Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/633

Rh SPIN historical society, the New England geiipalogical society, and Bowdoin college, anil in various private collections. The Berkeley sjnmp is said to havp been sketched at sea during the Miyairo from England, although the child in the arms of its mother must have been added later, as it was burn in America. This was the first paint- ing of more than a single figure that was executed in this country. Horace Walpole, in his " . ec- doti-s of Painting" (Strawberry Hill, 1763-71), calls Smybert "a silent and modest man, who abhorred the finesse of some of his profession, and was en- ehanted with a plan that he thought promised him iran<iuillity and an honest subsistence in a health- ful elysian climate." Walpole and George Vert UP spelled thp iiamp Smihert. His works are said to have had much influence on Copley, Trumbull, and Allston. The last has spoken of the instruction he gained from a copy after Vandyke, by Smybert. His son. Nathaniel, b. in Boston, 20 Jan., 1734; d. there, 8 Nov.. 1756, showed great talent for portrait- ure. Judge Cranch, of Quiney. Mass., wrote of him: " Had his life been spared, he would probably have been in his day what Copley and West have since i] the honor of America in imitative art." His portrait of John Lovell is owned by Harvard.

SMYTH, Alexander, lawyer, b. on the island of Rathlin. Ireland, in 1765; d. in Washington. 1 ). ( '.. 26 April, 1830. He came to this country in 1775, settled in Botetourt county, Va., and, after I-PPI iving an academic education, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1789, and began to practise in Abingdon, but removed to Wythe county in 1792. For many years he was a member of the Virginia house of representatives, and he was ap- pointed by President Jefferson, on 8 July, 1808, colonel of a U. S. rifle regiment, which he com- manded in the southwest until 1811, when he was ordered to Washington to prepare a system of discipline for the army. On 6 July, 1812, he was appointed inspector- general, and ordered to the Canadian frontier, where he failed in an invasion of Canada, was removed from the army, and re- sumed his profession. He was made a member of the Virginia board of public works, served in the house of representatives, and was elected to con- gress as a Democrat, serving from 1 Dec., 1817, till M March, 1825. and again from 3 Dec., 1827. till 17 April, 1830. Gen. Smyth was the author of "Regulations for the Infantry" (Philadelphia, 1812) and " An Explanation of the Apocalypse, or Revelation of St. John" (Washington, 1825).

'''SMYTH. Andrew Woods''', physician, b. near Londonderry, Ireland. 15 Feb., 1833. He settled in New Orleans in 1849, was graduated at the medical department of the University of Louisi- ana in 1858, and was house-surgeon of the Charity hospital in New Orleans from 1858 till 1878. Here he performed, on 15 May, 1864, the first and only recorded operation of tying successfully the arteria innominata for subclavian aneurism. All previous attempts had failed, and his success was attributed to ligating, where secondary haemorrhage had oc- curred, the vertebral artery, which prevented re- gurgitant haemorrhage. Dr. Valentine Mott, who was the first to perform this operation in New York, in 1818. and who never doubted its ultimate suc- pp-s. said that Dr. Smyth's operation had afforded him more consolation than all others of a similar nature. He also made the first successful reduc- tion of a dislocation of the femur of over nine months' duration, in 1866, and performed the op- eration of extirpation of the kidney in 1879, then almost unknown to the profession (nephrotomy), and in 1885 that of nephorrhaphy, attaching" a floating kidney to the wound to retain the organ in place instead of extirpation. From 1862 till 1877 he was a member of the board of health of Louisiana, and in 1881-'o was superintendent of the U. S. mint in New Orleans, and now (1898) prac- tises his profession in that city. Dr. Smyth has published a brochure on the " Collateral Circulation in Aneurism" (New Orleans, 1876; 2d ed., 1877), and a paper on "The Structure and Function of the Kidney," giving original views on the anatom- ical and physiological construction and action of the Malpigliian bodies, contending that a commu- nication between the interior of the capsule of these bodies and the uriniferous tubules could not exist, and that excretion in the organ is carried on by systolic pressure and diastolic relaxation, which are correlative, and effected by constriction of the efferent artery of the glomerule.

SMYTH, Clement, R. C. bishop, b. in Finlea, County Clare, Ireland, 24 Jan., 1810: d. in Dubuque, Iowa, 22 Sept., 1865. He received his early educa- tion in his native village and in a college in Lim- erick, and afterward was graduated at Dublin university. He then entered a convent of the Pres- entation order in Youghal, and subsequently be- came aTrappist in the monastery of Mount Melleray, Waterford. He established a college in connection with the monastery, which is still one of the chief educational institutions in Ireland. Having com- pleted his ecclesiastical studies, he was ordained a priest in 1844. He was sent by his brethren at the head of a body of Trappists to solicit alms in the United States' during the Irish famine, and also to select a suitable place for a Trappist monastery. He landed in New York in the spring of 1849, and travelled extensively through the country, finally reaching Dubuque. Here he was offered by Bishop Loras a grant of land in Dubuque county, Iowa, which he increased by purchase to more than 1,600 acres. By good management and the manual labor of himself and his companions, he brought this farm into a state of great productiveness, and then founded on it the monastery of New Melleray, of which he was elected prior. He built a church for the congregation that he had organized in the neighborhood, and established a free school, which was largely attended by children of every denomi- nation. Having increased the number of his monks to forty-seven, and placed the different in- stitutions he had founded on a basis of great pros- perity, he set out for St. Paul in 1856. In the fol- lowing year he was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Loras, of Dubuque, and he was consecrated on 3 May, with the title of Bishop of Thanasis in par- tibus. He succeeded to the bishopric in Febru- ary, 1858. He at once essayed to finish the cathe- dral, which had been begun some time before, and soon had it ready for service. He visited every part of the diocese, and made successful efforts to furnish priests and churches for the congregations that were springing up in every part of Iowa. During his episcopate the number of churches in- creased from 50 to 84, with 8 chapels and 20 sta- tions, the number of priests from 37 to 63, and that of Roman Catholics from 45,000 to over 90.000. The Sisters of Charity largely increased the num- ber of their institutions, and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul was established in every parish.

SMYTH, John Ferdinand D., British soldier, lived in the eighteenth century. He came to Virginia, and, after travelling in the west and south, settled in Maryland, where he cultivated a farm for several years. During a visit to the sons of Col. Andrew Lewis in Virginia he joined the troops that were ordered out by GOT. Dunmore, and ac-