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{{short description|American lawyer active during the American Revolution}}

factoids

Benjamin Kent (1708–1788) was a Massachusetts Attorney General (1776–1777) and then acting Attorney General during much of Robert Treat Paine's tenure (1777–1785).Acts and resolves passed by the General Court by Massachusetts, p. 161BOOK,weblink Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1895, 290, en, He was appointed seven successive terms.WEB,weblink June Meeting, 1895. Alleged Facts as to the Pilgrims; Benjamin Tompson; Attorneys-General of Massachusetts; Solicitors-General of Massachusetts, January 1895, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Prior to the American Revolution, Kent was notable for his representation of slaves suing their masters for their freedom,BOOK, Blanck, Emily, Tyrannicide: Forging an American Law of Slavery in Revolutionary South Carolina and Massachusetts, 2014, University of Georgia Press, 9780820338644, 35,weblink 13 May 2019, which contributed to the demise of slavery in Massachusetts. He was a member of the North End Caucus and prominent member of the Sons of Liberty, which formed to protest the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765.WEB, The North End Caucus Mobilizes Against the Tea,weblink Boston 1775, 14 May 2019, The efforts of the Sons of Liberty created the foundation for the Boston Tea Party. Kent called for independence early in the American Revolution.

Career

Kent graduated Harvard College in the class of 1727. In 1731, he served as chaplain at Fort George, Maine, and preached to the settlers at Brunswick. He was ordained as minister of the Marlborough Congregational church in 1733,BOOK, Briggs, Lloyd Vernon, Genealogies of the different families bearing the name of Kent in the United States : together with their possible English ancestry, A.D. 1295-1898, 1898, Rockwell & Churchill Press, Boston, 38–48,weblink 15 May 2019, where charges of heresy were soon leveled against him "due to his public questioning of the doctrines of the Trinity, of Absolute Election, and of Infant Damnation."BOOK, Parkman, Ebenezer, Walett, Francis C., The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, American Antiquarian Society, 381,weblink 15 May 2019, Following his dismissal, Kent successfully sued the Town of Marlborough for the balance of his fees and salary due.Kent then studied for the bar and began practicing in Boston in 1739, when there were only seven lawyers in the city, among whom he was at first "the Chimney sweeper of the Bar, into whose black dock entered every dirty action." He lived on the north side of King's Street (present-day State Street, Boston) by the north end of the First Town-House, Boston.p. 47He handled divorces, and represented numerous slaves in their attempts to gain their freedom, including the case of a slave Pompey suing his master Benjamin Faneuil.BOOK, Hardesty, Jared Ross,weblink Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston, 2018, NYU Press, 143, 9781479801848, 17 May 2019, Kent was the first lawyer in the United States to win a case to free a slave Jenny Slew, in 1766.WEB, Jenny Slew: The first enslaved person to win her freedom via jury trial,weblink Kentake Page, 29 January 2016, 17 May 2019, He also won a trial in the Old County Courthouse for a slave named {{proper name|Ceasar}} Watson (1771).WEB, Mand, Frank, Ceasar Watson's tale highlight of 1749 Courthouse Thanksgiving ceremony,weblink Wicked Local Plymouth, 17 May 2019, Kent also handled Lucy Pernam's divorce and the freedom suits of Rose and Salem Orne.BOOK, Adams, Catherine, Pleck, Elizabeth, Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England, 2010, Oxford University Press, 238, 9780199741786,weblink 17 May 2019, On 1 April 1776, Kent became Attorney General of Massachusetts.p. 44Kent was occasionally a guest at the Old Colony Club, whose members included John Adams. Kent has been described as one of Adams's "role-models in the elite of the Boston bar."WEB, Coquillette, Daniel, Justinian in Braintree: John Adams, Civilian Learning, and Legal Elitism, 1758–1775,weblink Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 17 May 2019,

American Revolution

Kent was a senior member of the Sons of Liberty in Boston and maintained correspondence with John Wilkes.WEB,weblink Principles and acts of the revolution in America, 1822, Baltimore, Printed and pub. for the editor, by W. O. Niles, On the eve of the American Revolution he was reported to be a member of more town committees than any other Bostonian. After the Siege of Boston, Kent urged Adams to create the Declaration of Independence: In response, Adams assured Kent that the "'Declarations in Words' of What is every day manifested in Deeds of the most determined Nature" was forthcoming.WEB, Founders Online: To John Adams from Benjamin Kent, 24 April 1776,weblink founders.archives.gov, 17 May 2019, en, On August 4, 1776, Kent wrote Samuel Adams, "It is GOD's doing the bringing about his truly astonishing and unparalled'd union the declaration of Independence."BOOK, Hazelton, John, History of the Declaration, 1906, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York,weblink 17 May 2019, 225, The loyalist Sampson Salter Blowers married Kent's daughter Elizabeth. When the Revolutionary War began, as Attorney General, Kent was forced to briefly to hold his son-in-law Blowers in jail for being a loyalist. In 1782, Kent's daughter Elizabeth fell ill in New York and he petitioned to have her return to Boston. The petition was refused and she departed for Nova Scotia.WEB,weblink Genealogies of the Different Families Bearing the Name of Kent in the United States Together, 1898, Rockwell & Churchill press, Governor Thomas Cushing sent Kent to Halifax to retrieve the probate records for Suffolk County, Massachusetts after the Revolution in 1784. The records had been taken by the son of Edward Winslow (scholar) and given to the loyalist judge Foster Hutchinson, who had left Boston on the eve of the Revolution (1776).BOOK, Adams, John, Legal Papers of John Adams, Volume 1, 1965, Harvard University Press, cii, 17 May 2019,weblink Nova Scotia Governor John Parr facilitated the negotiations with Foster, which led to Cushing returning to Massachusetts with the legal documents.

Personal life

Kent was the son of Joseph Kent of Charlestown, and was baptised in June 1708 at First Parish in Cambridge.BOOK, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1902, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 116–117,weblink 15 May 2019, In 1740 he married Elizabeth Watts in Chelsea, Massachusetts, with whom he had three daughters, Elizabeth, Ann, and Sally.BOOK, Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 1933, Harvard University Press, Boston, 220–228, 2027/uc1.31970025342293, His daughter Sally married Sampson Salter Blowers, who was a loyalist.When Blowers departed for Halifax after the Revolution, he was joined by Kent's wife and daughters. Kent, at age 78, rejoined them in 1785. He died there three years later and is buried in the Old Burying Ground.

Legacy

John Adams included Kent in the "long catalogue of illustrious men, who were agents in the Revolution."BOOK,weblink Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt, Attorney-General of the United States, Kennedy, John Pendleton, 1872, Putnam, 44, 15 May 2019, Benjamin Franklin wrote, upon hearing of Kent's death: "Our poor friend Ben Kent is gone; I hope to the Regions of the Blessed, or at least to some Place where Souls are prepared for those Regions. . . . I found my Hope on this, that tho' not so orthodox as you and I, he was an honest Man, and had his Virtues. If he had any Hypocrisy it was of that inverted kind, with which a Man is not so bad as he seems to be."WEB,weblink The private correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, LL.D, F.R.S., &c. Minister Plenipontentiary from the United States of America at the court of France, and for the Treaty of Peace and Independence with Great Britain, &c. &c, Benjamin Franklin, Google Books, 1817, 251, 15 May 2019,

See also

• History of slavery in Massachusetts
• Abolitionism in the United States
• Nova Scotia in the American Revolution

References

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