William Smith

Who was William Smith?

William Smith was a lawyer, historian, speaker, loyalist, and eventually Chief Justice of the Province of New York from 1763 to 1782 and Chief Justice of the Province of Quebec, later Lower Canada, from 1786 until his death.

He was the son of Judge William Smith of New York City and brother of Joshua Hett Smith, the supposed “dupe” of Benedict Arnold and Major John André. His wife Janet Livingston was of the Livingston family of New York.

During the American Revolution, he was referred to as "the weathercock" because his contemporaries were not able to understand which side he was on. Basically, though, he was neither friend to American nor Loyalist and was one of the main reasons that the loyalists themselves declared that they did never trust the family of Smith. In 1752, along with William Livingston and John Morin Scott he founded a weekly journal, the Independent Reflector.