Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith

Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith was born in Brentwood, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, on November 23, 1806. Little is recorded about his early family life, but his subsequent education and career indicate an upbringing that valued learning and public service. As a young man he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, one of the leading preparatory schools in New England, where he received a classical education that prepared him for the study of law and for a career in politics.

After completing his studies at Phillips Exeter Academy, Smith read law and was admitted to the bar. He established his legal practice in Portland, Maine, which at the time was emerging as a significant commercial and political center in the state. His abilities as a lawyer and his growing prominence in the community soon led him into public life. Smith first entered state politics as a member of the Maine House of Representatives in 1831. He then advanced to the Maine Senate, where he served in 1833 and was chosen president of the Senate, reflecting the confidence his colleagues placed in his leadership and parliamentary skills.

Smith’s state-level service paved the way for his election to the United States House of Representatives from Maine. He was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses and as a Democrat to the Twenty-fifth Congress, serving three consecutive terms from March 4, 1833, to March 3, 1839. During his tenure in the House, he represented Maine at a time of significant national debate over economic policy, internal improvements, and the role of the federal government. In the Twenty-fifth Congress he served as chairman of the Committee on Commerce, a position that placed him at the center of legislative consideration of the nation’s commercial and transportation interests. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1838 to the Twenty-sixth Congress, bringing his formal congressional service to a close in 1839.

Parallel to and following his congressional career, Smith became deeply involved in the development of the electric telegraph, emerging as a key early promoter, financier, and contractor in the new technology. Samuel F. B. Morse approached Smith seeking support to obtain a federal grant to construct an experimental telegraph line. Smith agreed to act as Morse’s counsel, publicity advocate, and promotional agent, and in 1838 he was taken into partnership and granted a one-quarter interest in the telegraph patent. He furnished Morse with funds for a trip to Europe to secure patent rights there and used his legislative experience to author a bill in Congress appropriating $30,000 for the construction of an experimental telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. This appropriation has often been noted as one of the earliest instances of direct government support for a private researcher, and particularly for applied scientific research.

Smith served as contractor for the construction of the Washington–Baltimore line, which was finally completed and placed in operation in 1844, when the first official telegraph message was sent. Construction of the line was troubled from the outset, and when failure seemed likely, Smith threatened to sue Morse to recover his construction expenses. The personal and business relationship between the two men deteriorated badly, with Morse accusing Smith of making unfounded claims and engaging in conduct Morse regarded as fraudulent. In a letter of January 4, 1851, to his agent Amos Kendall, Morse expressed his desire for “entire separation from that unprincipled man,” stating that while he could endure Smith’s alleged frauds against himself, he would not tolerate being made, “nolens volens, a particeps criminis in his frauds on others.”

Despite these conflicts, Smith continued to play a prominent role in telegraph expansion. He was the contractor for the construction of the New York and Boston Magnetic Telegraph line, which opened on June 27, 1846, but initially performed poorly. Seeking greater returns, he shifted his focus from New England to the Old Northwest in an effort to develop income from the Morse patent for himself. He appointed Ezra Cornell and John James Speed as his agents for the Morse patent in the Northwest—covering Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana—and they organized the Erie and Michigan Telegraph line to connect Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Patent disputes and corporate maneuvering, however, led to Smith’s loss of effective control, and his ambition to build a western telegraph empire was thwarted when the directors of the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company failed to issue him stock.

In an effort to secure an independent route to the eastern seaboard that would bypass the Magnetic Telegraph Company’s New York, Albany, and Buffalo main line—where Morse held a substantial interest—Smith organized the New York and Erie Telegraph, running south of Morse’s line. Constructed by Cornell and Speed, this line proved unsuccessful and ultimately went bankrupt. Even so, before the laying of the Transatlantic cable, Smith played a strategic role in the rapid dissemination of European news to newspapers in the northeastern United States. When ships arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before continuing on to Boston and New York, Smith helped forward the latest European dispatches inland by telegraph, enabling American newspapers to publish foreign news with unprecedented speed.

Beyond his public and business endeavors, Smith’s family connections linked him to the literary and religious life of his era. His wife was the sister of Luella J. B. Case, a noted author, poet, and hymn writer, suggesting that his domestic circle included figures active in the cultural and religious movements of nineteenth-century New England. Smith spent his later years in Maine, and he died in Deering, Maine, on October 14, 1876. He was interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, where he is buried in the F. O. J. Smith Tomb, a structure that has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, reflecting both his prominence in his own time and the enduring historical interest in his role as a legislator and telegraph pioneer.