A Tour of Four Great Rivers: The Hudson, Mohawk, Susquehanna and Delaware in L769; Being the Journal of Richard Smith of Burlington, New Jersey
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Richard Smith was an American lawyer, diarist, and member of the Continental Congress.
Background
Richard Smith was born on 22 March 1735 in Burlington, New Jersey, United States. He was the youngest of the five children of Richard and Abigail Rapier (or Raper) Smith. The elder Richard was a merchant and for many years sat in the colonial Assembly.
He belonged to a Quaker family which was transplanted to America from its original home, Bramham in Yorkshire, by the migration of several brothers during the last decade of the seventeenth century. His grandfather, Samuel Smith, settled in West Jersey in 1694.
Education
Young Richard was educated by tutors and at a Friends' school, and later studied law with Joseph Galloway of Philadelphia.
Career
About 1760, he was admitted to the bar and became recorder of Burlington or clerk of the county. He apparently served as clerk of the colonial Assembly for several years.
Following the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768), he was one of a group of proprietors who received a grant of land, the "Otego Patent" of 69, 000 acres, in the present Otsego County, on the upper Susquehanna in New York. With several companions, Smith visited the tract in 1769, keeping a journal of the trip, with interesting observations on the valleys of the Hudson, Mohawk, Susquehanna, and Delaware. Smith helped to promote settlement in the grant, which he visited again in 1773, 1777, and 1783 before making his home there in 1790. In 1773 he built "Smith Hall" in what is now the town of Laurens.
On July 23, 1774, Smith was elected one of New Jersey's five delegates to the Continental Congress. He was twice reelected and served until June 1776. He was a member of the committee on claims, but the chief interest attaching to his service in the Congress arises from his detailed diary of the proceedings from September 12 to October 1, 1775, and from December 12, 1775, to March 30, 1776.
Smith signed the "olive branch" petition to the King (July 8, 1775) but evidently was not yet ready to consider independence. Burlington had Loyalist leanings, and on June 12, 1776, with ill health as a reason or an excuse, Smith resigned. Ten days later New Jersey sent to the Congress an entirely new delegation, more definitely in favor of independence.
On October 17, 1776, Smith was elected to the state treasurership, recently vacated through his brother's death, but after five months resigned that office and retired to "Bramham Hall" near Burlington. In 1790, he moved from Burlington to the "Otego Patent, " whither his son, Richard R. Smith, had already followed William Cooper of Burlington, founder of Cooperstown and father of James Fenimore Cooper.
He settled at "Smith Hall, " remaining until 1799, when he removed to Philadelphia. Four years later, while traveling in the Mississippi Valley, he died of fever at Natchez.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Membership
Richard was a member of the Society of Friends.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
His son described him as "a man of incorruptible integrity, of gentle and amiable manners, of almost unexampled temperance, " with "a strong mind, enriched with a variety of knowledge, collected from judicious observations upon men and manners, and from intimate acquaintance with almost every author of note in the ancient or modern Ianguages".
Connections
On June 5, 1762, he married Elizabeth Rodman. They had five children: Scammon Rodman, Richard Rodman, John, Willett and Rodman.