What Did Wentworth Cheswell Do

New Hampshire (Hamburg: Carl Ernst Bohn, 1796)

Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection (2746002)

Wentworth Cheswell was a teacher, auditor, assessor, selectman, and Justice of the Peace in New Hampshire. When he was elected town Constable of Newmarket, New Hampshire in 1768, he became the 2nd person of African ancestry, after Mathias de Sousa of the Maryland colony, to be elected to public office in what would become the United States.

Cheswell, born on April 11, 1745 in Newmarket, New Hampshire, was listed in the demography every bit white but was considered mulatto because his begetter Hopestill Cheswell was a bi-racial, free-born black man, and his mother Catherine (Keniston) was Caucasian. The Cheswell family unit name and all descendants are linked to Richard Cheswell, a old enslaved person.

Wentworth Cheswell was sent to Byfield, Massachusett, to nourish Dummer Academy where he was educated in reading, writing, arithmetic, Greek, Latin, horsemanship, and swimming. Cheswell returned abode afterwards completing his education and became a Schoolmaster. He purchased his offset piece of land from his father in 1765 and on September 13, 1767, Cheswell married Mary Davis. The couple had thirteen children.

In 1768, Cheswell was elected equally the Boondocks Constable of Newmarket, and was elected every year (excluding 1788) until his death as a public official. He served as Accountant, Assessor, and Town Selectman amidst other positions.

During the American Revolution he was elected Town Messenger for the Committee of Safety, a post that give him safe passage through battle lines to acquit news to and from the Provincial Commission at Exeter. On December thirteen, 1774, Cheswell rode with Paul Revere to warn Portsmouth citizens of the approach of two British Warships. Along with other local men, Cheswell signed a certificate in April 1776, in which he pledged to take up arms and resist the British. He afterwards helped build rafts which defended Portsmouth Harbor. Cheswell enlisted in the Continental Army on September 29, 1777, in a company of Light Horse volunteers, allowable by Colonel John Langdon but his service ended one month afterward on Oct 31, 1777.

Cheswell returned to Newmarket after the Revolution concluded and became a teacher at the local schoolhouse. He also managed a store next to the school edifice. He is credited as existence the area'south first archaeologist because of his fieldwork, findings, and reports near the surface area which are highlighted in the three-volume History of New Hampshire past Jeremy Belknap. He also co-founded the town's showtime library, the Newmarket Social Library in 1801. Four years later, in 1805, Cheswell was elected Justice of the Peace, a position he held until his decease.

On March viii, 1817, Wentworth Cheswell died at his home in Newmarket from typhus fever at the age of 70. He left specific instructions in his volition for his family to create a memorial grave site on his property that continues to be maintained past the family unit descendants. The Cheswell family unit was highlighted in a PBS Frontline special, Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families, and Hugger-mugger Daughter, based on a 1996 memoir by June Cross.

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Cite this article in APA format:

Nielsen, E. (2019, June 09). Wentworth Cheswell (1746-1817). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/wentworth-cheswell-1745-1817/

Source of the author's information:

Mark J. Sammons and Valerie Cunningham, Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African-American Heritage, (Durham, New Hampshire: University of New Hampshire Printing, 2001), John C. Abercrombie, "Cheswell, Wentworth- Black Patriot Who Warned of the British Invasion", Amazingblackhistory.com, July 27, 2017, https://amazingblackhistory.com/2017/07/27/wentworth-creswell-black-patriot-who-warned-of-the-british-invasion/; Glenn A. Knoblock, African American Burying Grounds and Gravesites of New England, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2016); Erik R. Tuveson, A People Of Color: A Study of Race and Racial Identification in New Hampshire, 1750-1825, (Unpublished Master'southward Thesis, Academy of New Hampshire, May 1995).