Stephen Smith (privateer)
American militia leader

Captain Stephen Smith (1739 – 29 September 1806) was an American privateer and militia officer from Machias, Maine who fought in the raid on Saint John. The following year Smith was appointed truck master to the Native Americans to ensure their support during the American Revolution. He also participated in the Battle of Machias (1777). (Note: the record does not support that Smith was on the Unity, the ship Jeremiah O'Brien used to capture the Margaretta at the Battle of Machias.) Smith, after the revolution was appointed by President George Washington under Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in Machias as a Tax Collector.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american militia leader. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q85803445. VIAF identifies the subject as 36353818. The Library of Congress control number is n2006162269. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1739, 1806 and 1777.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stephen Smith (privateer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.