Smith, Sophia (1796–1870)

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Smith, Sophia (1796–1870)

American philanthropist who became the first woman to found and endow a women's college when she founded Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Born in Hatfield, Massachusetts, on August 27, 1796; died in Hatfield on June 12, 1870; one of seven children and eldest of four daughters of Joseph Smith (a farmer and Revolutionary War soldier) and Lois (White) Smith; niece of Oliver Smith (founder of Smith charities in Northampton); attended a local school and spent one term at a school in Hartford, Connecticut; never married; no children.

Though she herself had been denied an education, Sophia Smith used her considerable fortune to endow Smith College, chartered in 1871, thereby ensuring that future generations of young women would have the opportunity for higher learning. Born in 1796, the daughter of a prosperous farmer in Hatfield, Massachusetts, Smith received some rudimentary schooling in her town and in nearby Hadley and attended a school in Hartford, Connecticut, for one term. She spent the rest of her uneventful life in Hatfield with her family. Described as "shy, plain, … and, as she grew older, increasingly suspicious and melancholy," she became even more reclusive after losing her hearing at age 40. When her father Joseph Smith died in 1836, he bequeathed a large estate to Sophia and her three surviving siblings, Austin, Joseph, and Harriet Smith . Austin was an exceptionally cheap man who charged his sisters a fee each time they used the family's carriage and greatly resented the fact that his taxes helped to pay for the town's school. At some point he left Hatfield for New York City, where his business acumen and parsimonious living greatly increased his own and the family fortune. Meanwhile, back in Massachusetts, Joseph and Harriet died, and Sophia continued to live as frugally as she had when Austin was there.

When Sophia was 65, Austin died, leaving a plethora of unnotarized wills. Because these were all invalid, Sophia Smith inherited everything. She promptly built herself a mansion, the finest house in town, and furnished it in high style and luxury. (Despite her deafness and solitude—she lived with only a maid—one of these luxuries was a grand piano.) After living there for several years, she determined to put the rest of her money to good charitable use. Smith consulted the Reverend John Morton Greene, pastor of the Hatfield Congregational Church.

Greene was an advocate of women's education, and strongly advised Smith to donate funds to Amherst College, his alma mater, and to Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary, where his wife Louisa Dickinson had studied. Smith decided to use her inheritance to establish an institution for the care of the deaf instead. However, when the Clarke School for the Deaf opened in Northampton in 1868, it eliminated the need for a similar institution.

Greene again suggested that she donate her fortune to Mt. Holyoke, whose founder Mary Lyon had been distantly related to Smith, and she again declined. Finally, he suggested that she become "to all time a Benefactress" by endowing a women's college that would bear her name. This idea suited her, and she asked Greene to work on plans for such a college, which it was decided would be located in nearby Northampton. Sophia Smith died in Hatfield on June 12, 1870, following a stroke. In her will she left a generous bequest to the Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts, as well as smaller gifts to a variety of missionary organizations. The bulk of her wealth, over $393,000, was left to Smith College, making her the first woman in America to found and endow a women's college. She wrote in her will: "It is my opinion that by the higher and more Christian education of women … their weight of influence in reforming the evils of society will be greatly increased; as teachers, as writers, as mothers, as members of society, their power for good will be incalculably enlarged." The college opened in 1875, with 14 students, and went on to become one of the most prestigious women's colleges in the nation. Sophia Smith was inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame at Seneca Falls, New York, in the autumn of 2000.