Colonel Benjamin Symonds
- westmohney
- Nov 7, 2023
- 11 min read
Updated: Jun 20, 2024
A firm supporter of his country's independence ~ written on Benjamin's tombstone
Cousin Benjamin Symonds
Benjamin Symonds (2C8X) was a great-grandson of our immigrant ancester William Symonds (9GGF) of Woburn. Born in Connecticut in 1726, Benjamin joined the army at a young age and served two countries in his long and illustrious military career but his main claim to fame was his role as a colonel in the Revolutionary War. His regiment saw action at White Plains, Fort Ticonderoga, Bennington and Saratoga. In order to tell Benjamin's full story, we have to go back in time over twenty-five years.
the siege of Fort Massachusetts
When he was only nineteen, Benjamin enlisted for service in in King George's War which was waged against the French from 1744 to 1748. His early duty was as a sentinal (lookout guard) for a line of British defensive forts in northwestern Massachusetts.
In August of 1746, Benjamin had the extreme misfortune to be stationed at the disease-ridden Fort Massachusetts. The Reverend John Norton, also at the fort, wrote an account of his experience called The Redeemed Captive. From this account, we learn of the sad conditions at the fort just before an attack by the French:
The doctor with fourteen men went off for Deerfield, and left in the fort Sergeant John Hawks with twenty soldiers about half of them sick with bloody flux. Mr. Hawks sent a letter by the doctor to the captain. . .desiring that he would speedily send up some stores to the fort, being very short on it for ammunition, and having discovered some signs of the enemy; but the letter did not get to the captain seasonably. This day also, two of our men being out a few miles distant from the fort discovered the tracks of some of the enemy.
Three days after the doctor's departure, the French with their Native allies, attacked Fort Massachusetts. This attack was really no contest. The French and Native force was 800 strong to only eight of twenty-two soldiers in the fort who were well enough to fight. Still, the men put up a valiant but futile thirty hour defensive battle. The French commander finally called for surrender. Low on ammunition, the soldiers considered their options. In Norton's words:
Had we all been in health, or had there been only those eight of us that were in health, I believe every man would willingly have stood it out to the last. For my part I should; but we heard that if we were taken by violence, the sick, the wounded, and the women would most, if not all of them, die by the hands of the savages; therefore our officer concluded to surrender on the best terms he could get. . .
The terms turned out to be far better than those of most besieged towns where captives were taken. The French agreed that they themselves would take charge of the captives. Since some of the men in the fort had their families with them, the French also agreed that the children would remain with their parents and that all would be exchanged at the first opportunity.
The French commander, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, also promised, “that those who were weak and unable to travel should be carried in their journey.” This promise turned out to be a boon for Cousin Benjamin who was one of the soldiers incapacitated with dysentery.
the march to Canada
Norton reported that the captives were, in fact, mainly under the charge of the Natives. Fortunately, both the French and the Natives treated their prisoners with care. On the 21st of August the party set out with the Natives carrying the weakest, Cousin Benjamin included. After the first night's halt, a daughter was born to one of the soldier's wives. Reverend Norton baptized the child, who was named Captivity. The same night that the child was born, soldier Josiah Reed died of his illness. Norton wrote that "Next to Josiah Read, who died a few miles down the river a few hours later, the sickest of the captives was a lad named Benjamin Simonds, then twenty years old, who lived to own the broad meadow, and to build upon it the stately house still standing."
The initial part of the journey was a northwestern trek to the Hudson River in New York. Cousin Benjamin was still quite ill and carried as he could not travel on his own. Luckily for the captives, once they reached to Hudson, the rest of the journey was made in canoes. On the 23rd of August, the party reached Fort Ticonderoga. Here they stayed and rested for almost two weeks. Norton remarked that their "diet was very good, it being chiefly fresh meat and broth, which was a great benefit to me. We had also plenty of Bourdeaux wine..."
On the 4th of September, they set out again in canoes and by the 7th they had reached Fort Chambly near Montreal. The next morning, in a coincidence for our family, Norton wrote that "This morning there came an Englishman to see me; his name Littlefield. He was taken a lad from Piscataqua, and so continued with the French and lived, having a family at Champlain. We had a considerable discourse together." This Littlefield that Norton wrote of was our cousin Aaron Littlefield (4C8X) who was taken by the French when he was nine years old. We told Aaron's story in our "In Maine" post. He lived with his French wife and family in St. Mathias, only ten miles from Fort Chambly.
The final leg of the captives' journey was to Quebec City where our cousin Benjamin was hospitalized, still extremly ill with dystentery.
