On February 22, 1767, Benedict Arnold, a young, up and coming businessman, married Margaret Mansfield, whose father was the Sheriff of New Haven, Connecticut.
Arnold, of course, would go on to become one of the most successful of George Washington’s officers in the Continental Army, and shortly thereafter one of the most notorious traitors in American history.
By that time, his first wife had died, and he had remarried Margaret “Peggy” Shippen, an ambitious young socialite some have blamed, at least in part, for the General’s self-inflicted downfall.
As a result of his betrayal, failed as it was, Benedict Arnold has become world famous — or perhaps infamous would be a more accurate description — and next to Washington, one of the most fascinating personalities of the Revolutionary War, the subject of dozens of books and hundreds of articles.
Still, much of his life remains a mystery, and full of contradictions, and some segments of his family maintain that he was not actually an Arnold by blood, at all.
Now, as the result of ongoing research conducted by the Barryville based non-profit history education group, The Delaware Company, a heretofore unknown fact has been uncovered, linking General Benedict Arnold to Sullivan County, NY.
Although it is a story that is still in development, it now appears certain that the future Army General and his father were among the investors when the original Delaware Company purchased the land that would become Cushetunk, the first permanent European settlement in the Upper Delaware region, from a group of local Native American Lenape Sachems.
In three separate transactions, dated in December of 1754 and May and November of 1755, a group of investors from Norwich, Connecticut and its immediate surrounds, purchased land on both sides of the Delaware River, including a sizable portion of what would later become Sullivan County.
And plainly written on those deeds, along with the names long familiar to those who have studied the early history of the Upper Delaware, such as Joseph and Daniel Skinner, Moses Thomas, Isaac Tracy, Ezra Witter, and Nathan Mitchell, are Benedict Arnold and Benedict Arnold, Jr.
Interestingly, the earliest attempts to ascertain whether or not either of the two Benedict Arnolds whose names appear on the deeds was indeed the future traitor, met with skepticism and doubt. There were, after all, quite a number of men named Benedict Arnold in early American history.
In fact, when contacted for information, some historians in Connecticut opined that it was much more likely to be the General’s father and grandfather, since he himself would have been merely a teenager when the deeds were signed.
Nevertheless, the evidence that it was indeed the infamous Benedict Arnold, as well as his father, who was involved in the land purchases continues to mount.
First of all, the General’s grandfather was from Newport, Rhode Island, and never lived in Connecticut, and records indicate he died before 1755.
It was the General’s father – who would properly be known today as Benedict Arnold IV, but who was sometimes referred to as Benedict Arnold, Sr. – who moved to Norwich, Connecticut in 1730, and expanded his cooperage business into a prosperous import-export business with an income that enabled him to travel in the upper crust of Connecticut society and invest in various ventures. In addition, he married well, as his wife Hannah was from a prominent Norwich family.
The General, who was actually the second son in the family to bear the name Benedict – an older sibling by the same name died in infancy — was sent to private school to study the classics under the Reverend Dr. James Cogswell, with the ultimate vision of attending Yale.
That plan was derailed when two of the Arnold children died in a yellow fever outbreak, causing their father to seek solace in the bottle and eventually squander the family fortune.
The dwindling family finances resulted in the General being recalled from private school and being apprenticed instead to his mother’s cousins, the Lathrops, who operated a thriving apothecary business.
Another piece of evidence supporting the theory that the Benedict Arnolds on the Delaware Company deeds were the General and his father is the fact that among the other investors in the Delaware Company were the Lathrops, as well as Tracys and Griswolds, also relatives of the General’s mother.
It all seems to fit.
Of course, while about 30 of the families represented on those three deeds eventually made the journey to the Delaware River and took up the arduous life of a frontier settler in Cushetunk (in what is now Cochecton, NY), there is no record that the Arnolds were among them.
That would make sense, since by the time the settlement commenced, the senior Arnold had descended deeply into alcoholism and Hannah was attempting to raise her two surviving children on her own. As it was, just a small percentage of those listed on the deed ever became residents of the settlement.
Members of the present day Delaware Company are continuing the research into the General Benedict Arnold connection, with the intention of creating a permanent exhibit at Fort Delaware Museum of Colonial History in Narrowsburg, which tells the Cushetunk story.
It is hoped the exhibit will be in place for opening day in 2026, so stay tuned for further updates in the interim.
Illustration: Detail of Benedict Arnold portrait by Thomas Hart, 1776.
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