Smith's parents were Theosophists with Pantheistic tendencies (involving the belief in an immanent God who is identical with the Universe or nature), and both were fond of folk music. His mother, Mary Louise, originally from Sioux City, Iowa, came from a long line of school teachers and herself taught for a time on the Lummi Indian reservation near Bellingham. His father, Robert James Smith, a fisherman, worked as a watchman for the Pacific American Fishery, a salmon canning company. Smith's paternal great-grandfather John Corson Smith (d. 1910) had been a Union colonel in the American Civil War, brevetted Brigadier General just as the war ended, and had served from 1885-89 as Lieutenant Governor of the state of Illinois. He had also been a prominent Freemason and had authored several books about the history of the order.