Samuel Benjamin papers

This collection contains approximately 100 items in one box and one item relating to Lieutenant Samuel Benjamin of Waltham, Massachusettes, and Livermore, Maine, covering the years 1775-1845, but primarily the period 1775-1782. Samuel Benjamin, 1753-1824, fought at the battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775. Enlisting in Captain Daniel Whiting's Company, he served as a sergeant at Bunker Hill and after the British evacuated Boston was in the garrison of Fort Ticonderoga in New York. On January 1, 1777, Congress commissioned him an Ensign in Captain Ebenezer Cleavelands' Company of Colonel Michael Jackson's Regiment of the Massachusetts Continental Line. On October 7, 1777, he was commissioned a Lieutenant of the same Company and for a while in 1778 served as adjutant for Colonel Scammel's Massachusetts regiment. He was at Valley Forge, Saratoga, Monmouth, West Point, Stony Point, Paulus' Hook, and Yorktown. He married Tabitha Livermore of Waltham and had ten children. After his separation from the Continental Army on August 6, 1782, Benjamin bought land in Cumberland County, Massachesetts, now Maine. Mrs. Benjamin died in 1837, and these papers from the Revolutionary War became the property of Mrs. Benjamin Lindsay of Milwaukee, whose son donated the collection to Yale.

Of interest in this collection are four small paper booklets. One is a diary of Lt. Benjamin from January 20, 1781, to December 17, 1781. The early pages describe maneuvers around West Point, New York. Then comes a description of the march and voyage to Yorktown, and Benjamin's trip home to Waltham for a well-earned furlough. The few remaining pages of this book contain lists of Bible passage by chapter and verse, and financial accounts.

The second booklet contains a variety of notes and accounts, 1776-1780. There is also a prayer, a reply to a challenge to duel, the roll of Captain Whiting's Company in 1776, brief accounts, and a sketch of a camp. The book also contains four rhymed poems, one a pastoral, and three addressed to "Kate, the captains's lady".

A third booklet is an order book, October 4, 1781, to November 1, 1781, at Yorktown. Some of the pages are devoted to financial accounts, 1782-1788, and a few pages define the game of "Rickett," a close copy of cricket.

The fourth booklet is a printed version of Benjamin's brief diary, 1778-1780, with the longer account of the Yorktown campaign. A brief introduction supplied the biographical data on Benjamin.

The rest of the collection is in manuscript sheets arranged chronologically in ten folders with a map of a township, undated (in CF5).