Uncrowned Community Builders

Elizabeth Smith Brown Talbert was born on July 11, 1890. She was a native of Fayetteville, Tennessee and the daughter of Charles and Mary Smith. Her two siblings were Dr. K.K. Smith and Charles L. Smith.

Mrs. Talbert graduated from Kansas State Normal School in 1913 and attended Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and State Teachers during summer vacations while teaching at Muskogee High School in Oklahoma. She taught for one year at A. & M. College in Langston then went to Philander-Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas where she received her M.A. degree.

Her first husband, Attorney Scott Brown died in 1918. Mrs. Brown moved to Buffalo, New York in 1925. Mrs. Talbert was the second wife of William H. Talbert, widower of Mary B. Talbert, who died in 1923.

She was prominent in civic, political and social affairs in the city and the state. From 1929 to 1932 she was the president of the Empire State Federation of Women's Clubs. She was chairman for 6 years of the women's division of United Negro College Fund Drive locally. She was a member of the Business and Professional Women's Club, executive board, member of the Oscar DePriest Republican League, the YWCA, the Booklovers Club, and Mary B. Talbert Missionary Circle of the Michigan Avenue Baptist Church where she was a Sunday School Superintendent. She also was a deaconess at the Michigan Street Baptist Church.

Mrs. Talbert worked for 11 years as a social worker for the Erie County Department of Social Welfare. In 1945, she took a position as the Assistant Director of the Friendship House in Lackawanna, New York. She left that position in 1947.

She died on April 6, 1952.