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     Rev. Thomas Smith was born on 10 March 1702 in Boston, Massachusetts.² He was the son of Thomas Smith and Mary Corwin.² Rev. Thomas Smith was ordained on 8 March 1726/27 at Portland, Maine.² He married Sarah Tyng on 12 September 1728. Rev. Thomas Smith married Elizabeth Hunt on 12 August 1766 in Windham, Maine.¹ Rev. Thomas Smith died on 23 May 1795 in Portland, Maine, at the age of 93.²

     Thomas Charles Smith was the son of Thomas Smith Jr. and Mary Taylor.¹

     Thomas Hollis Smith was born in 1790.¹ He was the son of William Stephens Smith and Abigail Adams.¹ Thomas Hollis Smith died in 1791.¹

     Thomas Smith Jr. was the son of Thomas Smith and Elizabeth Lynsen.¹ Thomas Smith Jr. married Mary Taylor, daughter of John Taylor, on 4 December 1786.² Thomas Smith Jr. died in 1815 in Haverstraw.¹

     Velma Morse Smith was born on 19 December 1872 in New Orleans, Louisiana.¹ He was the son of Alexander Smith and Elizabeth Packer Sewall.² Velma Morse Smith is recorded as Morse Smith.³

     Walter Smith married Susanna Brooke, daughter of Clement Brooke and Jane Sewall, circa 1714.¹

     William Smith married Elizabeth Hartley, daughter of James Hartley and (unknown) (Unknown), on 4 September 1661.^1,2 Served in the army of the Commonwealth. They moved from the Isle of Ely to Newport Pagnell.³ William Smith made a will dated 28 February 1681/82 (34 Chas II).⁴ He died in 1682.^3,5 He was buried in the aisle on the south side of the font in the Parish Church at Newport Pagnell.⁵

     William Smith was born on 7 October 1762 in White Plains, Westchester County, New York.¹ He was the son of Dr. William Hooker Smith and Sarah Brown.

     William Smith was also known as "Port Royal" Smith.¹ He was born circa 1662.² He was the son of William Smith and Elizabeth Hartley.¹ William Smith married Frances Peartree, daughter of Col. William Peartree.¹ On 31 October 1696 he is named in a lease as William Smith of the Hand of Jamaica, merchant.³ William Smith died on 15 October 1736 in New York.²

     William Smith was the son of William Smith and Frances Peartree.¹

     William Smith was the son of Rev. William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy.¹

     William Smith married secondly Anne Vining Heron, daughter of Patrick Heron and Martha Bide, on 24 November 1783 in St. Mary's, Marylebone.¹

     Captain William Smith was born on 24 March 1666/67 in Charleston. He married Abigail Fowle circa 1699/0 in Charlestown.² Captain William Smith died on 3 June 1730 in Charleston at the age of 63.

     Chief Justice Hon. William Smith. Historian, diarist, jurist, and politician.² William Smith’s grandfather had been a merchant in England before immigrating to New York City in 1715. His father graduated from Yale College in 1722, became a successful lawyer, and in 1753 was appointed a member of the Council of the province of New York; his mother was from the French speaking Huguenot settlement of New Rochelle, New York. Smith graduated from Yale College in 1745 and articled in his father’s law office. Licensed attorney at law in October 1750, he quickly established a lucrative practice. He became particularly skilled in the defence of what were often ill-defined landed estates, and he was prominent in efforts to raise the standards of the legal profession by adherence to British forms. In 1763 Governor Robert Monckton offered Smith, then only 35 years old, the position of chief justice of the Supreme Court. Smith hesitated, because his father had just been appointed third judge of the same court, and the opportunity was lost. In 1767, when his father retired from the colonial council, Smith was appointed to succeed him.

From an early age Smith was a prolific writer. After several literary ventures, in 1753–54 he co-authored the Independent Reflector, New York’s first magazine. With one of his friends, William Livingston, he compiled the first collection of the Laws of New-York from the year 1691 to 1751, inclusive, published in 1752, and so acquired the basic material for The history of the province of New-York, which he published in London in 1757. This work served him well over the years, giving him a wide reputation as an authority on the colony, and he was often referred to as “the historian of New York”; 20 years later he began a second volume, published posthumously. In 1757 he was also the co-author, again with Livingston, of a pamphlet entitled A review of the military operations in North-America, condemning the direction of the Seven Years’ War. In this polemic he took his first look at his future home: “Canada must be demolished – Delenda est Carthago – or we are undone.” By now a compulsive writer, from 1763 to 1787 Smith kept a journal, intended partly as a confidant but chiefly as a historical source book, and from its publication in the mid 20th century it has served as such to historians of the British empire in North America.

