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William Richmond Smith was born May 10, 1752 in Pequea, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Rev. Robert Smith and Elizabeth (Blair) Smith. He was one of seven children, two of which died in infancy, two became physicians, and three became ministers–the eldest was Samuel Stanhope, the middle son was William Richmond, and the youngest was John Blair. However, William would not enjoy the same degree of academic and ecclesiastical prominence as his two brothers, but just as his brothers he would preparae for college in the academy operated by his father. The gospel was presented to him from the pulpit by his father and at his mother’s knee. As did other members of the Smith household, he went to Princeton College and found some of his class mates familiar because five had been taught by his father in the academy in Pequea. Even though he was four years older than his brother John Blair, the two began college studies together the fall of 1773. No reason is given for why Will was over twenty when he started college, but he may not have been as studious as his brothers due to his apparent preference for clowning around. William’s parents likely hoped that his matriculation with his studious and steady younger brother would provide both a good bookish example and a watchful eye keeping tabs on his activities.
One of Smith’s friends in Princeton was Philip Vickers Fithian, who graduated one year before Will and then moved to Virginia to become a tutor. While William struggled through his studies his final year he sent Fithian a few letters that related campus and town news and expressed his fervent anticipation of graduation. One problem often encountered by collegians in the past was the poor-quality food served by the campus steward. For example, when James H. Thornwell was president of South Carolina College the students rioted over their less than palatable food. Smith mentioned in one letter that the Princeton students were so disgusted with the poor butter served in the campus dining room that someone carved an image of Jonathan Baldwin, the steward, from a block of butter and hung it by its slippery neck in the dining room. It was February and the image survived softening due to the frigid conditions of a New Jersey winter and the less than efficient sources of heat. Bold William took the effigy down, walked to Baldwin’s table and handed it to him. Smith’s double-entendre comment to Fithian regarding the event was, “I believe [the butter effigy] does not sit very easy upon his stomach.” Baldwin, not long after the incident, was replaced.
At the time of Will Smith’s graduation in 1773, Princeton held its annual commencement at the end of September. Likely all graduates were happy when commencement arrived, but in William’s case graduation was the end of a necessary but unwelcome process. He was a jokester and expressed his thoughts regarding graduation to Fithian saying, “Fe—o—whiraw, whiraw, hi, fal, lal, fal, lal de lal dal a fine song—commencement is over whiraw, I say again whiraw, whiraw,” the meaning of which is unclear but may have been a common ditty sung by Will and his mates over a tankard of ale in a Princeton pub. Whatever the source of the ditty, the verse expresses the great relief felt by Will due to his liberation from the toils of classroom study.
His graduating class of thirty-one may have been difficult for him to get along with due to some of its staid and studious membership. It included not only his very bright brother, John Blair, but also William Graham—founder of what is currently Washington and Lee University; James F. Armstrong—moderator of the Presbyterian Church General Assembly in 1804; Philadelphia physician Hugh Hodge—the father of theologian Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary; Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee—soldier, politician, and the father of Gen. Robert E. Lee; John Witherspoon, Jr.—the son of Princeton President John Witherspoon; and the frontier Pennsylvania Presbyterian, Samuel Waugh. Several members of the classes on campus during William’s residency were important for the Revolution, such as Aaron Burr, and they went on to serve in both state and national government offices. Maybe Will’s pranks alleviated any intimidation he felt from such a gathering of future movers and shakers while elevating his position as the class comedian whose antics could bring the attention he desired.
Following graduation, the comparatively limited pool of information about Smith dwindles to a mere puddle. It is likely that his father tutored him in divinity after college in preparation for licensure by New Castle Presbytery in 1776 or 1777. Three years later he accepted a call from the Second Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was ordained and installed by Newcastle Presbytery. As a churchman, he was the moderator of his presbytery in 1784 and attended meetings of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia several times through to 1788. He and his father were commissioners from New Castle Presbytery to the Second General Assembly of the PCUSA in 1790. Smith’s tenure in Wilmington extended from 1780 into 1795, which shows that even though he had a propensity for antics as a young man he had learned the importance of fulfilling his pastoral calling.
Smith’s next call not only involved a change of location but also a new denomination. It is not known why, but Pastor Smith left the Presbyterian Church to serve in the Reformed Dutch Church in its Neshanic-Harlingen congregation in New Jersey. For a bit of speculation as to why the transition, his biographer, W. Frank Craven, theorized in Princetonians that some ministers in the Presbyterian Church and other denominations were so disturbed by the infidelity of the age of Tom Paine’s Common Sense, deism, the Enlightenment, rationalism, that they minimalized their church constitutional distinctives in order to be unified against the rationalist infidels. For example, William’s older brother Samuel found trouble as president of Princeton College with its Presbyterian sympathies, because he was too friendly with the Episcopals and was not as committed a subscriber to the Westminster Confession as some would like. However, there is another factor that may have contributed to the change. On February 5, 1795 he married a Dutch woman named Rachel Stidham who was eighteen years his junior. Having a Dutch wife would be beneficial for his ministry as she helped him with a new culture and new language.
