Ashbel Smith

Ashbel Smith (August 13, 1805 – January 21, 1886) was a pioneer physician, diplomat and official of the Republic of Texas, Confederate officer and first President of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas.

Smith was born on August 13, 1805 in Hartford, Connecticut, United States, and attended Hartford public schools. He graduated from Yale University at the age of 19 where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor society. Smith taught briefly in a private school in Salisbury, North Carolina and then attended medical school at Yale graduating as medical doctor in 1828. He later lived in France and during the Paris cholera epidemic of 1832, Smith helped to treat the sick and wrote a pamphlet on the disease. Returning to the United States, Smith began his medical practice in Salisbury, North Carolina. He became active politically and part owner of the nullification newspaper the Western Carolinian. In the fall of 1836, Smith was persuaded to move to Texas by J. Pinckney Henderson, whom Smith had become friends with in Salisbury and was already in Texas.

Upon arriving in Texas in 1837, Smith quickly became a close acquaintance of Sam Houston and was appointed to the post of surgeon general with the Republic of Texas Army. Even though militarily the Texas Revolution was over, Smith set up an efficient system of medical operations and established the first hospital in the area that would become Houston. As President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston called on Smith to negotiate a treaty with the Comanches in 1838. The Texas Congress failed to ratify the treaty, which would have recognized a Comanche homeland, the Comancheria, thus leading to the Council House Fight and Great Raid of 1840.

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