Smith’s talents as a writer were frequently enlisted in partisan causes. New York politics were dominated by family groupings struggling for control of patronage, and Smith espoused his father’s long-standing antipathy to the De Lancey party. A Presbyterian, he opposed such Anglican enterprises as the foundation in 1754 of King’s College (the future Columbia University) and the establishment of a bishop in America. William Livingston, John Morin Scott, and Smith became known as the “New York Triumvirate,” whose object, one critic observed, was “to pull down Church and State.” John Adams reported that Smith had “acted an intrepid, an honest and a prudent part” in the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, for which he earned the cognomen “Patriotic Billy.” After his appointment to the council, however, Smith became more cautious and as his land speculations increased he turned away from some of his youthful enthusiasms. He preferred to oppose the De Lancey party and the Anglican church covertly and represented himself to successive governors as the man “above party” on whom they could rely for disinterested advice. Nevertheless, when New York began to drift into rebellion, there were those among both radical and conservative opponents of Britain who looked to him for support. In 1776 he moved to his country house in a vain attempt to sit out the crisis in rural retirement, and he refused to pledge allegiance to the new state. After two years on parole in Albany, he was finally forced to take a stand and joined the British in New York City. Although he recognized that both sides were at fault in the conflict, he believed that nothing could pardon the revolutionaries’ desire to shatter the unity of the empire, and he declared his allegiance to the crown in 1778. To the British he was a prize equivalent to a repentant Samuel Adams, a sign for gentlemen “who had been lying on their oars,” though there were reservations: “few Men so able, if he could be trusted.” Two years later he was rewarded by appointment as chief justice of New York.

Sir Guy Carleton*’s arrival as commander-in-chief of the British forces in 1782 shaped the future course of Smith’s life. The two men quickly established a rapport, conversing frequently about ideas of empire and imperial management. Smith had long been an advocate of a union of the American colonies: between 1765 and 1775 he had written several papers urging a united legislature consisting of a lord lieutenant with wide discretionary powers, a council, and an assembly chosen by indirect election. Individual colonial governments would remain as they were beneath this superstructure; the continental assembly would handle all royal requisitions for taxation. Since Carleton had initially hoped to exercise viceregal powers in New York, and was disgusted by the way his command had been shackled by the British government’s determination to accept defeat, he saw great merit in the imperial structure Smith proposed, especially when Smith insinuated that the commander-in-chief was the obvious man to head it.

The British evacuated New York in 1783, and Carleton and Smith sailed for England on the same ship in December, Carleton to face a government unappreciative of his true merits, Smith to learn the numbing routine of office-seeker and claimant for compensation, although London was also a broadening experience in that he met and found himself at ease with many of the dissenting reformers of the day. Smith’s fortunes were inextricably tied to those of Carleton, who had recommended his appointment as chief justice of Quebec while they were both still in New York. Put simply, if Carleton became governor of Quebec, Smith would become chief justice; if not, Smith’s future was blank. It gradually became clear that even compensation for his losses as a loyalist might depend upon Carleton’s success. He heard that William Pitt himself had some “Doubt of my Principles” in the recent war.

Smith viewed Quebec in the context of what he hoped was a British determination to reunite the empire in North America, and he had to encourage an often surly Carleton, determined upon a peerage before accepting any post there, with visions of what might be achieved. If the surviving colonies were put under central direction and made a shining example of the superior wisdom of British forms, then the disorganized Americans would repent of their independence and perhaps “place themselves under the same protecting Power.” Carleton should be governor general of all the provinces and captain-general of the militia, with control of the navy and full authority to negotiate and conclude treaties within North America. He alone would be in contact with the imperial government, and all North American officials would correspond with him. He should approve all executive decisions, control Indian affairs and frontier defence, regulate commerce, grant crown lands and charters for towns, universities, and other public institutions, and choose all officers usually appointed by the British government. He should also have the power to confer for the levying of general taxes with a two-chamber house drawing members from all the colonies. The British government’s conception of what was needed in North America, however, differed from Smith’s. When Carleton was finally commissioned on 15 April 1786, it was not as governor general of a federation of colonies but as multiple governor of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, with none of the overriding powers Smith had envisaged. Ennobled as Baron Dorchester, he was sent to Quebec on a fact-finding mission, to advise ministers on the constitutional problems of the province.

