From Biographical Encyclopedia of the State of Delaware

William Henry Smith, Newark, Del, was born near Chesterville, Chester County, PA, son of William and Mary (Dehaven) Smith. His paternal grandfather, John Smith, a farmer and weaver, was born n Ireland in 1769, died in 1854; he married Isabella ____, born in Ireland, 1769, died in 1843. John Smith was a Presbyterian, and afterwards a member of the M. E. Church; he and his wife emigrated to America. Their son, William Smith, was born in Chester County, PA, in 1797, died suddenly, of heart failure, September 23, 1863; he was a farmer, a Democrat in politics, and a member of the Methodist Church. William Smith married Mary DeHaven, born in May, 1800, in Chester County, PA; also a Methodist. Their children are: (see my genealogical files for their children, one of whom, Winfield, was omitted from the list).

William Henry Smith, teacher and farmer, had served the public as justice of the peace, postmaster, notary public and census enumerator, as inspector of elections and school commissioner. When drafted for army service in 1863, he provided as substitute John E. Elliott, a Canadian, at a cost of $325. He is a Free Mason. William Henry Smith was married in Philadelphia, February 15, 1871, to Mary Emma, daughter of Ezra and Mary Thompson, of Chester County, PA, where she was born in 1845; originally a Friend, Mrs. Smith has become a member of the Methodist Church. Their children are: I. Willard Thompson, appointed superintendent of public schools for New Castle County, Del., by Governor Watson, reappointed the third time by Governor Tunnell, serving his fourth year; II. Lawrence DeHaven; III. Mary Miller; IV. William Henry, Jr; V. Amanda M.

The children of Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Thomson are; (see my genealogical records).

To these brief particulars we subjoin an interesting sketch, furnished by Mr. William H. Smith.

In the latter part of last century, and the closing days of September, an emigrant ship sailed up the Delaware River and cast anchor at New Castle, then the "Castle Garden" of the country. The town beautiful for situation, on the western shore, nestled in the outskirts of the tehn widespread forest, was inhabited by a thrifty people, many of whom gathered at the landing to welcome the newly arrived, who, following the western instinct of emigration, had come to seek a new home on the American shore. Among them was a newly wedded pair, John and Isabella Smith, the grandarents of William H. Smith. The husband of brawny arm, steady step and honest face; the wife, slight in form, sprightly in movement and intellectual in feature. There were traces of sorrow in their anxious faces, for not only had they severed the ties of the fatherland, but also, during the tedious voyage, had committed to the sea their child, a bright baby boy, and now, friendless, homeless and bereaved, they went they knew not where. A kindly farmer and justice of the peace, Davis Whitten, who lived some twenty miles inland in Pennsylvania, offered them a home and employment, and being industrious and frugal, they became possessed of a small farm, on which they reared a numerous family, whose labor was divided between the loom and the plow. Prosperity smiled on the home, and William, the eldest, father of the subject of this sketch, a robust, active lad, was apprenticed to a mason, Robert Christy, of Cecil County, MD, and on completing the trade, began business for himself which rapidly increased and gave employment to many workmen and apprentices; numerous large buildings were erected, and public contracts were taken for work on the New Castle and Frenchtown Railroad and the Delaware and Chesepeake Canal.

Of fine athletic physique, vivacious and aggressive, William Smith soon became a leader in sport as well as in business. On February 10, 1830, he was appointed adjutant of the Chester County Union Volunteer Battalion, by Governor Geroge Wolf, of Pennsylvania; the commission is still in the family. In 1832, in company with a friend, he visited Ohio to see relatives and, perhaps purcase a new home, but not being pleased with the "back woods," as the West was then called, he returned and bought a farm in Delaware, near the "Mason and Dixon" line, known as the Summit or Street far, in which he removed his family in October of the same year, and on which he resided until his demise in 1863, incresing the extent of the farm from 125 to 300 acres.

William Smith, or as he was more generallly calle din his own community, "Billy Smith", was in some respects a remarkable man, and left his impress on whatever of dealing or enterprise he undertook. Quitting the trade after moving to Delaware, he, with his brother George, secured the right to make and sell threshing machines, clover hulers and corn shellers throughout the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and ocntinued in the business through the thirties. But his delight was the farm and he was in the van of the most progressive farmers of his community. In the latter "forties" and early "fifties" he was elected, first as a representative and afterward as a senator to the Delaware Legislature, serving three terms, and was appointed by Governor W. H. Ross as one of his aides, thus acquiring the honorary title of Colonel.

