Smith, James

SMITH, JAMES. (1719–1806). Signer. Ireland-Pennsylvania. Born in Ireland, 17 Sept. 1719, Smith and his family settled in York Co., Pennsylvania in 1729. James was schooled in Philadelphia, admitted to the bar in 1745, and soon thereafter he became a lawyer and surveyor on the frontier near Shippensburg. Four or five years later he returned to York, which remained his home for the rest of his life. Although the only lawyer in town until 1769, he found little legal work and in 1771 he launched an unsuccessful iron manufacturing business that cost him £5,000 before he sold out in 1778. Meanwhile he had become a leader of the backcountry and Patriot causes. In July 1774 he read his "Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great Britain over the colonies in America" to the provincial conference. He also urged nonimportation and advocated that a general congress of the colonies be called. Returning to York full of revolutionary zeal, in Dec. 1774 he raised a volunteer company, was elected its captain, expanded this unit into a battalion, and accepted the honorary title of colonel. He was a delegate to the provincial congresses of Jan. 1775, June 1776, and in the constitutional convention of 1776 he was on the committee that drafted a state constitution. On 20 July, before the state convention had been in session a week, he was elected to the Continental Congress where he signed the Declaration of Independence. He did not return to Congress for the next session, but was re-elected on 10 December 1777 and sat as a delegate the next year. He declined re-election, but thanks to the efforts of General Howe the Continental Congress came to him, and while that body met in York the board of war held its meetings in Smith's office.

He held a number of political posts after the war, was brigadier general of militia in 1782, and was counselor for his state in the Wyoming Valley controversy. Between 1781 and his retirement in 1801 he acquired a substantial estate through the practice of law. He died in York, 11 July 1806.

                            revised by Michael Bellesiles