Dorchester and Smith arrived at Quebec on 23 Oct. 1786, and Smith took the oaths of office as councillor and chief justice on 2 November. Once again denied a full measure of power, Carleton retired from the political scene and did not attend the council. Since the next in line, Lieutenant Governor Henry Hope, was frequently absent, Smith was left to preside over meetings, and his position was strengthened through his chairmanship of numerous council committees. The council was sharply divided along party lines drawn in the names of national groups. The majority French party saw in Smith a powerful threat of anglicization, and the hostility of its leader, Adam Mabane, was doubly assured by the fact that he himself had hoped to become chief justice. Other judges, Thomas Dunn* and Pierre-Méru Panet*, regarded him askance as a newcomer and an American, who retained large land holdings in Vermont and New York and whose reputation for equivocal conduct had preceded him. But since the English party had no leader of Mabane’s calibre, men such as Hugh Finlay* and Samuel Jan Holland* at first looked to Smith to fill that role.

Smith made no secret of his wish to see massive anglophone immigration to strengthen Quebec through increased population, and one of the ways he hoped to encourage it was by anglicizing the legal system of the colony. He and Mabane soon came into conflict in a council committee called to report on the courts of justice. Among the reforms Smith proposed were new judicial districts for the loyalist settlements and the extension of optional jury trials, which since 1785 had been permitted in some civil cases, to all personal actions. Mabane, however, opposed further encroachment of English legal practice on French civil law procedures. Meanwhile, only two months after his arrival, Smith had caused a major controversy by upsetting the customary interpretation of the Quebec Act. He reversed the decision found by Mabane in the Court of Common Pleas in a case involving William Grant*, of Saint-Roch, and Alexander Gray by demonstrating that French civil law did not apply to natural-born British subjects. He argued that the Quebec Act, which had expressly granted Canadian laws to Canadians, had not expressly denied English law to British-born subjects, who were therefore entitled to their natural rights. Although he had good legal precedent for his opinion, Smith chose not to mention it, and it seemed that he was destroying singlehanded a system of laws widely regarded as holding back a flood of British immigration. His legal decision was a political challenge to the French party in the council. When he tried to embody his views in a law, Paul Roch* de Saint-Ours counterattacked by introducing a bill to abolish optional jury trials, as well as the English law of evidence in force in commercial cases since 1777. On 22 March 1787 the council voted not to commit Smith’s bill for consideration. Manœuvring to avoid defeat, Smith seized on a protest against Saint-Ours’ bill, in the form of a petition from the English merchants, as a reason to shelve it. The merchants’ protest was argued before the council on 14 April by the attorney general, James Monk*, who condemned the past administration of justice in such strong terms that a formal inquiry was unavoidable. Smith, the only judge not castigated by Monk, was mainly responsible for conducting the investigation and was uncomfortably prominent as one disappointed litigant after another denounced his colleagues. The accumulated evidence was sent to London with no suggestion as to what should be done; the judicial system had been discredited but continued as before; and Smith, blamed for the impasse, lost support among the English party. In April 1789 Monk was relieved of his office and replaced by Alexander Gray; feeling that he had been made the scapegoat, Monk became a bitter opponent of the chief justice.

Smith continued his efforts to clear the way for immigration when he supported, or possibly inspired, Charles-Louis Tarieu* de Lanaudière’s petition in January 1788 to convert his seigneury to freehold tenure. This effort failed, but in 1790 Smith chaired a council committee that recommended voluntary conversion. Feudal tenures, he argued, had held back the expansion of the old French colony and left it weak enough to be conquered; their retention would retard the progress of Quebec now that it was an English colony. A storm of public protest greeted the committee’s report, and when the legislative session opened in March 1791, the council voted unanimously to abandon a bill for voluntary conversion. Many members of the English party were themselves seigneurs.

Smith, feeling isolated, frequently demonstrated his scorn for provincial politicians, whom he found slovenly, unsophisticated, and unfit for an elective assembly. As he wrote to the London merchant Brook Watson*, “neither Protestant nor Popish Catholic, British nor Canadian, merchant nor landholder” agreed with his views. The only initiative that won nearly unanimous support was his proposal, advanced in 1789, for a provincial educational system crowned by a university with a council consisting of an equal number of French and English members. But since he opposed any denominational connection for the college, the plan was buried in London [see also Charles-François Bailly de Messein; Jean-François Hubert].

