Author: Smith, William Moore
Biography:
SMITH, William Moore (1759-1821: ancestry.com)
His father William Smith (1727-1803) was a Scottish schoolteacher who emigrated to the United States, was appointed as tutor at the Academy of Philadelphia with the support of Benjamin Franklin, was promoted to Provost when the Academy became a College, and then in 1754 took Anglican orders. In 1758 he married Rebecca Moore; William Moore Smith was the eldest of their seven children. He graduated from the College of Philadelphia in 1775, studied law, was called to the bar, and established a successful practice in Philadelphia. With Ann Rudolph, whom he married in 1786, he had three children, one of them Richard Penn Smith (q.v.), who seems to have inherited his father's literary interests. The peak of Smith's career was his appointment as agent for the settlement of claims under the John Jay Treaty of 1795--a process concluded in England in 1803, after which he effectively retired from the law. He died in his country home at the Falls of Schuylkill PA. (Appleton; ancestry.com 27 Sept. 2020; "Smith, William," ODNB 27 Sept. 2020) HJ