John Smith (200)

Election date: 1768 (Elected to the revived American Philosophical Society and the American Society in 1768.)

John Smith (20 March 1722–26 March 1771) was a merchant and government official, and was a member of the American Philosophical Society by his election in 1768; he was also elected a member of the American Society two weeks later. Born in Burlington, New Jersey, into a merchant Quaker family, he began his own mercantile business in Philadelphia in 1743, where he traded in the usual mix of luxurious finery and workaday dry goods typical of the era. He was a prodigy, amassing a net worth of £3,000 within his first five years, and that after purchasing a home in the city and a “plantation” home to the northeast, overlooking the Delaware River. He married Hannah Logan of the famed family and moved smoothly within that social orbit, committing himself to a variety of benevolent and improvement philanthropies. He was a manager of the Philadelphia Hospital; a founder and treasurer of the Philadelphia Contributionship insurance cooperative; and a member of the Philadelphia Library Company, a founder of the Burlington Library Company, and a trustee of the familial legacy Loganian Library. His commitment to the Society of Friends was firm and multilayered. Smith was an overseer of the Friends Schools and of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (as well as its clerk). In addition, after late-1740s privateer predations threatened the city and its waterways so routinely that evangelical New Light Presbyterian Gilbert Tennent began preaching in support of a “defensive” war, Smith penned a vigorous and vigorous-selling defense of Quaker nonviolence. As penman “Atticus,” he contributed some seventy essays on manners to the Pennsylvania Chronicle (1767–70). And, although such cases were rare, Smith served in official office in two colonies at the same time, having been elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1750 (reelected twice) while also becoming clerk of the Proprietors of East Jersey that same year. In 1754 he became the treasurer of the Jersey Province and then joined the New Jersey Governor’s Council beginning in 1758. Dead at forty-nine, Smith was broadly mourned and fondly memorialized. Brother Samuel Smith was also an APS member. (PI)



Member(s): John Smith
200.001
The doctrine of Christianity, as held by the people called Quakers, vindicated : in answer to Gilbert Tennent’s sermon on the lawfulness of war.
Creator(s):
Smith, John, 1722-1771 (Author)
Publication:
Philadelphia: Printed by Benjamin Franklin, and David Hall, [1748]
Subjects:
Tennent, Gilbert, 1703-1764. Late association for defence, farther encourag’d. | Society of Friends -- Controversial literature. | War -- Religious aspects.
Record Source:
ESTC
References:
Sabin 82872 | Sabin 82873 | Evans 6239 | Evans 6240
APS Subjects:
Religion | War
Editions:
2x 1748
Editions Note:

Two editions, both in 1748.

Holding Note: APS holds both editions. The first was presented by J. P. Norris, June 1815. The second contains the autograph of Margaret Minshall and was presented by Mrs. Richard Gimbel, October 1976.