One-month-old George Wetherall Smith was baptized in Lincolnshire, England.  He was born sometime during the previous month.

George's father, Thomas, was a wealthy merchant (probably a brewer) in England, but at age about 40, he sold all of his possessions, gathered his family, and emigrated to the New World, aka the upstart former colonies of America.

They arrived in 1819 with $100,000, the equivalent of about $5 million today.  He and his son set up Philadelphia and then scouted around New York state for a suitable land investment.   They settled on an undeveloped tract upstate with natural freshwater springs in what is now the city of Syracuse.  On the way back to Philadelphia to complete the transaction, Thomas took ill and made his son promise to return to England if the worst happened.  

Thomas died in Philadelphia, and George obliged his father's request and returned to England.  He returned to America the following year, this time alone.  He settled in New York City and spent a year in the shipping business on a dangerous route between New York and Tampico, Mexico.

On his final run to Tampico, his connection wouldn't meet George's price, and Smith was forced to try to sell his goods in New Orleans, Louisiana.  But New Orleans wasn't interested either, so George journeyed up the Mississippi to a secluded trading post on the Arkansas River called Little Rock.

George disposed of his cargo in Little Rock (and apparently traded his boat for a horse) and made his way back to the city of New York.  He rode across east Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.  He crossed the Allegheny Mountains in western Virginia.  When Smith arrived in Baltimore, he caught a stage to New York City.

In around 1825, George Smith started a brewery with his brother Thomas in New York on Broadway.  There his reputation for making fine beer grew.  So much so that in 1829 George was induced with a $500/year salary to relocate to Pittsburgh to be a brewer for the firm of Brown & Verner.  This was the most anyone had ever paid a brewmaster west of the Alleghenies.  His success in the brewery that the first year can be measured by the compensation he negotiated for the next two years, a doubling of his salary to $1000.  In 1837 Smith negotiated a partnership with the firm, and in 1839 he bought it outright.  His signature beer, Smith's Ale, would soon become a regional, if not national phenomenon.

In the early 1830s, Smith moved to St. Thomas, a town in what is now Ontario, and established a brewery with William Peacey. While in Canada, he became friendly with the Labatt family of brewers. He also courted and married Mary Eccles, who tragically died just a month after their wedding.

In 1834 George married Elizabeth Darby Fawdington (maybe Faddington), a fellow British emigre and herself a widow with one child.  Together Elizabeth and George would have three children of their own.

In 1847 George Smith was 48 years old and perhaps looking for a place to retire.  The memories of his long horseback ride through the beautiful American frontier were surely fond and were likely weighing in his mind.  When a long-time competitor in the Ale business, Henry Moore, passed away in Wheeling, Virginia, George Smith purchased his brewery from the bank.   Smith ran the Wheeling company as a branch of his Pittsburgh concern for a time, but eventually his attention turned away from Pittsburgh and more towards the beautiful mountains of Wheeling.

In 1856 Smith purchased Dr. Hanson Chapline's large home outside of town.  He spent $76,000 over the next 12 months improving the building and buying up adjoining tracts of land upon which he created a scientific and efficient "model farm."  The estate is today known as Oglebay Mansion and Waddington Farm.  Smith moved into the mansion in 1857 and sold his Pittsburgh Brewery five years later.

In 1859 John Kinder Labatt sent his son John Jr. to Smith's Brewery for an apprenticeship.  When Smith's wife died in 1863, he relocated with the junior Labatt up to Prescott, Ontario, to start a brewery.   The Labatt family later purchased the Prescott brewery and with it the famous Smith's Ale recipe.   At the end of the Civil War, Smith returned to his estate in Wheeling.  His brewery had been managed in his absence by his son Alfred, and George concentrated more and more on his model farm.  

George Wetherall Smith died on the 21st of October, 1872.  He was 73 years of age.  His brewery in Wheeling was transformed into a lager beer brewery.  His famous Ale, now owned by the Labatt family, became Labatt's Pale Ale, and has been a staple of the Canadian diet ever since.

Learn more at the links below

Associated Breweries

Point Brewery at Fort Pitt, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
George W. Smith, Pittsburgh Brewery of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Smith & Co. Brewery of Wheeling, West Virginia, USA