Smith had created acrimonious political controversy with himself as the focal point, a situation far different from his experience in New York, where he had been able to influence governors and yet remain in the background. And, as with the judicial investigations, to what end? Decisions were made in London, not Quebec. Dorchester’s advice to the home government on the constitutional problems of the colony was mostly negative, and the chief justice fully concurred. In 1789 the initiative for reform passed to William Wyndham Grenville, the new Home secretary, who drew up a plan for dividing Quebec into two separate provinces. He sent a copy of this document, the basis of the Constitutional Act of 1791, to Dorchester for his comments; Dorchester turned it over to Smith.

Grenville’s plan beat a retreat from the glorious prospect Smith cherished: a British America from Atlantic to Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean, through Louisiana, to the Gulf of Mexico. The expansion of British North America required a government that was more centralized, not further fragmented. There should, Smith argued, be a federal government uniting the existing colonies under a governor general, with a legislative council and a, general assembly. The council would consist of members from each province appointed for life by the governor general; the general assembly would have members chosen by the assemblies of the various provinces. To pass in the general assembly, a bill would have to receive not only a majority vote, but also a vote representing a majority of the provinces. This double majority would not, however, be necessary in the council. The legislature would meet at the behest of the governor general at least once in two years and continue no longer than seven years between elections. There was to be no hindrance to royal appointment of the executive council or crown officers. Thus a federal system was to be superimposed on the political constitutions of the provinces. Smith’s plan was included in Dorchester’s reply to Grenville, but a few words from London were sufficient to dispel the dream: the plan, sniffed Grenville, was “liable to considerable objection.”

The constitution of 1791 fell far short of Smith’s ideas, but as chief justice, now of Lower Canada, he resolved to do his best to set the new province on a correct course. He was determined that its politics should be conducted in proper parliamentary form, and his appointment as speaker of the Legislative Council gave him the necessary authority. He drew up commissions for Black Rod and the Serjeant-at-Arms with an exact copy of the uniforms worn at Westminster. Under his direction a council committee decided that all intercourse between council and assembly should be “in strict adherence to parliamentary practice,” and he saw to it that the writs issued to councillors were exact duplicates of the royal summonses to the House of Lords. He even determined the physical layout of the new legislature.

Reform of the judicial system continued to be one of Smith’s main concerns. In October 1792 Grenville’s successor, Henry Dundas, in an effort to make uniform the administration of justice in British North America, forwarded a plan to replace the existing Lower Canadian establishment of one chief justice and six judges of the Court of Common Pleas with two stationary courts of king’s bench in Quebec and Montreal, each presided over by a chief justice. Smith opposed the change, which threatened his personal position, and set out in a draft bill a whole judicial system that, to advance the provincial autonomy of Lower Canada under the crown, would have created almost a complete duplicate of the English judicial system. (Dundas’ plan went into effect, but after Smith’s death.) Smith also played an important role in determining land policy in the colony as chairman of the committee charged with reporting on the land-granting clauses of the royal instructions of 1791. Although the proclamation based on his report followed ministerial intentions, much depended on interpretation, and Smith’s zeal for immigration led him to interpret it in such a way that Lower Canada was opened to the worst kind of speculation. Millions of acres were petitioned for, mostly by Americans who had no intention of bringing in settlers Warrants of survey for large tracts of land were readily issued, and were then sold and resold in the United States, where they were accepted as proof of title. Smith’s policy, in effect, defeated his aims, and the land-granting problem was not resolved during his lifetime.

Smith died on 6 Dec. 1793 after a prolonged illness. The funeral procession was led by His Royal Highness Edward Augustus*, followed by the members of the Legislative Council and the assembly, officers both civil and military, “and the most respectable and numerous concourse of Citizens ever witnessed on a similar occasion.” Smith was buried – strange victory for a lifelong foe – in an Anglican cemetery. He was survived by his wife Janet and four children, including Harriet, who became the wife of Jonathan Sewell*, and William*, a future historian and member of the Executive Council.

