Benjamin Bosworth Smith

Benjamin Bosworth Smith (1784-1884) was an American Protestant Episcopal bishop. He was born at Bristol, R. I., and graduated at Brown University in 1816. 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, Ky., 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).