Andrew
B.F.
Smith

ANDREW BLAIR FRAZEE SMITH was born in Camden in 1866 to Richard Fetters Smith and Jane Frazee. His maternal grandfather, Captain Andrew Blair Frazee was the Superintendent of the Camden & Philadelphia Ferry Company for many years. Richard F. Smith was a prominent Camden businessman and served as Camden County Sheriff in the 1880s. His paternal great grandfather was Richard Fetters, who sold real estate to working class people regardless of race in South Camden, and for who the neighborhood of Fettersville and the Fetters Elementary School are named. Richard F. Smith had a successful lumber business near the Cooper's Creek Bridge and Federal Street, on what is now referred to as the East Camden side of the Cooper River.

After completing his education, Andrew B.F. Smith joined his father in the lumber business. By 1897 he had become a stockholder in the Stockton Building & Loan Association and the Mt. Holly Peoples Building & Loan association.  Within a few years he had gone into the insurance business with Charles W. Austermuhl. The Smith-Austermuhl Insurance Company was quite successful, and enjoyed further success when the firm became involved with the growth of the Parkside district by developing Wildwood Avenue off of Park Boulevard in 1915.

Andrew B.F. Smith and Charles W. Austermuhl erected a building on the northwest corner of North 5th and Market Streets in downtown Camden to house their company. Long a landmark in Camden, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. 

At the time of the 1920 Census, Andrew B.F. Smith and his wife Francis were living at 548 Penn Street. He passed away in 1926, and was buried at Harleigh Cemetery.

After Andrew B.F. Smith passed away, one-time U.S. Senator and long-time Camden County Republican party leader David Baird Jr. acquired an interest in the firm, which remained in their Camden home in one incarnation or another into the mid-1980s.

15th & Federal Streets
Stockton Township

1889

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Admiral Henry Wilson - Charles H. Ellis
Elisha A. Gravenor - Edward S. Hyde
William E. Albert - James H. Long
Frank S. Van Hart - William D. Sayrs Jr.
Frank S. Fithian - A. Benjamin Sparks
Kessel Webster - William H. Iszard
Robert D. Clow - Andrew B.F. Smith
William H. Lorigan
Charles Austermuhl
David Doane - William C. Davis
William Vanaman - David Baird Sr.
J. Wesley Sell - William D. Brown
Charles A. Wolverton - William J. Browning