Smith, William Jr.

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: J. M. Bumsted, “SMITH, WILLIAM (1769-1847),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/smith_william_1769_1847_7E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Office holder, politician, and historian; b. 7 Feb. 1769 in New York, son of William Smith and Janet Livingston; d. 17 Dec. 1847 at Quebec.
    • 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. 
    • 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. 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, 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.
    • 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.
  • Son of Proven Loyalist in Loyalist Directory –https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=7853
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231244887/william_g-smith