H. H. Smith was selected as SHSU's second principal. He was born in New Hampshire in 1820. He graduated from Bowdoin College and was licensed as an attorney, but chose to teach instead of practicing law.

He was a president of Catawba College in North Carolina and a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. After the Civil War, Smith was teaching in Alabama and was solicited by the General Agent of the Peabody Fund for the South to open schools in Tennessee and Houston.

He left his position as the Houston school superintendent to come to Sam Houston. Smith served two years. It is said he was reluctant to take the position. He stressed honesty and understanding as well as punctuality and energy. He felt "The teacher needs to understand man's entire nature to know how to develop it."

Smith moved to Atlanta, Georgia where he was a columnist and did editorials for the Atlanta Journal.

A donation may be made in President Hildreth H. Smith's honor to: The Hildreth H. Smith Endowment.

Sources include The Houstonian April 23, 1971.