Seba Smith was an American humorist and writer. He was married to Elizabeth Oakes Smith, also a major writer and feminist.

Born in Buckfield, Maine

Buckfield, Maine

Buckfield is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. Buckfield is included in the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine metropolitan New England City and Town Area. It is a member of Maine School Administrative District 39 along with nearby Hartford and Sumner...

, Smith graduated from Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...

 in 1818 and then lived in Portland, Maine

Portland, Maine

Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...

. He edited various papers including the Eastern Argus and then founded the Portland Courier and edited it from 1830 to 1837.

He was one of the first writers to use American vernacular in humor. His series with the New England character Major Jack Downing was popular after its start in 1830.

Under date of November 26, 1833, John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States . He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former...

 records in his diary an encounter with Colonel David Crockett, newly returned to Congress, whom he quotes as saying that he (Crockett) "had taken for lodgings two rooms on the first floor of a boarding-house, where he expected to pass the winter and to have for a fellow-lodger Major Jack Downing, the only person in whom he had any confidence for information of what the Government was doing." Diary (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929), p. 445.

His dry, satirical humor influenced other 19th century humorists, including Artemus Ward

Charles Farrar Browne

Charles Farrar Browne was a United States humor writer, better known under his nom de plume, Artemus Ward. At birth, his surname was "Brown." He added the "e" after he became famous.-Biography:...

 and Finley Peter Dunne

Finley Peter Dunne

Finley Peter Dunne was a Chicago-based U.S. author, writer and humorist. He published Mr. Dooley in Peace and War, a collection of his nationally syndicated Mr. Dooley sketches, in 1898. The fictional Mr...

. He is also credited as being a forerunner of other American humorists like Will Rogers

Will Rogers

William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....

.

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