Family and Descendants
Arnold was married on 17 December 1640 to Damaris, the daughter of Stukeley Westcott and Julianna Marchante. They had nine children: Benedict, Caleb, Josiah, Damaris, William, Penelope, Oliver, Godsgift, and Freelove. All but William grew to adulthood, married, and had children. His son Caleb, a physician, married Abigail Wilbur, who was the daughter of Samuel Wilbur, Jr., and the granddaughter of both Samuel Wilbore and John Porter, two signers of the compact establishing the town of Portsmouth with Anne Hutchinson.
Notable descendants of Benedict Arnold, through his son Benedict, include his great-grandson, also named Benedict Arnold, one of the great generals of the American Revolutionary War who was best known for his treason to the American cause when he switched sides to fight with the British. Descendants through his son Caleb Arnold include Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, American hero of the Great Lakes during the War of 1812 and his younger brother Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who compelled the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854; and Senator Stephen Arnold Douglas who debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858 before a senate race and later lost to him in the 1860 presidential election. Rhode Island colonial Deputy Governor George Hazard is another descendant.
Read more about this topic: Benedict Arnold (governor)
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or descendants:
“English people apparently queue up as a sort of hobby. A family man might pass a mild autumn evening by taking the wife and kids to stand in the cinema queue for a while and then leading them over for a few minutes in the sweetshop queue and then, as a special treat for the kids, saying “Perhaps we’ve time to have a look at the Number Thirty-One bus queue before we turn in.””
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1940)
“The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)