Samuel Mansfield
b. ca. 1759 New Haven, CT d. February 3, 1810 Albany, NY
Revolutionary Service: Canadian Expedition 1776; Captain 2nd Continental Artillery; Aide de Camp to Governor Walton during Siege of Savannah
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Soldier, Entrepreneur, Hudson Proprietor
Captain Mansfield was an officer in the Connecticut Line as early as 1776 and, there is some evidence that he served with his sister Margaret’s husband, Benedict Arnold, when Arnold participated in capturing Fort Ticonderoga and later while invading Quebec.
Engraving depicting Ethan Allen's capture of Fort Ticonderoga from Captain DeLaPlace, Heppenheimer and Maurer, 1875
On May 10, 1775, Benedict Arnold, with a commission from Massachusetts, and Ethan Allen, leading the Green Mountain Boys, captured Fort Ticonderoga. Though the fort was not strategically important at the time, when the cannons and ammunitions were brought by Henry Knox to a promontory on Boston Harbor, this ended the Siege of Boston by the British. The battle also led to the competition between Allen and Arnold that eventually contributed to Arnold’s betrayal of his nascent country.
Benedict’s wife and Charles’s sister, Margaret Mansfield Arnold, died shortly after capture of the fort in June 1775.
Siege of Savannah,
A. I. Keller, 1779
On January 1, 1777 Mansfield officially enlisted as a captain in Colonel John Lamb's 2nd Continental Artillery Regiment remaining through November 7, 1778. Mansfield would volunteer one final time during the war, serving as an aide-de-camp to Georgia governor George Walton in the fall of 1779 during the Siege of Savannah.
Mansfield, a Hudson Proprietor, was among the first generation of Hudson merchants, co-owning Green & Mansfield, dealers in dry goods. He married Elizabeth Greene and they had three daughters. He died suddenly traveling on the road between Albany and New York City.
Samuel Mansfield's grave,
Section 1B, Hudson Cemetery
Sketch of Margaret Mansfield Arnold's grave