Background
He was born on June 25, 1728 in New York City, New York, United States, the eldest son of William and Mary (Het) Smith.
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He was born on June 25, 1728 in New York City, New York, United States, the eldest son of William and Mary (Het) Smith.
William attended Yale College, from which he was graduated in 1745, studied law in his father's office with Whitehead Hicks and William Livingston.
Smith was admitted to the bar in 1750. With Livingston as his partner, he soon established himself as a leading practitioner in the mayor's court, supreme court, and Court of Vice-Admiralty. In 1752 he and Livingston, at the request of the Assembly, published the first digest of the colony statutes in force at that time, Laws of New York from the Year 1691 to 1751; ten years later a second volume, Laws of New York, appeared.
Smith was concerned as counsel in some of the most important litigation in the middle colonies. One notable instance was his appearance in 1771 in behalf of Lord Dunmore in his suit against Lieut. -Gov. Cadwallader Colden for an accounting of the governor's emoluments.
With William Livingston and John Morin Scott he was one of the chief contributors to the Independent Reflector and the Occasional Reverberator. In 1757 the three collaborators published A Review of the Military Operations in North America.
Smith's career during the Revolution is unique in the annals of American Loyalism. Though an office-holder under the Crown, having become chief justice of the province in 1763 and succeeded his father as a member of the council in 1767. In drafting the state constitution, the committee of the New York Provincial Convention freely consulted him, and in later years as an exile he claimed credit for influencing the federal constitutional program, apparently basing his claim on the parliamentary plan of union which he had put forth on the eve of the conflict and consistently advocated thereafter as a solution of the imperial issues.
Refusing in 1777 to take the oath of allegiance to the state, he was ordered to Livingston Manor on parole. Refusing again the following year, he was banished by the commissioners for detecting and defeating conspiracies, under the act of June 30, 1778, and returned to New York City, still maintaining a friendly correspondence with Gov. George Clinton, although by this time he was confident that the Revolution would fail because of a popular uprising against it.
Appointed chief justice of New York on May 4, 1779, to succeed Daniel Horsmanden, he took the oath of office in 1780 and strongly urged the restoration of civil government. He never actually served as chief justice, since the city remained under military control until the evacuation. In the fall of 1780 he was one of the commissioners who visited General Washington in an attempt to save Major Andre.
On the evacuation of New York in 1783 Smith proceeded to England, remaining there until 1786, when he sailed to Canada to take the post of chief justice, to which he had been appointed on September 1, 1785. This office he held until his death at Quebec, December 3, 1793.
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Prior to the Revolution Smith was a leader of the Whig Presbyterian forces in New York. He was one of the foremost leaders of the popular party and a founder of the Whig Club.
Smith was married on November 3, 1752, to Janet Livingston, daughter of James and Maria (Kierstedt) Livingston and first cousin of James Livingston. They had eleven children; the only son who survived infancy was William (1769 - 1847), the Canadian historian and jurist.