Thomas Alexander Smith was born near Greenwood, Delaware, and moved with his parents to Ridgely, Maryland, as a youth in 1856.

He engaged in the mercantile business, and was a member of the board of school commissioners for Caroline County, Maryland, from 1889 to 1893.

He was the first vice president of the National Association of Labor Statisticians in 1903 and 1904, and member of the board of State aid and charities in 1904 and 1905.

He later served as a delegate to the Farmers’ National Congress of the United States held at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1908 and at Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1910.

Smith married Adah Clayton Frazer of Detroit, Michigan on September 10, 1878.