Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith

Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith (Brentwood, New Hampshire, November 23, 1806; Deering, Maine, October 14, 1876) was elected from the state of Maine to the United States House of Representatives to serve three terms from 1833 to 1839, serving at one point on the US House of Representatives Committee on Commerce.

Smith was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and eventually was admitted to the bar to practice law in Portland, Maine. He served in the Maine House of Representatives in 1831, was a member of the Maine Senate in 1833, and served as its president. He was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses and as a Democrat to the Twenty-fifth Congress (March 4, 1833 – March 3, 1839). He chaired the Committee on Commerce (Twenty-fifth Congress), and was subsequently an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1838 to the Twenty-sixth Congress. Smith assisted Samuel F. B. Morse in perfecting and introducing the electric telegraph, and was a financial backer of the first telegraph lines set up in the United States.