When Ida Belle Smith’s mother, Rachel Reardon Smith, died in the late 1800s, Ida went to make her home with the Rudy and Rosanna Schaar family in Goshen. The Smith family had moved to Goshen earlier from the Sherrodsville area after Ida’s father, Benjamin Franklin Smith, started working in the mines at Goshen. They lived in the house now owned by Doug and Chris Krocker.

Some years later, Emmet Howard, a self-taught mining engineer, started working in the Goshen and Wainwright areas and boarded with the Schaar family where he met Ida. In 1908, Emmet and Ida were married and bought a home in Goshen near the Zeisberger Cemetery. The couple had four children, Mildred, (married Adrian Rausch), Donald, (married Helen Reymond),  Evelyn, (married Lester Moore) and Kathryn (married Eddie Krocker).

Emmet died after contracting malaria while working in South Carolina and Ida raised their children by herself, working as the first janitor at the Goshen School, built in 1923.

Ida’s brother, Marion Smith, built a home in Goshen where the Brokaw family has lived for many years.

Emmet’s grandfather, John Howard, was killed while serving as sheriff of Tuscarawas County in a buggy crash at the old canal bridge at Goshen.