Smith, William, 1728-1793 : William Smith (1728-1793), historian, diarist, jurist and politician, was born in New York City. He earned the cognomen "Patriotic Billy" in the Stamp Act crisis of 1765. When Sir Guy Carleton came to America as commander-in-chief of the British forces in 1782, he found a sympathetic friend in Smith, then chief justice of New York. The British evacuated New York in 1783 and Carleton and Smith sailed for England on the same ship. In 1786, Baron Dorchester was commissioned as governor of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and Smith, arrived in Quebec, on a fact-finding mission, to advise ministers on the constitutional problems of the province. Smith became councillor and chief justice of Quebec on 2 November 1786.
Sharp, Granville, 1735-1813 : Granville Sharp (1735-1813), philanthropist, pamphleteer, and scholar, was born at Durham, the ninth and youngest son of Thomas Sharp, and grandson of John Sharp, archbishop of York. The abolition of slavery was his main object in life. The decision in the James Sommersett case, 1772, stating that any slave setting his foot upon English territory instantly becomes free, was accredited to Sharp's efforts. In 1776 he resigned his government office rather than assist in despatching war material to the colonies, and also joined in Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe's crusade against the press-gang. On the close of the American war he started a movement for the introduction of episcopacy into the independent colonies, and in 1787 Bishops of New York and Philadelphia were consecrated. Sharp took a prominent part in the establishment of a colony of freed slaves in Sierra Leone, Africa, in 1789, and in the founding of the British & Foreign Bible Society in 1804.
Oglethorpe, James Edward, 1696-1785 : James Edward Oglethorpe (1696-1785), general, philanthropist, and colonist of Georgia, was born in London, the third son of Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe and Eleanor Wall. Commissioned in the British Army in 1710, he was member for Haslemere from 1722 to 1754. In 1732 Oglethorpe, with twenty associates, obtained a charter for settling the colony of Georgia in America. He forbade negro slavery and rum in the new colony and selected John and Charles Wesley as his spiritual staff.