William Smith received one of the greatest gifts any man can have, a second chance. He was one of the few loyalists able to resume a career broken by the American revolution. Consequently his life spanned not just two colonies, but two empires as well. From the perspective of the old empire he foresaw the new: a British America federated, virtually autonomous, bulwarked by British political concepts and traditions. He was able to adapt ideas formulated in the first empire while an official of the second. Yet Smith’s career was one of potential rather than actual achievement. His political durability was bought at a high price. Too many men had too many reservations about him; there were too many accusations of duplicity and greed and hypocrisy. His portrait shows a man of middling stature with a high forehead and a weak chin. He was an ascetic individual, prim, self-possessed; an intellectual with a gift for crushing repartee. It was his misfortune to live in times that required clear-cut decisions or at least the appearance of straightforwardness. Smith’s motto had always been in medio tutissimus ibis.

L. F. S. Upton

[William Smith is the author of The history of the province of New-York, from the first discovery to the year M.DCC.XXXII; to which is annexed, a description of the country with a short account of the inhabitants, their religious and political state, and the constitution of the courts of justice in that colony (London, 1757), translated by M.-A. Eidous as Histoire de la Nouvelle-York . . . (London, 1767); Continuation of the history of the province of New-York, to the appointment of Governor Colden, in 1762, ed. William Smith Jr (New York, 1826); and A review of the military operations in North-America; from the commencement of the French hostilities on the frontier of Virginia in 1753, to the surrender of Oswego, on the 14th of August, 1756 . . . (London, 1757). With William Livingston, he compiled Laws of New-York from the year 1691 to 1751, inclusive (New York, 1752) and Laws of New-York from the 11th Nov. 1752, to 22d May 1762 (New York, 1762). W. H. W. Sabine published in New York in 1956 Historical memoirs from 16 March 1763 to 9 July 1776 of William Smith . . . and in 1958 Historical memoirs from 29 July 1776 to 28 July 1778 . . . ; L. F. S. Upton has edited The diary and selected papers of Chief Justice William Smith, 1784–1793 (2v., Toronto, 1963–65). For a more complete listing of Smith’s writings, as well as a comprehensive biography, see L. F. S. Upton, The loyal whig: William Smith of New York & Quebec (Toronto, 1969). l.f.s.u.].² He was born on 18 June 1728 in New York, New York.^3,4 He was the son of Judge William Smith and Mary Hett.¹ Chief Justice Hon. William Smith married Jennet Livingston, daughter of James Livingston and Maria Kierstede, on 3 November 1752.⁴ Chief Justice Hon. William Smith died on 6 December 1793 in Quebec City at the age of 65.^3,4

     Judge William Smith was born on 8 October 1697 in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, published sources give the date as 5 October 1697.² He was the son of Thomas Smith and Susanna Odell.¹ Judge William Smith emigrated in 1715 to North America with his parents and two brothers.³ He graduated in 1719 from Yale. He adopted the profession of law, and was admitted to practice 20 May 1724, in New York, and rose rapidly to eminence. He was foremost among the founders of King's College. In 1751 he was appointed Attorney General, and Advocate General, and was for many years a member of the Council. In 1763 he was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court, and held that position till the time of his death.⁴ He married firstly Mary Hett, daughter of René Hett and Blanche Dubois, on 11 May 1727.³ Judge William Smith married Elizabeth widow Williams after 1754 there were no children of this marriage.⁴ Judge William Smith died on 22 November 1769 in New York at the age of 72.³

     Rev. William Smith was born on 29 January 1706/7 in Charlestown, Massachusetts.² He was the son of Captain William Smith and Abigail Fowle. Rev. William Smith graduated in 1725 from Harvard. He was ordained on 4 December 1734 at Weymouth.² He married Elizabeth Quincy, daughter of Hon. John Quincy and Elizabeth Norton, on 16 October 1740 in Braintree, Massachusetts.¹ Rev. William Smith was living in Weymouth.¹ He died on 17 September 1783 in Weymouth at the age of 76.

