Benjamin Kent

Benjamin Kent (1708-1788) was minister and later a lawyer in Boston. He began as a lawyer sometime before 1739, at which time there was 7 lawyers in Boston. He handled the case of a slave Pompey suing his master Benjamin Faneuil for his freedom. Later he won a case for Governor Shirley against the lawyer Benjamin Prat. He was occasionally a guest at the Old Colony Club, amusing among others a young John Adams. On the eve of the Revolution he was a member of more town committees than any other Bostonian.

His son in law was loyalist Sampson Salter Blowers. Kent eventually was forced to put Blowers in jail for being a Loyalist.[1] Kent’s wife and children eventually moved with Blowers to Halifax. Kent moved into the abandoned Blowers mansion.

Massachusetts first patriot Governor Thomas Cushing sent Kent to Halifax to retrieve the probate records for Suffolk County, Massachusetts after the war (1784). The records had been taken by loyalists Foster Hutchinson (judge) when he left Boston on the eve of the Revolution (1776).[2]

Kent eventually followed his family to Halifax (1785). Kent is buried (along with Blowers) in the Old Burying Ground (Halifax, Nova Scotia).

References

  1. ↑ New England Life in the Eighteenth Century: Representative Biographies from ... By Clifford Kenyon Shipton p. 262
  2. ↑ Legal Papers of John Adams, Volume 1 By John Adams, p. cii
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