Ernest W. “Bill” Smith was born in Greenville, Indiana in 1937, and lives in New Albany, indiana with his wife Janet Schoen Smith. He has two children by a prior marriage, Eric W. Smith and Lara Smith Lawton. Janet has two children by a prior marriage, Kimberly D. Hogle and Gregory S. Hogle, and together they have seven grandchildren.

Bill went to high school in Jeffersonville, Indiana, graduating in 1955; then to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, graduating in 1959; then three years in the U. S. Army as a tank officer and an Army aviator; then three years at the Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, graduating in 1965. While in law school Bill served in the 38th Aviation Battalion in the Indiana National Guard reaching the rank of captain.

In 1965 Bill started in the practice of law with Charles C. Fox in Jeffersonville. After Mr. Fox died Bill grew the firm into a nine person law firm. Bill was a general practice lawyer representing Clark Regional Airport near Sellersburg, Indiana for forty years and Clark Memorial Hospital in Jeffersonville for thirty-two years. He tried over 200 jury cases representing insurance companies in the defense of personal injuries claims. During the last ten years of his practice he represented plaintiffs in personal injury claims against insurance companies. Bill served on various boards of directors, trustee boards, and advisory boards including Clark County United Way, Citizens Bank & Trust Company, Commerce-America Bank, Indiana National Bank, NBD Bank, Clark County Chamber of Commerce, Indiana University Southeast, New Albany/Floyd County Board of School Trustees, Floyd Memorial Hospital, and the Jeffersonville Carnegie Library. He was a forty-year member of the Jeffersonville Rotary Club serving one year as its president.

Bill is neither a professional historian nor a professional writer. He has always been interested in history from the time in 1946 that he, his sister, and his mother traveled across the continental United States from Washington, D. C. to Seattle, Washington to join his father who was an Army officer at Ft. Richardson, Alaska. He has been a member of The Athenaeum Society book club in Jeffersonville for twenty years where he has read over 200 books, a lot of them on history. Bill retired in 2007 from the practice of law and has spent several thousands of hours reading, researching, writing, and rewriting a biography on the life of Davis Floyd, who was born in Virginia in 1774.