peoplepill id: benjamin-smith
BS
United States of America
1 views today
1 views this week
Benjamin Smith
Governor of North Carolina

Benjamin Smith

The basics

Quick Facts

Intro
Governor of North Carolina
Work field
Gender
Male
Place of birth
Brunswick County, USA
Place of death
Southport, USA
Age
70 years
The details (from wikipedia)

Biography

Benjamin Smith (January 10, 1756 – January 26, 1826) was the 16th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1810 to 1811.

Biography

Smith was born in Charles Town in the Province of South Carolina into a socially prominent family, later moving to Brunswick County, North Carolina. His parents were Thomas Smith and Sarah Moore Smith. During the American Revolutionary War, Smith served an aide-de-camp to General George Washington and rose to the rank of colonel in the Continental Army.

In 1784, Smith was elected to the Continental Congress, although it is unclear whether he actually served. He was active in the North Carolina Constitutional Conventions of 1788 and 1789, and served a number of terms in the North Carolina General Assembly, in 1783 (Senate), 1789–1792 (House of Commons), 1792–1800 (Senate), 1801 (House of Commons) 1804–1805 (House of Commons) and 1806–1810 (Senate). From 1795 to 1799, Smith was the Speaker of the North Carolina Senate.

During his political career, Smith also sat on the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and donated 20,000 acres (81 km²) of land for the university's endowment; he chaired the trustees during his term as governor.

As of 1789, he owned 221 slaves.

In 1810, aligned with the Democratic-Republican Party (he had earlier had Federalist leanings), Smith was elected governor by the North Carolina General Assembly. He served only a single one-year term, and emphasized reform of the state's criminal code and penitentiary system. Although Smith did seek re-election to the governor's seat in 1811, he polled behind William Hawkins on the first ballot and withdrew himself from consideration. He later returned to the North Carolina Senate in 1816.

Smith died in Smithville, North Carolina in 1826 and is buried at the St. Philip's Church near Wilmington. Smithville, now known as Southport, is situated a few miles outside of Wilmington along the Cape Fear River.

The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Lists
Benjamin Smith is in following lists
comments so far.
Comments
From our partners
Sponsored
Credits
References and sources
Benjamin Smith
arrow-left arrow-right instagram whatsapp myspace quora soundcloud spotify tumblr vk website youtube pandora tunein iheart itunes