Provost William Smith

Smith was born in Scotland in 1727. He was ordained as a Church of England Clergyman before serving as the university’s first provost from 1775-1779. While Benjamin Franklin and his Quaker faction, allied themselves with the Provincial Assembly, Smith and Richard Peters chose to support the Anglican Penn family properties. After a trip to England in 1759, Smith returned to Philadelphia with several honorary degrees in one hand and a deed to Perkasie Manor in the other. The university trustees would eventually attempt to use the Perkasie property as an avenue to raise funds for the financially struggling university.

Timeline of Fundraising Efforts

However, before attempting to benefit from Perkasie Manor the university’s first provost, William Smith, traveled to Great Britain to raise funds in the ‘Mother Country. (Smith and John Morgan would eventually organize fundraising trips to South Carolina and Jamaica.) Account Books from Provost Smith’s Great Britain fundraising trip show donations from Thomas Penn, the Archbishop of Canterbury, [Rev M Powell] John Thorton, and King George III.