Benjamin Garfield

Biography

Life summary. Benjamin Garfield combined family estate responsibilities with public service at Watertown. An executor, constable, tithingman and later representative, he helped administer property, taxes and local duties while raising a family through bereavement and remarriage. He died in 1717.

Benjamin Garfield served Watertown through the practical work of settling estates, collecting taxes and administering local laws. His father’s will entrusted him with obligations to several households; later town appointments made him responsible for public business as well. ^{603-1603-2603-3}

Benjamin was a son of Edward Garfield and Rebecca. His birth around 1643 is inferred from the age given at his death. Watertown, west of Boston in present-day Massachusetts, was an agricultural community whose households depended on fields, meadow, livestock and rights of access. His father’s holdings and testamentary provisions belonged to that economy, and Benjamin was given responsibility for their settlement as executor of Edward’s 1668 will. ^{603-1603-2603-4}

That appointment required more than distributing land. Edward had provided for Joan, his later wife, through crop payments, a cow, a furnished room and temporary household maintenance. Children’s portions differed according to previous gifts and conditions such as marriage. Benjamin’s task was to carry out a settlement whose obligations continued beyond the immediate death and funeral. ^603-2

In June 1674 he also took part in an inquiry into the deaths of John Lawrence and James Smith, two boys run over by a load of bricks. The court-file abstract names Benjamin as a witness and among the signers of the inquest. ^603-1

His own household suffered a loss the following year. Mehitable Hawkins, his first wife and the mother of sons Benjamin and Benoni, died on December 9, 1675, five days after Benoni’s birth. The interval makes a childbirth connection plausible but does not establish a medical cause. Benjamin later married Elizabeth Bridge and had further children. His household responsibilities therefore developed alongside the estate and civic duties recorded in these years. ^603-1603-3

On July 18, 1677, Benjamin and John Bright, serving as constables, were entrusted with six single war rates—tax assessments totaling £236 7s 9d. The entry places wartime revenue collection among Benjamin’s duties. ^603-3

On January 5, 1679/80, Benjamin was among fifteen men sworn as tithingmen. A 1677 enactment gave these officers, together with selectmen and constables, responsibility for gathering household information about people who had not taken the required oath and returning names to the appropriate authority. At the meeting where he was sworn, Watertown voted to obtain two hundred copies of the laws concerning tithingmen for inhabitants’ use. The appointment connected a particular officer to duties that reached into the town’s households. ^603-3603-5

The same meeting continued the schoolmaster and granted a twenty-year exemption from town rates to the new Stony Brook corn mill. Later January entries concerned sheep regulation and supervision of young people during worship. Schooling, productive infrastructure, livestock and conduct all came within local administration. These were among the local priorities surrounding Benjamin’s service. ^603-3

Benjamin later represented the town in 1689 and 1692. In his own will of May 1717 he described himself as a yeoman, provided for Elizabeth and his children, and named Samuel executor. He died on November 28, 1717; the town entry called him Captain Benjamin Garfield and gave his age as seventy-four. By naming Samuel executor, he entrusted another generation with the settlement he had planned for his own household. ^603-1