Benjamin B. Smith
Benjamin Bosworth Smith was an American Protestant Episcopal bishop, and the Presiding Bishop of his Church beginning in 1868.Early life
Smith was born at Bristol, R. I., and lost his father when he was 5 years old. Nonetheless, he graduated at Brown University in 1816.Career
The following year he was ordained, beginning his ministry at Marblehead, Mass. He held several pastoral charges and was for a time editor of the Episcopal Recorder at Philadelphia. His last rectorship, in Lexington, Ky., he held until 1837, though in 1832 he had become Bishop of the diocese. While he was presiding Bishop, a separatist movement, which became the Reformed Episcopal Church, was organized under the leadership of Bishop Smith's own assistant bishop, George David Cummins. He published Saturday Evening and Apostolic Succession.
In the late 1860s, he helped establish schools and hire teachers to work with former slaves throughout the south.
In 1874, Presiding Bishop Smith led the consecration of James Theodore Holly, the first African-American to be consecrated a bishop in the Protestant Episcopal church, and who became the missionary bishop for Haiti.
