At age 13, Smith worked as a clerk on a Lake Erie freighter, where he learned business practices and probably met traders returning from the far west to Montreal. This work gave Smith an ambition for adventurous wilderness trade. According to Dale L. Morgan, Smith's love of nature and adventure came from his mentor, Dr. Titus G. V. Simons, a pioneer medical doctor who was on close terms with the Smith family. Morgan speculated that Simons gave the young Smith a copy of Meriwether Lewis' and William Clark's 1814 book of their 1804–1806 expedition to the Pacific, and according to legend Smith carried this journal on all of his travels throughout the American West. Smith would provide Clark, who had become superintendent of Indian affairs, much information from his own expeditions into the West. In 1817, the Smith family moved westward again to Ohio and settled in Green Township in what is present-day Ashland County.