Capt. Benjamin Kimball, 1st N.H. Regiment
Benjamin Kimball was born August 5, 1741 in Plainstow, New Hampshire. He was the son of Jonathan and Elizabeth (Little) Kimball. He married Sarah Little in 1761.
Benjamin Kimball was appointed as First Lieutenant in Captain Samuel Gilman’s company of the 2nd New Hampshire on May 25, 1775. He continued as a First Lieutenant in the 8th Continental Infantry (the temporary designation for the 2nd New Hampshire Regiment, Continental Line) on January 1, 1776. On September 6, 1776, First Lieutenant Kimball was promoted to Captain and transferred to the 1st New Hampshire Regiment, Continental Line with duties as the Regiment’s Paymaster.
During the Continental Army’s encampment at Valley Forge, Captain Kimball is listed as part of the Regimental Staff of the 1st New Hampshire. He further is marked as “Present” for January 1778, “Furlough” for February-April 1778, and again “Present” for May and June of 1778.
Captain Kimball was killed by friendly fire on August 23, 1779.
Joseph Leigh, Commissary of Issues for the New Hampshire Line, wrote from Newburgh, NY to Nathaniel Peabody, a member of Congress, on October 14, 1779:
“You undoubtedly have heard of the Death of Capt. Benjamin Kimball. Poor man! He unfortunately lost his life by the accidental discharge of a Soldiers Musquet – I conceived him to have been a valuable member of society, and the publick, in my opinion, has lost a faithful Servant.”
Sources: Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, Year-book of the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution for 1897-1898 and 1899, (Hartford, 1900), 301; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army, (Baltimore, 1914), 331; Frederic Kidder, History of the First New Hampshire Regiment in the War of the Revolution (Albany, 1868), 84; “To George Washington from Brigadier General Enoch Poor, 29 January 1780,” Founders Online, National Archives, version of January 18, 2019, [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 24, 1 January–9 March 1780, ed. Benjamin L. Huggins. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016, pp. 316–317.]; Selected Wartime Service Records of Captain Benjamin Kimball.
