not there. Henry Sawdry and Helen Self are buried there (in Lot 1291 so we can ignore them going forward). However, there is a Lewis James Smith in Vesperland Lot 1292, along with Lewis Lorensen. OK, so the lot is (was) off by 1 number, no big deal, right?

The lot being off by one number is (was) the least of the problems with these two people. The real problem is that with anyone whose last name is Smith (or maiden name, for that matter), you have to dot your 'I's and cross your 'T's when you do anything.

The actor J. Lewis Smith was born 24 May 1902 (actually apparently 1906) in Ohio and died 12 September 1964 in Culver City, California. However, the Lewis James Smith who is in Vesperland Lot 1292 was born 12 September 1902 in Georgia and died on 16 September 1964 in Los Angeles County (I don't know which city).

Oh, and the Find A Grave memorial isn't consistent either, the bio section says he was born in 1906 and the date field on the memorial shows 1902. That was the case (I believe) in 2020 but the information has been corrected to the proper dates for the actor as of 2022, with no explanation for why the birth year is different on the marker). I could tell them why the birth year is different, it's because they have the wrong f**king person's marker attached to the memorial.

I went far enough in my research to link the actor to his father, and the non-actor to both his mother and father. At some point I need to add more events to both records to give them a bit more granularity. They do show up as two separate people in the California Death Index, although the CADI shows the one from Ohio was born in 1906 not 1902 (which means the bio section on the memorial is correct, not the birthdate field -- again, no longer relevant since the memorial was edited). Which just shows me that someone "adjusted" the birth year of the actor to match what was found on the marker. It's always good research practice to randomly adjust information to fit what you see when you "think" you've found a match. Which is one of the reasons why there is so much garbage on sites like Ancestry Dot Com and also, unfortunately, Find A Grave.

In any event, if J. Lewis Smith IS buried at Forest Lawn Glendale, he is NOT in Vesperland Lot 1292, and he doesn't show up on their online grave locator. Which means that it's possible he's there, but it's much more likely he is buried in any number of other cemeteries in the Los Angeles area (or not buried at all, he could have been cremated and ended up just about anywhere). Unless a death certificate shows up that indicates he is in Forest Lawn, my suspicion is that he's not.


Forest Lawn Glendale famous people that find a grave thinks are buried there who aren't
Small notes (field in database 50 characters max)
Family Search ID	LTX5-D9B
Find A Grave 1	12359
Famous per Find A Grave	Yes
Famous per Consensus	Yes
Find A Grave 2
Find A Grave 3
BillionGraves Record ID
Other websites
Record Entry Date	2020-12-08 13:30:53
Record Last Edit Date	2022-05-24 10:40:00

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