Biography
Crowninshield was born in Salem, Massachusetts the son of a sea captain and merchant of the Boston Brahmin Crowninshield family. He worked in the family shipping business, Geo. Crowninshield & Sons, served at sea, and was also active in politics. His family owned the lands near Mineral Spring Pond, where the first Crowninshield family was cradled in the country. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1811 and the state Senate in 1812.
Crowninshield became Secretary of the Navy in January 1815, a position almost held by his brother Jacob Crowninshield ten years earlier, at the end of the War of 1812 and managed the transition to a peacetime force. This included implementation of the new Board of Commissioners administrative system and the building of several ships of the line, the backbone of a much enhanced Navy. He also oversaw strategy and naval policy for the war with Algiers in 1815.
After leaving Navy office in 1818, Crowninshield returned to business and political affairs in Massachusetts, prospering in both. In addition to serving two more terms in the Massachusetts House, he was also elected to four terms the United States Congress from 1823 to 1831.
On his passing in 1851, Benjamin Williams Crowninshield was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Crowninshield was the great-great-grandfather of Charles Francis Adams III, also Secretary of the Navy from 1929 to 1933.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Williams Crowninshield
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