The Mystery of “William Benson a Negro Man”

On 6 Nov 1775, the Boston Gazette, then being published in Watertown, ran this announcement from the keeper of the jail at Cambridge:

Cambridge, October 20, 1775.

BROKE out of the Goal in Cambridge, the following Prisoners, Thomas Smith, and William Benson a Negro Man. Said Smith is a very noted Thief, hath been in almost all the Goals on the Continent; had on when he broke Goal, a blue Jacket, a Pair of striped Trowsers, sandy coloured Hair about 5 Feet 4 Inches high.

Said Benson the Negro had on when he went away, a dark coloured old Coat, a Pair of old black knit Breeches, about 5 Feet 6 Inches high. Whoever will take up said Prisoners, and return them to said Goal, shall be handsomely rewarded, by

ISAAC BRADISH, Under Keeper.

The name of William Benson caught my eye. I wondered if this might be the black man of that name who appears in the records of the town of Framingham.

That William Benson was born in 1732. His parents, Nero Benson and Dido Dingo, had been kidnapped from Africa to New England. They married in 1721. Nero Benson served in Massachusetts army units around 1725 and died in 1757.

William Benson was sold to a man named Joseph Collins about 1762 but somehow gained his freedom shortly afterward—though he had to fight for it. Collins and two helpers tried to forcibly take Benson back into captivity and resell him. A Middlesex County grand jury indicted Collins in 1764. He formally acknowledged Benson’s freedom and refunded the buyer’s money (or, under another interpretation, bought Benson back and freed him). Under those circumstances, the court accepted Collins’s plea of no contest and let him off with a small fine.

By early 1762 William Benson was husband to Sarah Perry of Sudbury, born in 1747. Or as Shrewsbury warning-out records from 1762 said, “Perry, Sarah, alias Benson, white, called by William Benson, (colored) his wife.”

According to William Barry’s history of Framingham and the town’s published vital records, their children included:

• Katy or Cate, born 8 Apr 1763, later the wife of Peter Salem.
• Abel, born in 1766.
• Polly, born in 1773.
• Sally, born in 1782.
• William, who died young.

Traditions in Framingham and Needham say that a black trumpeter helped to summon the militia in one part of the region on 19 Apr 1775. Various authors have named that military musician as Nero or Abel, both recorded in other documents as playing the trumpet. But Nero was dead by 1775, and Abel was no more than nine years old and didn’t mention such service in his military pension application. I’ve posited that William—Nero’s son and Abel’s father—is a candidate for being that trumpeter.

Was the same William Benson locked up in the Cambridge jail a few months later? Unfortunately, I’ve found no more detail on this escaped prisoner. On 9 October the besieging army’s general orders had said:

If any Negroe is found straggling after Taptoo beating about the Camp, or about any of the roads or Villages, near the encampments at Roxbury, or Cambridge, they are to be seized and confined until Sun-rise, in the Guard, nearest to the place where such Negroe is taken up.

That was confinement in a military stockade, not the town or county jail, but it reflects the general hostility toward blacks that Gen. George Washington’s army adopted in that season.

Of course, African-American soldiers were already serving in that army, and at the end of December Washington reversed course and decided they could continue to serve. William Benson’s son Abel became one of those Continental soldiers, signing up in 1780 at the age of fourteen (saying he was sixteen). He received a plot of Framingham land as payment. After Abel’s mother died, his father William came to live there.

“Near this site was buried a British soldier”

Yesterday’s posting included a recent photograph of the monument marking the grave of two British soldiers who died in the skirmish at the North Bridge in Concord. That tablet, with lines by the poet James Russell Lowell, has been on the site for decades.

In recent years, as D. Michael Ryan’s article from 2000 describes, Concord installed a stone marker on the site linked to a third soldier said to be fatally wounded in that fight. Concord chronicler Lemuel Shattuck had described his burial according to the landmarks of his time, and local research in real estate records relocated the approximate spot.

Ryan’s article states that the names of the three British soldiers buried in those places are Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall. Minute Man National Historical Park, Wikipedia, and the Silver Whistle site that supplied the photo above say the same.

How did Ryan and other historians arrive at those three names? They looked at the muster rolls for the company of His Majesty’s 4th Regiment known to be at the North Bridge. They counted which men were listed as killed or missing after the Concord march. Three names of three privates—three bodies—case solved!

But a few years ago Dan Lacroix of Westford shared some research that convinced me that neither of those graves probably contains the remains of Pvt. James Hall of the 4th. You’ll see some of that research tomorrow. Dan is more careful about that conclusion than I am; for one thing, the name “James Hall” was common enough that it’s hard to rule out the possibility of two men with that name, a lucky confluence like Hezekiah Wyman. But see what you think. Is James Hall buried in Concord?

TOMORROW: Or, would you believe, Vermont?

Dr. Daniel How: prepared to receive insane patients

Yesterday I quoted Samuel Breck’s passing remark that Andover, Massachusetts, was “a town where insane people are well nursed and comfortably boarded.” That intrigued me, so I dug further. The town tradition seems to have started with Dr. Daniel How (1719-1797), a local physician who specialized in mental illnesses.

The earliest hint of this specialty that I’ve found is in the diary of the Rev. Thomas Smith of Portland, Maine. Himself subject to “hypochondriac” fits and disorders, Smith wrote with interest about a clerical colleague, the Rev. John Wiswell or Wiswall (1731-1812):

[24 Dec 1761] Mr. Wiswall taken distracted.
...
[17 July 1762] Mr. Wiswell (at New Casco [parish in Falmouth]) is close confined in the height of distraction.
...
[6 Sept] Mr. Wiswell went to Boston last night.
...
[19 Nov] Mr. Wiswell returned to this place from Dr. How, of Andover.

According to this Mental Health History Timeline and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, How’s treatment for Wiswell was a “dark chamber,” and recovery was swift—perhaps because Wiswell would have recovered anyway.

A couple of years later, Wiswell accepted a nearby Anglican church’s invitation to become their minister. From that point he leaned Loyalist, and on 11 May 1775 he was suddenly arrested by the Topsham militia under Col. Samuel Thompson. [Try saying “Thompson of Topsham” three times fast.] Wiswell was released, moved to England, and finally settled in Nova Scotia.

On 14 June 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress noted Dr. How’s work with the mentally ill by passing this resolve:

Whereas the committee are informed that Dr. How of Andover is prepared to receive insane patients and is well skilled in such disorders, resolved that Daniel Adams, a lunatic now at Woburn, be carried to the town of Andover and committed to the care of Doct. How and the said Dr. How be hereby desired to take proper care of the said lunatic at the expense of this colony.

James Otis, Jr., was another person suffering from mental illness who went to live in Andover. He first showed signs of psychosis in 1769, and had to be confined the next year, but I don’t know where he was treated then. Otis spent most of the early 1780s in Andover, perhaps receiving treatment from Dr. How. Otis lived at the home of Capt. Isaac Osgood until he was struck by lightning, on 23 May 1783. The picture above shows the Osgood house in Andover; note the lightning bolt helpfully inserted on the right.