William Owen Smith (August 4, 1848 – April 13, 1929) was a lawyer from a family of American missionaries who participated in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii. He was attorney general for the entire duration of the Provisional Government of Hawaii and the Republic of Hawaii. Life Smith was born August 4, 1848, in Kōloa on the island of Kauaʻi. His parents were the physician James William Smith (1810–1887) and Melicent Knapp Smith (1816-1891), a teacher. His parents were in the tenth set of missionaries to Hawaii from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions who arrived in 1842. His sister Charlotte Elizabeth "Lottie" Smith (1845–1896) married Alfred Stedman Hartwell (1836–1912), who was a former general in the American Civil War, on January 10, 1872. His brother, Jared Knapp Smith (1849–1897), became a physician and carried on his father's medical practice. His sister, Melicent Lena Smith (1854–1943), married William Waterhouse (1852–1942). Waterhouse was mayor of Pasadena, California, 1904–1906. He attended Daniel Dole's missionary school at Kōloa, Punahou School from 1863 to 1866, and then Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst). On his return, he worked as a clerk in his brother-in-law Hartwell's law office. He was sheriff on Kauaʻi in 1870 and then Maui from 1872 to 1874. While working at the Lāhainā Courthouse, on April 24, 1873, he planted a banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Christian missionaries on the island. On March 23, 1876, he married Mary Abbey Hobron. They had five children: Clarence Hobron Smith, Ethel Frances Smith born November 17, 1879, Pauline Melicent Smith, Anna Katherine Smith, and Lorrin Knapp Smith. He founded the law firm of Smith, Thurston & Kinney with Lorrin A. Thurston and William Ansel Kinney in Honolulu in 1887. Politics He acted as deputy attorney general, and was elected as a representative from Maui to the legislature of the Hawaiian Kingdom from 1878 to 1884. He helped draft the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii, which King Kalākaua was forced to sign, giving it the name "Bayonet Constitution". His law partner Thurston then became minister in the new cabinet. In the 1887 and 1888 sessions, he was elected to the upper House of Nobles. In 1892, he was elected as representative from Kaua'i. Overthrow He was a member of the Committee of Safety that organized the overthrow of