Early Life and Politics
Smith was born in Marengo, King George County, Virginia. He attended private schools in Virginia and Plainfield Academy in Connecticut. He then studied law and was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Culpeper, Culpeper County, Virginia, in 1818. Two years later, he married Elizabeth Hansbrough Bell. They would have twelve children, several of which died in infancy or as young adults.
He established a line of United States mail and passenger post coaches through Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia in 1831. It was in this role that he received his nickname. Given a contract by the administration of President Andrew Jackson to deliver mail between Washington, D.C., and Milledgeville, Georgia (then the state capital), Smith extended it with numerous spur routes, all generating extra fees. During an investigation of the Post Office department, Smith's extra fees were publicized and he became known as "Extra Billy" in both the North and South.
Smith served as a member of the Senate of Virginia from 1836 to 1841, when he resigned. Smith successfully contested as a Democrat the election of Linn Banks to the Twenty-seventh Congress and served from March 4, 1841, to March 3, 1843. He failed to be reelected in 1842 to the Twenty-eighth Congress. He then moved to Fauquier County.
Smith served during the Mexican-American War as Governor of Virginia from 1846 to 1849 and was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate during that period. He moved to California in April 1849 and was president of the first Democratic State convention in 1850. He returned to Virginia in December 1852 and was elected to the Thirty-third Congress and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1853 – March 3, 1861).
His brother-in-law Peter Hansbrough Bell was a Texas Revolutionary and Mexican War veteran who served as the third Governor of Texas from 1849 through 1853.
Read more about this topic: William Smith (Virginia Governor)
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