Isaac Smith, Jr.

Isaac Smith Jr. (May 18, 1749 – September 29/30, 1829) was an American librarian, minister, and educator. Smith, the son of the prosperous Boston merchant Isaac Smith Sr. and Elizabeth Storer Smith, was born May 18, 1749. At the age of fourteen he entered Harvard College with the class of 1767. After taking his second degree, and preparing for the ministry, he traveled in Europe for some years. Returning to this country, he was appointed, in 1774, a tutor at Harvard, but the position he was not destined to hold long. Smith was a firm loyalist, and when on April 19, 1775, Lord Percy marched through Cambridge to reinforce the British troops at Lexington and Concord, the young tutor was the only person in Cambridge willing to show the puzzled leader, confused by the number of roads branching off from the Boston Common, which one to take for Lexington. Being for this service to the enemy almost ostracized by the good people of Cambridge, he was glad to sail a month later for England with many other exiled loyalists. After living a few years in London, he was ordained (June 24, 1778) pastor over a dissenting church in the little town of Sidmouth in Devonshire. Of his pleasant life there, in a comfortable home, with congenial society and light parish duties, we get glimpses in the published Journal and letters of his fellow exile, Samuel Curwen.