Wentworth Cheswell
Wentworth Cheswell[a] (11 April 1746 – 8 March 1817) was an American assessor, auditor, Justice of the Peace, teacher and Revolutionary War veteran in Newmarket, New Hampshire.
Among other projects, Cheswell helped to build the Bell In Hand Tavern on Union Street in Boston and the John Paul Jones House, originally owned by Captain Gregory Purcell and now a designated National Historic Landmark.
[5] Cheswell also built the Samuel Langdon House, which was moved to Sturbridge Village; it is a central exhibit demonstrating 18th-century construction technology.
Later, he had part ownership of a sawmill and stream in Durham, New Hampshire, as well as "mill privilege" at another falls, to handle his need for lumber.
[5] There the youth studied with the Harvard graduate William Moody,[4] who taught the classical subjects of Latin and Greek, reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as swimming and horsemanship.
As Erik Tuveson noted in his master's thesis on the first three generations of Cheswells, the youth's education was: an unusual privilege for a country boy of that time.
Education of any formal sort in colonial New England carried a significant degree of elite social status.
[7][6] In 2008, George Mason University in Virginia declared Wentworth Cheswell to be the first African American elected to public office in the history of the United States.
He preceded Alexander Twilight of Vermont (1836), Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina (1870), and John Mercer Langston of Virginia (1888) for the title.
The abundance of the returns gave the signers of the Declaration of Independence assurance that their acts would be sanctioned and upheld by most of the colonists.
On 13 December 1774, Paul Revere was dispatched to Portsmouth to warn the town that the British warships, frigate Scarborough and the sloop of war Canseau, were on their way to reinforce Fort William and Mary (known as "The Castle") and seize its powder and arms.
When Portsmouth asked for help from neighboring communities, Newmarket held a town meeting to decide on their response.
[citation needed] On the morning of 14 December 1774, John Langdon made his way through Portsmouth with a drummer, collecting a crowd to descend on the fort.
Cheswell supported his family as a teacher, and was elected and appointed to serve in local government for all but one year of the remainder of his life, as selectman, auditor, assessor, scrivener, and other roles.
The scholars W. Dennis Chesley and Mary B. Mcallister have said, "Cheswell's writings clearly contain the seeds of modern archaeological theory.
[6] In his will, Cheswell requested that: the burying place in the orchard near my dwelling house be fenced with rocks, as I have laid out (if I should not live to finish it) and grave stones be provided for the graves therein....His original will is available to view at NH Records and Archives located at 9 Ratification Way in Concord, NH.
