Compiled by Russell Bastedo
State Curator
1998

Portrait painted by artist Adna Tenney, c. 1873, after the 1835 original by artist Francis Alexander. The Dartmouth College portrait plaque for the original says the sitter is shown as he looked in 1804. See American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art (to be pub.2007-2008).
Gift of a descendent to the State, 1873.

Smith (1759-1842) was born at Peterborough (NH). He attended Harvard College (1777-1779) but graduated from Queen’s College (now Rutgers University, NJ) in 1780. Returning to New Hampshire, Smith read law and was admitted to the bar at Amherst in 1786.

Smith served four terms as a state representative (1787-1791) and was a delegate to the state constitutional conventions of 1791-1792. Smith was then elected to three terms as a U.S. Representative (served 1791-1797). He resigned in 1797 and returned to Exeter (NH), where he married (Eliza Ross, March 8, 1797). Smith was then appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of New Hampshire (served 1797-1800), and Judge of Probate for Rockingham County (served 1800-1802).

In 1802 Smith was appointed Chief Justice of the NH Supreme Court (served 1802-1809, 1813-1816). Smith served as a Presidential Elector in 1808, then won the gubernatorial election of 1809, defeating John Langdon, 15,610 votes to 15, 241 votes. In 1817-1818 Smith was one of four legal counsel representing Dartmouth College in The Trustees of Dartmouth College v. William H.Woodward. In 1817 the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled against Dartmouth College legal counsel Jeremiah Smith and Jeremiah Mason; the College appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a year later their legal counsel Daniel Webster and Joseph Hopkinson won the case for Dartmouth.