a considerable fortune. Peter was the county judge of Madison County, New York, and has been described as 'easily its leading citizen'." He was "a devout and emotionally religious man[...]. From 1822 on, Peter Smith was intensely engaged in the work of the Bible and Tract societies." The author of the only book on Peter calls him greedy, self-centered, driven by the search for profits, and someone who did not like people who were not like him: white, male, and Dutch. He turned over a $400,000 business [] to his son Gerrit in 1819 and bequeathed $800,000 more [] to his children in 1837. Gerrit also inherited of land from his father, and at one point he owned , an area bigger than Rhode Island. An 1846 listing of lands he is offering for sale fills 45 pages. Smith's maternal aunt, Margaret Livingston, was married to Judge Daniel Cady. Their daughter Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a founder and leader of the women's suffrage movement, was Smith's first cousin. Elizabeth Cady met her future husband, Henry Stanton, also an active abolitionist, at the Smith family home in Peterboro, New York. Established in 1795, the town had been founded by and named for Gerrit Smith's father, Peter Smith, who built the family homestead there in 1804. Gerrit came there when he was 9. Gerrit as a young man Gerrit was described as "tall, magnificently built and magnificently proportioned, his large head superbly set on his shoulders;" he "might have served as a model for a Greek god in the days when man deified beauty and worshipped it." He attended Hamilton Oneida Academy in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, and graduated with honors from its successor Hamilton College in 1818, giving the valedictory address, and describing his stay at the college as "very active with many friends". In January 1819, he married Wealtha Ann Backus (1800–1819), daughter of Hamilton College's first President, Azel Backus D.D. (1765–1817), and sister of Frederick F. Backus (1794–1858). Wealtha died in August of the same year. In 1822, he married Ann Carroll Fitzhugh (1805–1879), sister of Henry Fitzhugh (1801–1866); their relationship "appeared to be loving". They had eight children, but only Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822–1911), mother of his grandson Gerrit Smith Miller, and Greene Smith (c. 1841–1880) survived to adulthood. In the year of his graduation, the death of his mother plunged his father, Peter, into severe depression. He