Canada and return to New England
Most of Norton's entries for the next year list hundreds of captives brought in to the Quebec City prison. Also listed were the deaths of scores of English captives who seemed to be dying in droves in New France. Illness swept quickly through the prison where they were kept. Sadly, Mrs. Smeed who had given birth to the daughter she named Captivity, died on March 29, 1747. One of Mrs. Smeed's young sons died nine days later and another on May 13. Then poor little Captivity died on May 17.
The deaths had taken certainly their toll. Only nine of the thirty people captured at Fort Massachusetts returned to New England. Seven, including Reverend Norton, set sail for Boston on July 25th and and arrived on August 16, almost a year to the day of the attack at the Fort. Cousin Benjamin, although too sick to be moved from the hospital in Quebec with the others, was one of the lucky ones. He was finally well enough to leave Canada in October. According to a petition submitted by him on 9 Dec 1749, Benjamin was “unable to Get Home till 14 days after, and was weak & low and unable for a whole month to provide for himself.” He was awarded £20, 9s. for his service.
Back at home, Benjamin eventually recovered from the illness that had plagued him for over a year and would go on to fight in two more wars.
settling in West Hoosac
Although his father had left him a seventy acre farm in Ware, MA, Benjamin chose to return to northwestern Massachusetts where he had served in the militia. He had two reasons for the move. After King George's War ended in 1748, Fort Massachusetts had been rebuilt and was in need of men to man it. At the same time, the town of West Hoosac was in the process of being developed with acreage ripe for the taking. Every land owner there was required to build a dwelling eighteen by fifteen feet as well as to "clear, plow, and sow five acres of his house-lot with English grass or corn" within two years of his purchase.
Cousin Benjamin's name is seventh on a list of thirteen soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Massachusetts who purchased property in Hoosac. According to town records, he was one of the first to clear his lot at the west end of the village.
In 1752, Benjamin married Mary Davis. Their daughter Rachel (3C7X), born in April of 1753, was the first child born in the new settlement.
Benjamin in the final French and Indian War
When the final French and Indian War began in 1754, Benjamin, now 28, was again stationed at Fort Massachusetts. On September 8, 1755, in a battle know as the Bloody Morning Scout, Benjamin's commanding officer, Colonel Ephraim Williams, was killed.
Note: In his will, Col. Williams included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in Benjamin's new home town of West Hoosac, provided the town change its name to Williamstown. The town was happy to oblige. Williamstown, the most northwesterly town in Massachusetts, stretches to the border of Vermont to the north and the border of New York to the west.
After the death of Col. Williams, Benjamin's new commanding officer was another cousin of ours, Captain Isaac Wyman (3C7X).
Note: We wrote of Cousin Isaac, who owned a tavern in Keene N.H, in two previous posts, "Family Stories" and "Our Relatives at Bunker Hill."
Benjamin served at Fort Massachusetts until 1759 when the Battle of Quebec effectively ended the war. That same year, Fort Massachusetts was decommissioned. Benjamin then returned home to begin his life again as a civilian.
in Williamstown
In 1764, Benjamin purchased another piece of property where he built and operated the first tavern in Williamstown. By 1765, he had added six more lots to his growing estate and, on one of these lots, he built another home and inn that he named the River Bend Tavern.
Today, the house that Benjamin built is a bed and breakfast appropriately named River Bend Farm owned by the Loomis family.
Note: The Loomis family may well be related us through our grandfather Edward Loomis (9GGF) who settled in Ipswich, MA in 1635.
Below is a photo of Benjamin's house as it looks today:
In 1983, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A description on that site reads:
In 1746 French soldiers and Indians overwhelmed the colonists at Fort Massachusetts. Among the group of captives was a young Benjamin Simonds. . .On their march to Canada the prisoners were stopped at the ancient Indian camp just where the Hossac River makes a long bend northward. . .Simonds returned to that same stopping place several years later and built the. . .plank house known as the River Bend Farm.
the Revolutionary War
When the Revolutionary war began in 1775, Benjamin was 49 years old. He had already fought in two wars for the British but now felt compelled to throw his hat into the ring once again, this time with his fellow Patriots. By this time a full colonel in the army, Benjamin headed a regiment known as the 2nd Berkshire. He had in his regiment about five hundred men known as the "Berkshire Boys."
In the summer of 1776, Benjamin had frequent correspondence with Generals Horatio Gates and Philip Schuyler concerning the defense of upper New York State. By October, however, Washington had been driven from Manhattan and Benjamin's Berkshire Boys were ordered to join the Continental Army at White Plains, NY to take part in a battle that turned into yet another defeat for the Americans.
