Archives West Finding Aid

Raymond Smiley Spears, author of western and adventure stories, was born in Belleview, Ohio, in 1876. His father, John R. Spears, was a U.S. naval historian and reporter for the New York Sun; his mother, Celestia Colette Smiley Spears, was a teacher. Raymond Spears was educated in Philadelphia in a village school until he was fifteen, when it was discovered he had a throat ailment. He was sent to the Adirondack Mountains to recuperate. During this period, he acquired a strong love of the outdoors--fishing, hunting, and trapping.

A few years later, Spears moved to New York City where he spent the next five years as a reporter for the New York Sun. He tired of city life and returned to the country where he began free-lancing for newspapers and magazines. Spears wrote several accounts of various cross-country trips he had made which were published in Forest and Stream. In fact, he was hailed as "America's best-known automobile tourer," having travelled by car and motorcycle across the United States. These trips provided many ideas and much background information which Spears used in his fiction and non fiction articles.

His love of the outdoors helped secure his next job, that of a fire patrol worker with the New York Forestry Department. Spears advocated strict enforcement of game laws which he felt would not only protect wildlife, but also increase revenue from the sales of furs and skins. He continued to write about fishing, hunting and trapping and, in 1913, was approached by the editor of Hunter-Trader-Trapper to do a question/answer column. The column also included inquiries related to woodcraft, conservation and outdoor sports and recreation.

Spears published two novels, The River Prophet and Diamond Tolls, and an Argosy serial entitled "The Flying Coyotes" was later published in book form. He used no less than eight pseudonyms; of these Jim Smiley was the one used most frequently. His stories appeared in slicks like Collier's, but Spears built his reputation on the numerous pieces he wrote for pulp magazines such as Adventure, West, and Argosy. An outspoken proponent of prohibition in the 1920's, newspapers often published his opinion on that subject as well as on other local, state, and national issues.

During the 1930's, Spears was president of the American Trappers' Association. Prior to his presidency, he served as the organization's conservation director.

Spears married C. Eleanor Shepard of Long Island in 1904. They had two children, John and Charles. Raymond Spears eventually settled in Inglewood, California, where he died in 1950.