SMITH, Peter, merchant, born in Greenbush, Rockland County, New York, 15 November, 1768; died in Schenectady, New York, 13 April, 1837. His ancestors came from Holland. At the age of sixteen he became a clerk in an importing-house in New York city, and afterward he was a partner of John Jacob Astor in the fur business. They bought the furs of Indians in the northern part of the state, and Smith, who spoke the Indian language, established a trading-post on what is known as the Bleecker property at Utica. When the partnership was dissolved, and Mr. Astor bought real estate in New York city, Mr. Smith purchased large tracts in Oneida, Chenango, Madison, and other counties. In some cases these included whole townships, and the total amount was nearly a million acres. His first wife, whom he married in 1792, was Elizabeth, daughter of Colonel James Livingston. His manuscript journals, still in existence, contain interesting descriptions of his journeys among the Indians. In his later years he was deeply interested in religion, and spent considerable sums for the distribution of tracts.--His son, Gerrit, philanthropist, born in Utica, New York, 6 March, 1797; died in New York city, 28 December, 1874, was graduated at Hamilton college in 1818, and devoted himself to the care of his father's estate, a large part of which was given to him when he attained his majority. At the age of fifty-six he studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was elected to congress as an independent candidate in 1852, but resigned after serving through one session. During his boyhood slavery still existed in the state of New York, and his father was a slave-holder. One of the earliest forms of the philanthropy that marked his long his opposition to the institution of slavery, and his friendship for the oppressed race. He acted for ten years with the American colonization society, contributing largely to its funds, until he became convinced that it was merely a scheme of the slave-holders for getting the free colored people out of the country. Thenceforth he gave his support to the Anti-slavery society, not only writing for the cause and contributing money, but taking part in conventions, and personally assisting fugitives. He was temperate in all the discussion, holding that the north was a partner in the guilt, and in the event of emancipation without war should bear a portion of the expense: but the attempt to force slavery upon Kansas convinced him that the day for peaceful emancipation was past, and he then advocated whatever measure of force might be necessary. He gave large sums of money to send free-soil settlers to Kansas, and was a personal friend of John Brown, to whom he had given a farm in Essex county, New York, that he might instruct a colony of colored people, to whom Mr. Smith had given farms in the same neighborhood. He was supposed to be implicated in the Harper's Ferry affair, but it was shown that he had only given pecuniary aid to Brown as he had to scores of other men, and so far as he knew Brown's plans had tried to dissuade him from them. Mr. Smith was deeply interested in the cause of temperance, and organized an anti-dramshop party in February, 1842. In the village of Peterboro, Madison County, where he had his home, he built a good hotel, and gave it rent-free to a tenant who agreed that no liquor should be sold there. This is believed to have been the first temperance hotel ever established. But it was not pecuniarily successful. He had been nominated for president by an industrial congress at Philadelphia in 1848, and by the land-reformers in 1856, but declined. In 1840, and again in 1858, he was nominated for governor of New York. The last nomination, on a platform of abolition and prohibition, he accepted, and canvassed the state. In the election he received 5,446 votes. Among the other reforms in which he was interested were those relating to the property-rights of married women and female suffrage and abstention from tobacco. In religion he was originally a Presbyterian, but became very liberal in his views, and built a non-sectarian church in Peterboro, in which he often occupied the pulpit himself. He could not conceive of religion as anything apart from the affairs of daily life, and in one of his published letters he wrote" " No man's religion is better than his politics" his religion is pure whose polities are pure; whilst his religion is rascally whose politics are rascally." He disbelieved in the right of men to monopolize land, and gave away thousands of acres of that which he had inherited, some of it to colleges and charitable institutions, and some in the form of small farms to men who would settle upon them. He also gave away by far the greater part of his income, for charitable purposes, to institutions and individuals. In the financial crisis of 1837 he borrowed of John Jacob Astor a quarter of a million dollars, on his verbal agreement to give Mr. Astor mortgages to that amount on real estate. The mortgages were executed as soon as Mr. Smith reached his home, but through the carelessness of a clerk were not delivered, and Mr. Astor waited six months before inquiring for them. Mr. Smith had for many years anticipated that the system of slavery would be brought to an end only through violence, and when the civil war began he hastened to the support of the government with his money and his influence. At a war-meeting in April, 1861, he made a speech in which he said" "The end of American slavery is at, hand. The first gun fired at Fort Sumter announced the fact that the last fugitive slave had been returned .... The armed men who go south should go more in sorrow than in anger. The sad necessity should be their only excuse for going. They must still love the south" we must all still love her. As her chiefs shall, one after another, fall into our hands, let us be restrained from dealing revengefully, and moved to deal tenderly with them, by our remembrance of the large share which the north has had in blinding them." In accordance with this sentiment, two years after the war, he united with Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt in signing the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis. At the outset he offered to equip a regiment of colored men, if the government would accept them. Mr. Smith left an estate of about 81,000,000, having given away eight, times that amount during his life. He wrote a great deal for print, most of which appeared in the form of pamphlets and broadsides, printed on his own press in Peterboro. His publications in book-form were "Speeches in Congress" (1855) ; "Sermons and Speeches" (1861) ; "The Religion of Reason" (1864) ; " Speeches and Letters " (1865) ; " The Theologies" (2d ed., 1866); "Nature the Base of a Free Theology" (1867)" and "Correspondence with Albert Barnes" (1868). His authorized biography has been written by Octavius B. Frothing-ham (New York, 1878).