After the loss at White Plains, Washington's army moved south to Trenton, NJ. Cousin Benjamin's regiment was then ordered north to Fort Ticonderoga where they remained from 16 Dec 1776 thru 22 Mar 1777. Benjamin may have briefly crossed paths with Cousin Jeduthan Baldwin (3C7X) who returned to Ticonderoga on March 13 after a three month working furlough.
Winters always proved difficult, particularly for the American soldiers. Clothing and blankets were generally inadequate for the unheated tents quartering the regular soldiers. Benjamin himself probably kept fairly toasty warm with fires that could be lit inside the fort.
By the summer of of 1777, Burgoyne's army was on the move again. On August 13, Benjamin met for a council of war with General John Stark and Colonel Seth Warner. The meeting took place at our cousin Stephen Fay's (4C10X) famous Catamount Tavern in Bennington, VT. We wrote about Stephen and his tavern in our "Final Days Before Revolution" post.
Note: In January of 1777, Vermont had declared its independence from the province of New Hampshire and was now known as the Vermont Republic.
Three days after the meeting in the tavern, five regiments, including those of Stark, Warner and Cousin Benjamin, took on the British at the Battle of Bennington. As we saw in our last post, that battle turned into a stunning victory for the Americans which served to weaken British General John Burgoyne's fighting force.
Below is a marker that was erected in Bennington Vermont recognizing the five commanders, including Colonel Benjamin Symonds, who helped to make the victory there possible:
Cousin Benjamin was also included on a Bas-relief of the Battle of Bennington, shown below, created by William Gordon Huff. The monument stands on the grounds of the Bennington Battleground Historic Site in New York. Benjamin is shown 2nd from the right. The artist chose as a model for Benjamin's face and figure his great-great-grandson, Perry Smedley (6C4X).
Two months after Bennington, Benjamin and his Berkshire Boys fought in the Battle of Bemis Heights which led to the equally stunning surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga.
Note: We'll have more on that battle in a future post.
The map below shows Benjamin's movements from October 1776 to October 1777. The distance between Bemis Heights and Saratoga where Burgoyne surrendered is less than five miles.
Back in Williamstown
When the war ended, Benjamin returned to his tavern life in Williamstown. All of his seven children were grown except for Polly, 12, born six years after her closest sibling. In 1790, Benjamin began work on founding a school that his old commanding officer, Colonel Ephraim Williams had included funds for in his will.
The school opened on October 20, 1791, and was named the “Free School.” It had originally been designed "for the direct benefit of the children of the soldiers, who had served under [Colonel Williams] in one or other of the forts of the old French line." Since those children were then all grown, the school was soon converted into a tuition-based college. Williams College in Williamstown has the distinction of being the second institute of higher learning to be founded in Massachusetts after Harvard College.
In 1798, when he was 72, Benjamin's wife Mary died. He quickly remarried five months later and moved with his new wife to a house "a stone's throw away" from the home he had shared with Mary. Benjamin's youngest daughter Polly (3C7X) and her husband took over the running of the tavern.
Benjamin's wife Anna died on April 3, 1807 and he followed only a week later on April 11 at age 81. Benjamin's gravestone states that he was "a firm supporter of his county's independence." At the bottom are these words, "What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? Shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?"
memories of the Colonel
The section of route 7 in Williamstown which runs past the house that Benjamin built was named "Simonds Road" in his memory. The marker below shows the location of the house near the river:
Benjamin's great-great grandson, Arthur Latham Perry (6C4X) was a professor at Williams College. From his book Origins in Williamstown we find this passage:
Mrs. Hamilton [Benjamin Simonds's step-daughter] communicated other pleasant recollections of Colonel Simonds in her girlhood: such as, for example, he always wore his military costume more or less complete till the last, as it appears in his portrait, — the cocked hat and powdered wig, the white neck-kerchief and frilled shirt-bosom, the regimental coat and buttons, and also the short-clothes and knee-buckles; he always went to church in full costume; and he occasionally offered family prayers, standing by the back of his chair. The late Dr. Morgan, of Bennington, told the writer that when he was a small boy riding past with his father, he had repeatedly seen the Colonel sitting in summer in his front doorway in his military toggery, being saluted by, and saluting in turn, the passersby.
Finally, there is this passage from a book about the Colonel written by another grandson, Arthur Latham Perry's son, Bliss (5C5X):
. . .what really passed through the Colonel's mind as he sat there, reviewing his career. Was it the tomahawks of his Indian captors? The French grandees at Quebec? That first cabin with Mary Davis beyond Hemlock Brook? Washington's impassive face as he retreated at White Plains? The stolid Hessians in the Tory redoubt? Building a church of which he was not a member, or a West College which a grandson might some day enter? Rum at two shillings a gallon? The answer is that no one knows or can possibly know.
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