Benjamin Smith, governor of North Carolina, was born in Brunswick County, N.C., in 1750. He was aide-de-camp to General Washington in 1776; took part in the retreat from Long Island; in the defense of South Carolina under Moultrie and in the fortification of South Carolina against the British. He was fifteen times a member of the state senate from Brunswick county; major-general of militia, 1794-1810; leader of the Brunswick militia volunteers at the time of the threatened war with France in 1796, and governor of the state, 1810-1812. He was the first benefactor of the University of North Carolina, giving toward its endowment warrants for 20,000 acres of land in Tennessee in 1789. Smith Hall was erected in 1852, in his memory. The capital of his county was named Smithville, and an island at the mouth of the Cape Fear River was named after him. He was a charter trustee of the University of North Carolina, 1789-1824, and president of the board of trustees, 1810-11. He died in Smithville, N.C., Feb. 10, 1829.
(Source: The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable American by Rossiter Johnson, John Howard Brown. Published by the Biographical Society, 1904)