     William Charles Smith was born in 1842 in Winchester, Hampshire.¹ He was the son of William Robert Brudenell Smith and Caroline Grierson.¹ William Charles Smith. He was an ensign in the 78th Foot, Lieutenant by purchase March 1863, Captain by purchase August 1865 in 1861.^1,2,3

     William Eugene Smith was the son of Thomas Smith Jr. and Mary Taylor.¹

     Hon. William G. Smith was born on 7 February 1769 in New York.² He was the son of Chief Justice Hon. William Smith and Jennet Livingston.¹ William Smith’s father was a leading political figure in New York and in 1780, during the American revolution, he was appointed chief justice of the colony. When the British evacuated New York in late 1783 young William took ship for London, where he was joined by his father. The elder Smith had grave doubts about the boy’s abilities but, as the only son, William received the best introduction to life that Smith could give him. He briefly attended a prestigious grammar school and, after abandoning it, was educated by a Swiss tutor. He became fluent in foreign languages, especially French, and developed a taste for Latin and the classics. Introduced by his father to the cultural life of the great city as well as to the labyrinthian politics of the British government and of the loyalist émigrés, William appears to have learned best that connections were the way to success, not a totally illegitimate conclusion in the closed world Smith Sr inhabited.

In 1786 William went to Quebec with his father, who had been appointed chief justice of the colony under the administration of Lord Dorchester. Smith’s efforts to found a university having failed, William’s continuing preparation for life centred on practical training. He was given increasing responsibility for the vast family landholdings in New York and Vermont. In 1792 he petitioned for a land grant of 108 square miles on the Rivière Saint-François in Lower Canada. Through the influence of Smith, who was chairman of the colony’s land committee, the petition was recommended, but ultimately the grant was never completed as a result first of bureaucratic complexities and then of political opposition. In 1791 William had been commissioned an ensign in the Quebec Battalion of British Militia, and the following year, during the first elections held in Lower Canada, he ran for a seat in the House of Assembly but was soundly defeated. His father’s friendship with Dorchester obtained his appointment on 15 Dec. 1792 as clerk of the Legislative Council, a post to which the assembly fixed a salary of £450 sterling in 1793.

On the death of his father late in 1793, William inherited three-elevenths of the Smith estate. The only male heir, he was nominally chief custodian of the family inheritance, but after 1796 the administration would be performed increasingly by his brother-in-law Jonathan Sewell, who was more adept at such matters. On 6 April 1803 Smith was appointed master in Chancery for the province, mainly to run messages between the assembly and the Legislative Council; his chief recommendation for this unpaid position had been his innocuousness. But Smith had ambitions, and in 1803 he journeyed to England to try to obtain a salary for the post, to solicit further appointments – and to find a wife. Feeling himself “not sufficiently informed as to the advantages” of matrimony, he had long hesitated to marry. Necessity drove him to it, however. “Money is everything . . . ,” he wrote to Sewell, “unless I marry a woman of fortune I shall be ruined.” He found a suitable mate in Susanna Webber, a niece of the wealthy and influential merchant Sir Brook Watson. Susanna had considerable “attractions,” Smith informed Sewell in a letter which might have been written by Jane Austen. “She is pretty, not handsome, of a very good Family, with £200 a year now & one hundred more, at her mother’s death – of a very amiable disposition, good Temper and good Sense – and what is better than all, will go to Canada, a country in the estimation of the women of this Country, the most barbarous and the most uncomfortable of the world.” Smith also found a patron in the Duke of Kent (Edward Augustus), who had much admired his mother during a stay in Lower Canada from 1791 to 1794; the duke assisted him in obtaining £81 sterling per annum as master in Chancery. Like his father in the early 1780s, Smith kept a diary of his sojourn in London.

Smith returned to Lower Canada with his bride in 1804. He worked on a history of the colony that he had apparently begun in 1800, perhaps in emulation of his father, who had published The history of the province of New-York . . . in 1757. John Neilson furnished printing estimates in 1805 and 1809, but fearing the effect on his career of adverse public reaction, Smith dithered about publication. In 1810 he was given a commission of the peace, and two years later he began seeking appointment to the Executive Council; however, he received little encouragement from either friends or the government. Shortly before the War of 1812 he was promoted major in Quebec’s 3rd Militia Battalion, but he did not see action. Realizing that his history might sell in the wake of the war, Smith had it printed by Neilson in 1815. That year a friend and an active supporter of his candidacy for executive councillor, Herman Witsius Ryland, assured an English contact that the forthcoming work would force the crown to assert its rights vis-à-vis the assembly or to abandon them. He added that if the book had appeared under the “energetic” administration of Sir James Henry Craig it might have facilitated acceptance by imperial authorities of that governor’s draconian measures for extending the influence of the crown and reducing the power of the assembly. Since Craig’s departure in 1811, however, the political tendency had been to conciliation rather than confrontation. Having second thoughts, Smith delayed publication of the history, ostensibly to correct errors and add material, and then left for England in the summer of 1815, possibly to promote claims to office. The decision to delay publication was perhaps wise; on his return from England he found a conciliatory governor, Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, at the head of the administration. During Sherbrooke’s tenure Smith was named a commissioner for the Jesuit estates in November 1816, appointed an honorary member of the Executive Council on 3 Feb. 1817, and promoted lieutenant-colonel commanding Quebec’s 3rd Militia Battalion in May 1817. He was made a full member of the Executive Council, with voting rights, on 3 April 1823.

