Benjamin Smith

Benjamin Bosworth Smith (June 13, 1794 – May 31, 1884) was an American Protestant Episcopal bishop, and the Presiding Bishop of his Church beginning in 1868.

Early life Smith was born in Bristol, Rhode Island, 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, Kentucky, he held until 1837, though in 1832 he had become Bishop of the diocese. While he was presiding Bishop (from 1868), 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 (1876) and Apostolic Succession (1877).

In 1840, Smith was appointed by the Governor of Kentucky to serve as the third Kentucky Superintendent of Public Instruction. 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.

Architecture Smith is not to be confused with Benjamin Bosworth Smith (architect) (1863–1926), a related but different architect based in Montgomery, Alabama.

Smith is listed as the architect of several buildings, including some listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places: Church of the Advent, Episcopal (1855), 122 N. Walnut St. Cynthiana, KY, Gothic Revival in style (Smith, Bishop Benjamin Bosworth) St. Paul's Episcopal Church (1859–60), 338 Center St. Henderson, KY (Smith, Bishop Benjamin Bosworth) A Gothic-style small study with a peaked roof that Smith used at his Louisville home is preserved on the grounds of the St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church ("near Prospect" in Louisville, Kentucky?).