While in the State Senate, Mr. Smith was frequently alluded to as "the gentleman from Pennsylvania", from the fact that his residence and a large part of his farm wee embraced in the traingular tract of land between the states as shown by the survey of 1849, the dispute concerning which has been agitated in later years, leading to the appointment by the legislatuers of both states, of commissioners, who met in joint commission and re-surveyed the circular boundary, planting stones thereon. This survey and the line marked have been severely criticised as to their correctness, and John I. Johnston, whose farm is situated near the western initial stone, and whose property had been in Delaware ever since it was a state, but was put into Pennsylvania by this survey, refusing to accept the transfer, was compelled to apply to the courts of Pennsylvania for pretection; he still maintains his citizenship in Delaware, and the troublesome line is apparently still unsettled.

William Smith married Mary DeHaven May 10, 1821, and ten children were the offspring of the union, seven boys and three girls, all of whom married, and all of whom lived to see their fiftieth birthday, leaving forty grandchildren. The DeHavens are of French extraction. One, Peter Dehaven, and two brothers, Samuel and Jacob, cme to this country in 1690 an settled in Montgomery County, PA, at the Gulph, in Upper Merion Township. They were engaged in vine culture in France, and brought considerable wealth, and in the Revolutionary times when Washington and his army were suffering at Valley Forge, and provisions, money and credit were alike scanty, Jacob DeHaven and others were appealed to by Wshington and Robert Morris, the financier, in an hour of dire extremeity, and tradition and records alike attest that Jacob DeHaven nobly loaned the Continental Government $450,000 in gold and landed securities, besides cattle, provisions and grain. Samuel, his brother, an officer in the army, also gave financial assistance. The latter was the grandfather of Mary DeHaven Smith, whose father, Jesse DeHaven, removed from Montgomery to Chester county in 1800 and purchased , in partnership with his father Samuel DeHaven, the Wright farm, known in after years as the DeHaven Homestead, which was near the John Smith family farm. Mary DeHaven Smith survived her husband some twenty years, and they now lie side by side in a beautiful enclosed family burial plot in Wesley cemetery, in South Side, Chester County, and a monument stands a white sentinel keeping vigils over their resting place, as well as that of John and Isabella Smith.

William Henry Smith, fifth in the family roll, was the third son of William and Mary Smith, and like those that went befre, as well as those that followed, was well drilled in the family school of obedience and industry, form which no one graduated until a score of years were fulfilled. The district school, with its winter term, was but an adjunct; but by these schools and schoolmasters his stock of knowledge was increased. Professor Alexander Terrell, an eminent scholar and mathematician, kept a select school in his own house for a score of years; in him, William H. Smith found a proficient instructor in the natural sciences and higher mathematics. The pupil, before he reached his majority, became a teacher, being employed at Rose Hill, a district school midway beween Wilmington and New Castle. Here he continued for six years, in the fifties. His attention was divided between the farm and the school-room until the death of his father, in 1863, when he settled permanently on the Smith homestead. William Henry Smith married Mary E. Thompson of Chester County of the Friend or Quaker persuasion. His eldest boy, Willard Thompson, graduated at Delaware College with first honor, in the class of ’92, and is now serving the fourth year as county superintendent of free schools of New Castle county with acceptance; Lawrence Dehaven and Wm H., Jr., are at this writing students in Delaware Collge. In 1888 W. H. Smith was appointed by Governor Biggs justice of the peace at Newark, he removed to that place and swerved a full term of seven years. In the fall of 1896 he was appointed postmaster in the same town by President Cleveland.

A younger brother graduated at the Medical University at Philadelphia in the early sixties, and taking the advice of Greeley, went west and settledin Pequa, Ohio. He acquired a large and lucrative practice, became eminent as a physician and surgeon, and as a local minister in the M. E. Church; he died in his fiftty-eighth year, much lamented in the community. His son, Ernest Smith, graduated at Delaware College, Ohio, recently took a course at Johns Hopkins, and is now professor in the College at Meadville, PA. There are two other collegiate graduates in the Smith family, William, of Jacob R. Smith, and William, of James P. Smith. The Smith family are are Democrats in politics without an exception, and generally Methodist in religious preference. The family standard had for its ideal, "Neither riches nor poverty," avoiding the snares of the one, the temptations of the other, they rather seek a competency and a good name, which are preferable to great riches and empty honors. The homestead has always been the scene and center of domestic enjoyment; farm activities, obedience and industry, the cardinal rules, and good brains and pure blood and healthy bodies, in a measure, some of the products of the farm; these are legacies of more value than gold or bonds, or stock. Another disticntive feature and tract in the family is its frequent family weddings; then followed the tin, the sliver and the gold weddings; they have had them all. The whole course of family life has been conducive to keeping the head cool and the heart warm.