William Henry Smyth

Admiral William Henry Smyth (21 January 1788 – 8 September 1865) was an English Royal Navy officer, hydrographer, astronomer and numismatist. He is noted for his involvement in the early history of a number of learned societies, for his hydrographic charts, for his astronomical work, and for a wide range of publications and translations. Origins William Henry Smyth was the only son of Joseph Smyth (died 1788) and Georgiana Caroline Pitt Pilkington (died 1838), the daughter of John Carteret Pilkington and the granddaughter of Laetitia Pilkington and her husband Matthew Pilkington. His father, Joseph Smyth, an American Loyalist from New Jersey who served as a lieutenant in the King's Royal Regiment of New York during the Revolutionary War, was the sixth son of Benjamin Smyth (died 1769), a landowner in what is now Blairstown, and his first wife Catherina Schoonhoven (died 1750). Never having known his father, he grew up with a half-brother Augustus Earle and a half-sister Phoebe Earle. To conceal the disreputability of his parents and his probable illegitimacy, his descendants, in particular his daughter Henrietta Grace Smyth, invented an imaginary ancestry. Their claims, which were reproduced in works like Burke's Peerage, included alleged descent from the childless Captain John Smith, whose coat of arms they adopted, and a fictitious relationship with Lord Nelson. Genealogical research they had commissioned in England and the USA, suggesting that his father Joseph Smyth was in fact a forger, a perjurer and a bigamist, was suppressed. Royal Navy