Isaac William Smith (1825 - 1898)
Born at Hampstead (NH); died at Manchester (NH).
Lawyer, state legislator, jurist.
Portrait by E. H. Dearborn, 1898.
Presented to the State, date unknown.

Isaac Smith attended academies at Salisbury, Atkinson, Derry and Sanbornton (all NH) before graduating from Phillips Academy (Andover, MA). He entered Dartmouth College in the fall of 1842 and graduated with the Class of 1846. After graduation Smith read law at the offices of William Smith at Lowell (MA) during 1847; he spent his next two years reading law at the Manchester (NH) law offices of Judge Daniel Clark. He was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar on July 9, 1850.

During the 1850s Smith was a partner with Herman Foster for two years, and a partner with Judge Clark for about five years. At the same time Smith was active in Manchester city government, as President of Common Council (1851/2), City Solicitor (1854/5), and Judge of City Police Court (1855/7). In 1856 Smith went as a delegate to the new Republican Party's nominating convention where John C. Fremont won the delegates' votes to be their presidential nominee.

Moving to state politics, Smith was elected to the State House of Representatives from his Manchester ward (1859, 1860). He was elected to the State Senate (served 1862, 1863). In 1863 President Lincoln appointed Smith Assessor for New Hampshire's Second Internal Revenue District; Smith gave up the position when he was elected Mayor of Manchester (1869).

Smith was appointed as Associate Justice of the State Supreme Judicial Court on February 10, 1874. When the next State House of Representatives convened in August 1874, the Republicans were out and the Democrats were in. The Legislature reorganized the courts and the entire system of state patronage, but Smith survived and was appointed a Justice of the new Superior Court. Smith served until 1895, when he was compelled by age limitations to resign. He spent his last years in law practice at Manchester.

References: Henry E. Burnham, "Isaac William Smith", Publications of the Southern New Hampshire Bar Association, vol. II (1899); "New Hampshire Necrology", Granite Monthly, vol., XXV, no. 6 (December 1898).