He was born on January 13, 1857 at Boscawen, New Hampshire, United States, the youngest of the three sons of Ambrose and Cynthia Maria (Egerton) Smith. On the death of the father, a Congregational minister, the family moved first to Pembroke, New Hampshire, and then to Norwich, Vermount.
From Norwich, Justin walked each day the three miles to Hanover, New Hampshire, where he attended Dartmouth as his father had done; he graduated in 1877, the valedictorian of his class. He was a serious student, keeping somewhat to himself.
After graduation he visited the Paris Exposition, accompanying as private secretary, John D. Philbrick, who was in charge of the United States educational exhibit. Perhaps this experience implanted in young Smith that love of journeying abroad which later made of him a world traveler. The years 1879-81 he spent at the Union Theological Seminary; but, instead of proceeding to the ministry, he entered the employ first of Charles Scribner's Sons and then of Ginn & Company.
After holding positions of responsibility, both on the business and on the editorial side, he became in 1890 a member of the latter publishing firm, highly valued by his associates. In 1898 Smith retired from the publishing business. He became next year professor of modern history at Dartmouth College. Here began his work as a productive scholar with the publication in 1899 of The Troubadours at Home.
All of his later work lay in the field of American history. Arnold's March from Cambridge to Quebec appeared in 1903, as did also The Historie Booke, edited by Smith for the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. For this he wrote the historical narrative. He also published Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony: Canada and the American Revolution (1907). In 1908 he resigned his professorship to devote his time entirely to historical research. The Annexation of Texas appeared in 1911.
Smith wrote also many articles in historical journals. For the Historical Manuscripts Commission of the American Historical Association, of which he was chairman from 1917 to 1923, he edited "Letters of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna Relating to the War Between the United States and Mexico, 1846-1848".
On March 21, 1930, having returned from the South, where of late years he had spent his winters, he reached New York, and late that afternoon, while taking a walk in Brooklyn, where he lived, he suffered a heart attack in front of Borough Hall and died instantly.
Justin Harvey Smith was a great specialist on the Mexican-American War, his magnum opus, The War with Mexico, brought him the Pulitzer Prize and the Loubat Prize for the best book in English published on the history, geography, archeology, ethnology, philology, or numismatics of North America. Smith was also chairman of the Historical Manuscripts Commission of the American Historical Association.
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Tall, with a somewhat ruddy countenance and keen eyes, and, at least in later life, a full beard, Smith presented a commanding figure.
Quotes from others about the person
One of his students recalled him as "a man of flexible dignity, kindness, judgment, and scholarly taste, " whom "the classroom never succeeded in narrowing" (private letter to author).
His marriage, May 22, 1892, to Mary E. Barnard of Chico, California, the daughter of Allyn and Sarah Barnard, who, like Smith himself, had entered into the musical circle of Boston, was followed after two years by a separation and later by a divorce in Paris (private information).
