David Smith (1742 - 1789)

Born 11 Oct 1742 in Truro, Barnstable, Massachusetts Bay

Ancestors

Husband of Rebecca (Lombard) Smith — married 9 Apr 1767 in Truro, Barnstable, Massachusetts Bay

Descendants

Died 17 Feb 1789 at age 46 in Port Hood Island, Inverness, Nova Scotia, Canada

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Biography

Captain David Smith served with Barnstable County Militia, Massachusetts Militia during the American Revolution.

David Smith is a DAR Patriot Ancestor, A105064.

Captain Smith is the son of Galmeliel Smith and Hannah Harding. He was born in Truro, Barnstable, Massachusetts in 1742. (31 October 1742 according to a transcription of Truro Vital Records). He married Rebecca Lombard in Truro in 1767, and all but two of their children were born in Massachusetts. He and his family came to Nova Scotia, settling first at Guysborough, in 1784. In 1786 the removed to Juste au Corps, later known as Port Hood Island, the first family to settle there.

David was lost when he and two of his sons went hunting seals on the ice flows. Wind parted the ice and they were stranded on a flow. David tried to swim to solid ice but couldn't climb out of the water. The two sons eventually drifted to shore and were able to return home and share their grief with the rest of the family.

Notes

While Captain David is recognized as a patriot by the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) he is also recognized as a United Empire Loyalist by his descendants and Nova Scotia historians. In his DAR profile, it indicates that he served as a captain in the Truro, Massachusetts militia in 1775. Although he left Massachusetts in 1784, the annotation on his file states that he moved "due to economic reasons & not any loyalist leanings."

A.C. Jost notes that a "David Smith" is included in the list of settlers at the Hallowell Grant, at Boylston (in what was then Sydney County, now Guysborough County, Nova Scotia) but notes that most of these settlers were Loyalists from Connecticut, and that this David Smith did not stay for long after receiving a grant of land there for a wharfing and business site in 1784. Albeit brief, this association with the Guysborough and Boylston settlers might connect the marriage of David's son David Jr to Agnes Lyle, daughter of Guysborough settler James Lyle, and the marriage of David Sr's grand-daughter Rebecca, daughter of John, who was born and raised at Port Hood, Cape Breton, to Joseph Lee Hart, grandson of Josiah Hart, another of the Boylston settlers.

Sources

• Smith, Perley W., The Smiths of Cape Breton - A History of Port Hood and Port Hood Island with the Geneology of the Smith Family, 1610 - 1967. privately published, 1967, pp. 285.

• Massachusetts Vital Records, Truro, Births, http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Barnstable/Truro/aBirthsS.shtml

• Massachusetts Vital Records, Truro, Marriages, http://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Barnstable/Truro/aMarriagesS.shtml

• David Smith, Daughters of the American Revolution, Revolutionary Ancestors Database, https://services.dar.org/Public/DAR_Research/search_adb/default.cfm

• David Smith, in A.C. JOST, Guysborough Sketches and Essays, revised edition", p.123, pp.174-176