John Smith

Who was John Smith?

John Smith was a professor at Dartmouth College and the author of the first unpointed Hebrew grammar book published in the United States.

Smith was born in Byfield, Massachusetts. After graduating from Dartmouth, he moved to West Hartford, Connecticut, and became a pastor. In 1777, he returned to Dartmouth as a professor in of English, Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Smith arrived in Hanover in 1771 after graduating from Byefield Academy where he had studied under the classical scholar Samuel Moody. He was admitted to the junior class and graduated in 1773. He then studied divinity under Dartmouth President Eleazar Wheelock while serving as tutor in ancient languages for the freshman and sophomore classes. In 1776 he was granted the degree of Master of Arts. He was then appointed Dartmouth's first professor in November 1777. The agreement between Eleazar Wheelock and John Smith was written in November 1777 and amended by Dartmouth's Trustees in August 1778.

From his early interest in Greek and Latin, he soon proceeded to master Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic and other oriental languages. In 1780 he also prepared an interesting set of lectures on Natural Philosophy covering Newtonian astronomy and earth science, in which he speculated on the possibility of multiple peopled worlds and the origin of the Indians. These lectures seem to have stimulated his students Solomon Spaulding and Ethan Smith to further speculate on the later subject.