John Blair Smith

John Blair Smith (June 12, 1756 – August 22, 1799) was born in Pequea, Pennsylvania Colony, the son of the Rev. Robert Smith, who ran a celebrated academy there. Like his older brother, John Blair Smith was valedictorian of the Class of 1773 at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. He was in the graduating class of 1771, with William Graham, the rector of Liberty Hall Academy (now Washington & Lee University) and Henry "Light Horse" Lee, governor of Virginia and father of Robert E. Lee. He was recruited at the age of 19 to come to Virginia as a tutor at the new Hampden–Sydney College, then being founded by his elder brother, Rev. Samuel Stanhope Smith.

While a tutor at the College, John Blair Smith was chosen in 1777 as a captain of a company of students (about sixty-five total) during the American Revolutionary War, assigned to the defense of Williamsburg. He accepted a position as pastor to the Old Pine Street Church in Philadelphia. Four years later he was elected the first president of Union College in Schenectady, New York. Eight months after returning to his pastorate in Philadelphia in 1799, he died there in a yellow fever epidemic.