Benjamin THOMPSON

1753 - 1814  (61 years)

• Name	Benjamin THOMPSON  [1]
  Birth	26 Mar 1753	Woburn, Mass.   [1]
  Gender	Male
  Death	21 Aug 1814	Auteuil, France   [1]
  Notes	Excerpt from "Descendants of Thomas Hale": Benjamin Rolfe d. at Rumford 21 Dec., 1771, being at the time of his death accounted the richest man in the town, and held in high respect for his abilities and many virtues. The inventory of his estate footed oe4,082, a large sum for those days. Among his assets was included "one negro" valued at oe55, the latest case of existing African slavery I have found in New England. He left no will and his property went wholly to his widow and son Paul. In 1772 or 1773, his widow, then some 33 years of age, rich and beautiful, married Benjamin Thompson, a youthful school-master in Rumford, who was born in Wobur, Mass., 26 March 1753, thus being hardly 20 years of age, and nearly fourteen years the junior of his bride. He adhered to the mother country on the outbreak of the Revolution, his wife preserving her attachment to the cause of Colonies, went to England with dispatches from Lord George Germain, and in 1780 was an under Secretary of State. On the retirement of Lord George from office he returned to America, raised and commanded a regiment of loyalists or tories in New York, and was actively engaged in hostilities against the Americans in New England and South Carolina till the end of the war. Then returning to England he was knighted, and in 1784 entered the service of the King of Bavaria. Of his subsequent distinguished, brilliant and useful career, political, military and scientific, it would be going too far outside the scope of our work to trace even the outline. But it is to be remembered especially to the credit of his heart, that when he was raised to the dignity of County of the Holy Roman Empire, he selected as his title the name of the little country village where as a boy-schoolmaster he had found his wife and the founder of his fortunes, and so carried to posterity the name of Rumford with great distinction. His wife, then Lady Thompson, died in Corcord, 10 Jan., 1792, never having joined her husband abaroad. She bore him an only daughter, Sarah, born in the Rolfe house in Corcord, 18, Oct., 1774. She spent many years after the death of her mother with her father in Europe, remaining with him till his death at Auteuil, France, 21, Aug., 1814. She then returned to Concord, where she spent a quiet and useful life as Countess of Rumford, till her death ther in 1852, at the age of 78. Most of her large fortune she devoted, either during her life or by her will, to charitable uses, among other institutions having founded and endowed that noble charity at Concord, the "Rolfe and Rumford Asylum." Count Rumford married as a second wife, in 1804, the widow of the French savant Lavoisier who had died on the scaffold in 1794. She survived him, and died in Paris in 1836 at the age of 81.
  Person ID	I56762	Main Tree

  
  

  Family	Sarah WALKER,   b. 06 Aug 1739, Rumford, Massachusetts d. 10 Jan 1792, Concord, Middlesex Co., Massachusetts (Age 52 years)
  Family ID	F07829	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Event Map

  Death - 21 Aug 1814 - Auteuil, France  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Sources

  [S00053] Robert Safford Hale, LL.D., Genealogy of Descendants of Thomas HALE of Watton, England, and of Newbury, Massachusetts.