Smith did not lose interest in his “History,” however, and in early 1823 he mentioned to Governor Lord Dalhousie his preoccupation with the deterioration and disappearance of historical sources in the colony. In April Dalhousie invited him along with Sewell and Joseph-Rémi Vallières de Saint-Réal to help form “a Society, not entirely ‘Antiquarian’ but Historical rather and Canadian,” the principal objects of which would be “the early history of Canada, and particularly that which relates to the Indians,” as well as the collection of “all books, papers, deeds or documents which are supposed to be still existing but neglected.” The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec was founded the following year; Smith, however, seems to have played only a discreet role in its subsequent development. The time now seemed propitious for bringing out his history and, after protracted negotiations with Neilson over payment of printing costs since 1815, Smith released the History of Canada in two volumes in 1826.

The appearance of the History coincided with an increasingly determined effort on the part of the assembly, dominated by the nationalist Canadian party under Louis-Joseph Papineau*, to subject to its control the governor and the Executive and Legislative councils, led by Sewell and John Richardson* of the English party. In the mould of the English party, Smith had conceived the theme of his work to be “a Colony daily augmenting in Wealth, Prosperity and Happiness: now fortunately placed under the dominion of Great Britain and with a Constitution . . . which, . . . in assigning to its various branches, rights, peculiar to each, but necessary to the preservation of all, has been found in the harmony and co-operation of its powers . . . best adapted to the spirit and happiness of a Free People.” Although Smith himself considered his book a “narrative” rather than a history, it did constitute an effort at analysis and synthesis; it was in any case a much more substantial work than its only predecessor in English, George Heriot’s The history of Canada, from its first discovery . . . , published in London in 1804. For the French régime, the subject of the first volume, Smith used a certain number of official and private manuscript sources, but his coverage and opinions were largely those of the Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France . . . (3v. and 6v., Paris, 1744) by Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix and of the “Histoire du Canada depuis l’année 1749 jusqu’à celle 176(0) . . .” by Louis-Léonard Aumasson de Courville. He wrote of the earliest period of French settlement with relative impartiality, but as he brought his account down to the conquest he increasingly reflected views current in the English party; his treatment of church-state relations, for example, was heavily influenced by Sewell, who had long dealt with the subject. Perhaps in an effort to camouflage his parti pris, Smith made the second volume, which covers the period 1763 to 1791, little more than a compilation of documents; most of them were official in nature, but all were chosen to express his view that progress in the colony could be achieved only through the adoption of English law, land tenure, and education among other things.

Produced in an edition of 300 copies, the History sold only 68 in 1826 and 8 more in the three years following. Its sales reflected a certain disinterest in history which can also be seen in the disappointing reception given by the educated public to the Literary and Historical Society. The work did provoke a vigorous response by the priest Thomas Maguire over its treatment of the Roman Catholic Church, but the leaders of the Canadian party opted to ignore it. It formed the basis for Joseph-François Perrault’s treatment of the British régime in the Abrégé de l’histoire du Canada . . . (4v., Québec, 1832–36), a school textbook, and of the Histoire du Canada, et des Canadiens, sous la domination anglaise published in 1844 by the office holder Michel Bibaud; neither work was influential. In 1826 as well Smith had edited for publication a continuation to 1762 of his father’s history of New York.

The mild sensation in Smith’s life produced by the publication of his History was followed by a return to tranquillity. In 1835, however, Governor Lord Gosford (Acheson), who had been sent to the colony to quiet ever-intensifying discontent, one cause of which was plural and incompatible office holding, forced Smith to decide between the prestige of the executive councillor and the salary of the clerk of the Legislative Council. Smith chose the salary, but he was kept on as an executive councillor for political reasons until after the rebellion of 1837. Attempts to gain a knighthood were unsuccessful, and when the Canadas were unified in 1841 Smith was forced to retire from the clerkship on half salary as a pension; he was unable to persuade authorities to let a son replace him as clerk. He lived out his remaining years quietly in a summer house he had built at Cap-Rouge and in his substantial residence at Quebec, where he died on 17 Dec. 1847.

