William Rudolph Smith

Smith was born on August 31, 1787, in Trappe, Pennsylvania. His grandfather was William Smith, the first provost of the College of Philadelphia. He studied law and in 1808 was admitted to the bar and moved to Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.[1] He married Eliza Anthony in 1809.[2] He served as a colonel in the United States Army during the War of 1812.[3] His wife Eliza died in 1821 and he was remarried in 1823 to Mary Campbell Vandyke.[2]

Smith served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the Pennsylvania Senate for the 17th district from 1821 to 1824.[4] In 1837, he was appointed by Wisconsin Territorial Governor Henry Dodge to make a treaty with the Chippewa Indians which resulted in the purchase of land encompassing a large part of Minnesota.[2] He moved to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, in 1837.[1] He was elected Adjutant General and served until 1852. In 1846, he served as Clerk of Legislative Council and as a delegate to the first Wisconsin Constitutional Convention. In 1849 and 1850, he served as Secretary of the Senate. He was elected Attorney General of Wisconsin and served from 1855 to 1856.[2]

His son Richard M. Smith spent a one-year term as a Democratic member of the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1856.[5] Another son, John Montgomery Smith, also served in the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1892.[6] Smith died on August 22, 1868[7] and is interred at Graceland Cemetery in Mineral Point.[8]

According to the book Cambria County Pioneers, a General William Rudolph Smith, son of William, lived in the town of Ebensburg, Pennsylvania in the 1840s and raised a Company of men known as the Cambria Guards who would serve in the Mexican American War, but Smith could not go.[9] He was "universally accepted as an authority in literary matters and upon historical subjects particularly he was a veritable encyclopedia. His literary style was forcible, direct, and elegant."[10]

• List of Attorneys General of Wisconsin

• William Rudolph Smith at Find a Grave