The bust shows a man with a receding hairline. He is sporting a short beard and a full mustache. At his throat is a collar and a bow tie.
Wikipedia
"Ashbel Smith (August 13, 1805 – January 21, 1886) was a pioneer physician, diplomat and official of the Republic of Texas, Confederate officer and first President of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas.
Smith was born on August 13, 1805 in Hartford, Connecticut, United States, and attended Hartford public schools. He graduated from Yale University at the age of 19 where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor society. Smith taught briefly in a private school in Salisbury, North Carolina and then attended medical school at Yale graduating as medical doctor in 1828. He later lived in France and during the Paris cholera epidemic of 1832, Smith helped to treat the sick and wrote a pamphlet on the disease. Returning to the United States, Smith began his medical practice in Salisbury, North Carolina. He became active politically and part owner of the nullification newspaper the Western Carolinian. In the fall of 1836, Smith was persuaded to move to Texas by J. Pinckney Henderson, whom Smith had become friends with in Salisbury and was already in Texas.
Upon arriving in Texas in 1837, Smith quickly became a close acquaintance of Sam Houston and was appointed to the post of surgeon general with the Republic of Texas Army. Even though militarily the Texas Revolution was over, Smith set up an efficient system of medical operations and established the first hospital in the area that would become Houston. As President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston called on Smith to negotiate a treaty with the Comanches in 1838. The Texas Congress failed to ratify the treaty, which would have recognized a Comanche homeland, the Comancheria, thus leading to the Council House Fight and Great Raid of 1840.
A supporter of public education, Smith was a charter member and first vice president of the Philosophical Society of Texas. The society immediately set about to request that the Texas Congress establish a system of public education in Texas.
In 1839, a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Galveston, and Smith treated the victims of the disease while writing reports about the treatment of the disease in the Galveston News. As a result of this experience, he wrote the first treatise on yellow fever in Texas. He purchased land near Galveston Bay and built his plantation, Evergreen, in southeast Harris County in what is now Baytown, Texas.
n President Sam Houston's second term (1841–1844), Dr. Smith was Minister Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Texas to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and France, residing in London and Paris, respectively. He also traveled to Rome on a diplomatic mission to Pope Gregory XVI. In Europe, Smith secured ratification of a treaty of amity and commerce between England and Texas and improved the Republic's relations with France, which had been ruffled by the so-called Pig War. On his return from Europe in 1845, Smith was appointed Secretary of State by President Anson Jones. With the possibility of annexation by the United States Smith worked to give the people of Texas a choice between remaining an independent republic and being annexed. To facilitate this, he negotiated a treaty, in which Mexico recognized the independence of Texas, won in 1836, and in return Texas would not be annexed by another country. This treaty, known as the Smith-Cuevas Treaty, angered many Texans who were strong supporters of annexation, and Smith was burned in effigy by citizens of Galveston and San Felipe. This treaty was rejected by the Texan Congress which preferred the annexation resolutions, and thus, Texas was annexed by the United States on December 29, 1845 and became the 28th state of the Union in early 1846."