William Smith was a man of ordinary intellectual abilities who largely failed in his efforts to emulate a brilliant father. Indeed his father’s domination of him had left him indecisive and lacking character; Dalhousie referred to him disdainfully as “Billy Smith.” Without his father’s breadth of vision, but trained to seek prestige and wealth, Smith became in Dalhousie’s (albeit exaggerated) view “a mean self-interested adviser . . . (who) would do or say anything to please the reigning power.” None the less, in his career Smith to some extent typified the influential anglophone oligarchy of office holders, and through his pioneering research and the publication of his History he promoted the preservation of historical documents and struggled to awaken in Lower Canada an interest in the study of the past. J. M. Bumsted in Dictionary of Canadian Biography.²
Hon. William G. Smith married Susannah Webber, daughter of Admiral Charles Webber and Anne Vining Heron, on 28 June 1804 in St. George's, Hanover Square. Hon. William G. Smith died on 17 December 1847 in Quebec at the age of 78.^2,3 He was buried on 20 December 1847 in Quebec.³

     William Henry Smith was the son of Henry Smith and Anna Shepard.¹ William Henry Smith married Margaret Lloyd.¹

     Dr. William Hooker Smith was born on 23 May 1725 in Rye, New York. He was the son of Rev. John Smith and Mehitable Hooker. Dr. William Hooker Smith married Sarah Brown, daughter of Jonathan Brown and Phoebe Kniffen, in June 1743 in Rye, New York.¹ Dr. William Hooker Smith married secondly Margery Kellog on 22 November 1779.¹ Dr. William Hooker Smith died on 17 July 1815 in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, at the age of 90.

     William Livingston Smith was born on 26 September 1763.² He was the son of Chief Justice Hon. William Smith and Jennet Livingston.¹ William Livingston Smith died on 28 August 1764.²

     William Peartree Smith was born circa 1723.¹ He was the son of William Smith.¹ William Peartree Smith died in 1801.¹

     William Robert Brudenell Smith. 68th of Foot and subsequently the 15th Regiment of Foot. He was born on 29 April 1805.³ He was the son of Hon. William G. Smith and Susannah Webber. William Robert Brudenell Smith was baptised on 5 June 1805 at Holy Trinity Church, Quebec.³ He married Caroline Grierson, daughter of Major William Grierson, on 13 November 1832 in Montreal.⁴ William Robert Brudenell Smith was promoted on 16 March 1858, brevet Colonel.⁵ William's death was registered in the quarter ending June 1886 in the St. Pancras, London registration district.⁶

     William Stephens Smith was born in 1755.³ He was the son of John Smith.² William Stephens Smith married Abigail Adams, daughter of President John Adams, 2nd President of the United States and Abigail Smith, in 1786 in London.³ From 1813 to 1816 he was a member of Congress from New York.¹ William Stephens Smith died in 1816.³

     William Steuben Smith was born in 1787.¹ He was the son of William Stephens Smith and Abigail Adams.¹ In 1809 he accompanied his uncle John Quincy Adams to St. Petersburg.² William Steuben Smith married Catherine Maria Frances Johnson, daughter of Hon. Joshua Johnson and Catherine Nuth, in 1813.¹ William Steuben Smith died in 1850.¹

     Anne Titcomb Smoot was born on 25 February 1871 in Washington, District of Columbia.³ She was the daughter of William S. Smoot.² Anne Titcomb Smoot married Patrick Tracy Jackson, son of Patrick Tracy Jackson and Eleanor Baker Gray, on 11 April 1898.¹

     Gwynneth Elsie Smyth was born in 1922.¹ She married Graham Hope Sewell Hill, son of Major Shuldham Hope Hill and Janie Graham de Quincy Sewell, on 5 June 1943 in Cathedral of Holy Trinity, Quebec.¹ Gwynneth Elsie Smyth died in 1982.¹

     Sarah Smyth was the daughter of Thomas Smyth.¹ Sarah Smyth married Matthew Tilghman, son of Col. Edward Lloyd Tilghman and Juliana Carroll, in 1788 in Chestertown ?¹