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Tag: Dr. Benjamin Church

  • Church Gets Out–January 18, 1776

    Cover art for January 18, 1776: a posthumous portrait of Benjamin Church based on "contemporary information." No life portrait of Church is known to exist.

    Given that Benjamin Church was discovered to be a traitor long before Benedict Arnold was, it’s a little peculiar that Arnold’s name has carried down through history much more than Church’s was.

    Maybe it’s because Church was a little less prominent in the Revolution before he was caught. Maybe “Benedict Arnold” has a better ring to it as something to hurl at someone who’s broken your trust.

    It’s also possible that, at that time, nobody really knew the extent of the damage Benjamin Church had done, while Arnold’s treachery was immediately apparent.

    (For what it’s worth, it’s been postulated that Benedict Arnold’s traitorous activities were pushed on him by his wife, but nobody gets called a “Peggy Shippen,” so in the end, who knows?)

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  • October 4, 1775: A Spy In The Ointment

    Cover art for October 4, 1775: Portrait of Benjamin Church, created posthumously based on people's descriptions of him. A life portrait was never made of him.

    It’s actually kind of curious that Benedict Arnold gets all the “traitor” press when there were other spies and turncoats doing their thing during the Revolution. Of course there were! There were Loyalists among the Patriots! It was practically a civil war.

    Dr. Benjamin Church, essentially our first Surgeon General (but that wasn’t a thing yet, so), was a Loyalist in Patriot clothing. Arnold was swayed by his young, pretty, Loyalist wife Peggy Shippen. But we’ll get to that eventually. (There was probably more to it than that, but Peggy was at the heart of it.)

    Incidentally, we ran out of time to tell you this part, but it’s only presumed that Church died on the way to Martinique because the entire boat simply vanished; it was never heard from again. I guess you could argue that it was claimed by the Bermuda Triangle.

    Do people still talk about the Bermuda Triangle? That was a big honkin’ deal fifty years ago.

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  • July 27, 1775: The Army Hospital is Born

    Cover art for July 27, 1775: Posthumous portrait of Dr. Benjamin Church, based on "contemporary description."

    The Continental Congress thought they had a strong candidate in Dr. Benjamin Church as their Surgeon General. And while Church was a generally good doctor as such, and a loyal member of the Sons of Liberty, he wasn’t especially good at leading others to do the same. This eventually turned into a big problem that came to a head in October, when George Washington needed to step in.

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