Delazon Smith

Delazon Smith ( born October 5, 1816 in New Berlin, Chenango County, New York, † November 19, 1860 in Portland, Oregon ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He was one of the first two U.S. senators for the state of Oregon.

After graduating from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1837 Delazon Smith began to study law and was subsequently admitted to the Bar Association. He subsequently moved into the newspaper business. In 1838 he called in the Rochester New York Watchman into life, for which he spent two years working as an editor. In this function he worked for the True Jeffersonian and the Western Herald, before the newspaper Western Empire founded in Dayton in 1941.

His first public office Smith as special representative of the United States in Ecuador's capital Quito 1842-1845. Upon his return, he initially retired from Iowa Territory, and later the Oregon Territory, where he published the Oregon Democrat from 1852. In 1854 he was elected to the Territorial House of Representatives, where he represented the Linn County. He was 1855-1856 the Speaker of the Parliament chamber.

As the accession of Oregon to the United States was imminent, Smith took in 1857 as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of the future state of some. After joining the Union as the 33rd state he and Joseph Lane were elected to the first two U.S. senators. Smith took office on 14 February 1859 left the Congress after unsuccessful re-election, however, on March 3 of the same year again. He returned to Oregon, where he died the following year.