Background

He was born on June 16, 1798 on a farm at Green Hill, Burlington County, New Jersey, United States, the sixth of seven children of John and Gulielma Maria (Morris) Smith.

He was a grandson of John Smith, one of the founders of the Philadelphia Contributionship (1752), the first fire-insurance company instituted in America, and of Hannah (Logan) Smith, daughter of James Logan, 1674-1751.

Education

John Jay attended the Friends' boarding school at Westtown, Philadelphia, and was given some courses in languages at an early age. He was then apprenticed to a druggist in Philadelphia.

Career

After a brief partnership with Solomon Temple in the wholesale drug business, he entered business on his own account.

About 1821 he was active in the establishment of a line of Conestoga wagons, operating as regular carriers between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but the enterprise was short-lived. From his early years he was interested in literature, and occasionally wrote short pieces for the local newspapers.

In 1827, in partnership with George Taylor, who had published a newspaper in Mount Carbon, he inaugurated the Pennsylvania Gazette, purchasing the subscription list of the Aurora from John Norvell. Two years later he withdrew from this firm.

Later he became librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia; he was a hereditary trustee of the Loganian Library, one of its component parts. In the early thirties Smith suggested to Adam Waldie, a Philadelphia printer, the republication of important foreign books in the form of a cheap weekly, which could be circulated through the mails; this project was realized on October 1, 1832, when the first issue of Waldie's Select Circulating Library appeared, under Smith's editorship. Within three months the work had a circulation of 6, 000 copies a week, and for some years it enjoyed great success.

During 1835, for Eliakim Littell, he also edited the Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art. He was treasurer of the Philadelphia Museum. During the laying out of Laurel Hill Cemetery, his interest in landscape gardening was deepened, and he afterwards edited the eleventh edition (1857) of The American Gardener's Calendar by Bernard McMahon. He also published Designs for Monuments and Mural Tablets.

To The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (1834 - 39), edited by James Herring and J. B. Longacre, Smith contributed articles on Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse, William Augustine Washington, and Simon Kenton. In 1847, assisted by John F. Watson, he edited American Historical and Literary Curiosities, of which, in 1860, a second series was issued in New York, under Smith's editorship. He made four trips to Europe, describing one in A Summer's Jaunt across the Water (2 vols. , 1846).

In 1851 he retired from his librarianship so that his son Lloyd might be appointed to the place. His later literary work included the editing of Letters of Dr. Richard Hill (1854) and the authorship of a volume of entertaining gossip, written for his children, which was edited by his daughter and privately printed in 1892 under the title, Recollections of John Jay Smith Written by Himself.

Smith died at his estate, "Ivy Lodge, " Germantown, at the age of eighty-three.

Achievements

• As a librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia, John Jay Smith gathered for the institution a large collection of autographs and manuscripts relating to the history of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He helped with the first issue of Waldie's Select Circulating Library, that was the first effort in America to take advantage, on an extensive scale, of the absence of international copyright. He was also a founder of the Girard Life Insurance, Annuity, and Trust Company and of Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Works

More photos

• book

  • American Historical and Literary Curiosities, Part 15. Second Series

    (HardPress Classic Books Series)

  • American Historical and Literary Curiosities, Part 22. Second Series

    (HardPress Classic Books Series)

  • American Historical and Literary Curiosities, Part 03

    (HardPress Classic Books Series)

Connections

On April 12, 1821, married Rachel Collins Pearsall, of Flushing, daughter of a New York merchant. He had had four sons and three daughters. In 1845 his son, Lloyd Pearsall Smith, had begun the publication of Smith's Weekly Volume.

Father:

John Smith

Mother:

Gulielma Maria (Morris) Smith

Spouse:

Rachel Collins Pearsall

Grandfather:

John Smith

Partner:

Solomon Temple

Partner:

George Taylor

Son:

Lloyd Pearsall Smith

grand-uncle:

Richard Smith

coworker:

John F. Watson

grandmother:

Hannah (Logan) Smith