Peter Gerrit Smith

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Peter Smith was born near Tappan, Rockland County, New York, the son of Gerrit P. and Wyntje (Lent) Smith, descendants of Dutch emigrants to America in the seventeenth century.

At an early age Peter became a clerk in the New York house of Abraham Herring. From 1785 to 1788 he conducted a general store in New York selling books, library, school and theatrical supplies. He met John Jacob Astor and formed a partnership in the fur trade that lasted only about a year. However, they cooperated in the purchase and sale of land in upstate New York for a number of years thereafter.

In 1789 Smith moved to what is now Utica, in Oneida County, and established the first general store on the site of the old Baggs Hotel. There he lived for several years selling supplies and groceries to traders and Indians, receiving in return grain, pelts, and furs.

At the same time he speculated in land. In 1794 he obtained a lease from the Oneida Indians for a large tract extending roughly over Oneida and Onondaga counties, and after the state acquired title by the treaty of 1795, he was able to obtain ownership from the state.

In the center of this holding he built the "Homestead," calling the village that developed Peterboro and the township Smithfield. Further purchases increased his holdings to nearly a million acres, scattered through most of the counties of the state. He was also interested in agricultural activities, engaged in the manufacture and sale of grindstones, and for a time managed a glass factory at Peterboro.

His relations with the Indians were cordial. He named his eldest son Peter Skenandoah in honor of Skenandoa. He was the second sheriff of Herkimer County and the "first judge" of Madison County as well as holding other minor offices. He was a member and officer of the New York Tract Society.

He married twice. On February 5, 1792, he married Elizabeth Livingston, the daughter of James Livingston, who died in 1818. They had six children of whom the most important was Gerrit Smith. His second wife was Sarah Pogson of Charleston, South Carolina, though of English birth. This marriage ended in bitterness and separation. The wife returned to South Carolina, and the husband gave himself up to the religious and personal peculiarities of his earlier years.

In 1819 he had made arrangements to hand over his business to his son Gerrit but retained the income from $125,000. His earlier letters and journals reflected his gloomy religious ideas, and his business dealings revealed both decided financial abilities and equally decided penurious tendencies. Growing more morose, he brooded morbidly over what he considered the neglected religious opportunities of his active years. He lived most of the time at his Schenectady home, "a trouble to himself and a vexation to those about him" (Frothingham, post, pp. 20-21). He died there.