The Neshanic Reformed Church was established August 25, 1752 by eleven individuals dismissed for the purpose from a local congregation. Neshanic later separated from a group of local churches with which they had been sharing a minister in order to unite with the Harlingen Church. When Neshanic-Harlingen’s pastor, Johannes Martinus van Harlingen, died in 1795, William R. Smith succeeded him. One of the factors the congregations found attractive about Smith was his ability to preach and teach the younger church members in English. The Dutch were concerned that their succeeding generations gain facility with the language of their recently formed new nation and its English constitution. He continued with Neshanic-Harlingen until his death February 23, 1820. Rachel survived until her passing January 8, 1849. His grave inscription reads, “Sacred to the memory of Rev. William Smith for 25 years as one of the ministers of the United Congregations of Shannick [Neshanic] and Harlingen.” The stone church building in which Rev. Smith led worship was completed in 1762 and is still in use.
Eight children were born to William and Rachel Stidham Smith and all were baptized in the Neshanic Church: Anne Dubois, born September 14, 1795, baptized January 18, 1796; Elizabeth, born October 19, 1796, baptized October 29; Mary Colesberry, born January 3, 1798, baptized July 8; Robert Stidham, born February 19, 1800, baptized April 26; William Richmond, born July 21, 1802, baptized August 22; Jane McCroskrey, born May 15, 1804, baptized July 15; Margaret Van Arsdalen, born April 17, 1806, baptized June 14; and Samuel Stanhope, named for Will’s older brother, born August 8, 1808, baptized September 30. Conspicuously missing is a son named John Blair honoring William’s other brother.
With regard to honors and publications, Smith is credited with having published for his presbytery a discourse titled An Address from the Presbytery of New-Castle to the Congregations under their care: Setting forth the declining State of Religion in their bounds; and exciting them to the Duties necessary for a Revival of decayed Piety amongst them, Wilmington, 1785. He was honored by serving twenty years on the board of trustees of Rutgers College, which at the time was named Queens College. Two of the Smiths’ sons went on to graduate from Queens.
In Biographical Sketches of the Founder and Principal Alumni of the Log College, Archibald Alexander provides an assessment of William in relation to his two brothers. After speaking about the academic excellence of Samuel Stanhope and John Blair Smith, it is said,
Mr. William Smith, the third son, was a pious, judicious minister; less distinguished than either of his brothers; but his good old father was wont to say, that though William was inferior to his brothers in learning and eloquence, yet to comfort and edify the plain Christian, he was equal to either of them (p. 298).
Not all Christians are equally gifted, but all have gifts that are useful and should be used. The rambunctious middle brother that endured education matured to become a minister that pastored well.
Barry Waugh
Notes–See, “Samuel M. Breckinridge, A Christian Gentleman,” for the account of Samuel Miller’s unruly grandson who became an elder and judge in St. Louis. The header is the Princeton Campus Showing Nassau Hall which is from, The Manhattan, July 1883. Grave marker photograph, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11033877/william_richmond-smith. The grave is in Mill Lane Cemetery, Hillsborough, Somerset County, New Jersey. The use of “Reformed Dutch Church” instead of “Dutch Reformed Church” is because in the eighteenth century it was the accepted name. For more information about the Reformed Dutch Church, see John Henry Livingston, 1746-1825. Sources include: the Smith letters in Philip Vickers Fithian, Journals and Letters, 1767-1774, Student at Princeton College 1770-72, Tutor at Nomini Hall in Virginia 1773-74, edited by John Rogers Williams for the Princeton Historical Association, 1900. The Somerset County Historical Quarterly, 1914, provided the baptismal records of the Neshanic Reformed Church and the birth dates of the children. The information on Smith’s ministry in the Reformed Dutch Church was located in History of Hunterdon and Somerset Counties, New Jersey, With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, of its Prominent Men and Pioneers, by James P. Snell, Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1881. Information regarding Queen’s College were found in Rutgers College, Founded as Queen’s College, 1766, c. 1883, which also provided the picture of the Queens building, and the biographical catalog titled, Trustees, Faculty, Alumni, and Students of Rutgers, Queens College, 1766-1916, 1916. Information about his Synod of New York and Philadelphia years was found in the Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America, 1706-1788, which was edited by Guy S. Klett and published by the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia, 1976.
