Thomas Smith (politician)

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Thomas Smith (1648 - 1694) was the governor of Carolina from 1693 to 1694, a planter, a merchant and a surgeon. He arrived in Charles Town in 1684 with his first wife Barbara Atkins and his sons Thomas and George. He was a Cacique by 1690 and was made Landgrave by the Lords Proprietors on May 13, 1691.

He died in 1694 and is buried at Medway Planation. A stone slab marks his grave with the inscription: Here Lieth Ye Body of the Right Honble Thomas Smith Esq. one of Ye Landgraves of Carolina who Departed This Life Ye 16th of November, 1694. Governor of the Province of Carolina in Ye 46 year of his age.

Governor Archdale described Thomas Smith as "a wise sober and moderate wellliving man." The Proprietors, writing to Governor Archdale on January 10, 1695, stated: We forward copies of letters written by Colonel Smith not long before his death, that you may enjoy with us his satisfactory account of the growing condition of the province and of the peace and union to which he had brought it. He appears to us to have been a man not only of great parts, integrity and honesty but of a generous temper and a nobleness of spirit as to the public good as is scarcely to be met withal in this age.

His brick townhouse with a wharf on Cooper River was on the corner of East Bay and Longitude Lane.

Smith was the grandfather of Rev. Josiah Smith, a prominent minister of colonial South Carolina.