Person:Benjamin Romaine (1)

Notes

• 8 Apr 1789 - Benjamin Romaine, schoolmaster; John Newcomb, and Cornelius Vanaulen, witnessed the will of Jacob Stymets, shopkeeper, New York City. ^[2]
• 8 Sep 1792 - Benjamin Romaine, schoolmaster, and Simon Van Antwerp, merchant of New York City, were appointed as executors of the will of Isaac Vervalen, of New York, shopkeeper. ^[3]
• 25 Oct 1794 - B. Romaine, Adam Hamilton and Nathaniel Nott, witnessed the will of John Winchell of New York. ^[4]
• 1 Oct 1798 - Benjamin Romine and Betsy Slidell (mother of the testator) were appointed as executors of the will of Isaac Slidell of New York, shoemaker. ^[5]
• 4 Sep 1804 - a child of Benjamin Romaine was buried at the New York Reformed Dutch Church. ^[6]
• 1808 - Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall
• 10 Nov 1812 - called a gentleman of New York City in the will of John Brower, his father-in-law.
• Alderman of New York City
• created the Tomb of the Martyrs in Brooklyn, New York to memorialize those who died on the prison ships in New York during the Revolutionary War

Military service

see Benjamin Romaine file; W18839; NARA Ser. M805; Roll 702

• 27 May 1834 - filed Rev war pension application^[7], stating that
  • he was his parent's youngest son
  • Aug 1776 - his family fled New York City to Fort Washington, and when the enemy appeared, they crossed the Hudson to Fort Lee, near Hackensack [NJ], living there during the war
  • Nov 1777 - he enlisted and served various times until 1782 for a total of about 34 months service
  • he was with the NJ troops under Captains Elias Romaine (his brother), John Outwater, Samuel Demarest, Bowman, John Vreeland, Ward, James Christie, John Huyler, Thomas Blanch, Abraham Harring, Board, J. Wade, John Mead, and Colonel Dey
  • he was at the burnings of Closter and of Schraalenburgh, where his mother lived after his father died
  • 6 Sep 1781 - he was captured and held in prison in New York City in the Sugar House for seven weeks and eventually exchanged at the time of Cornwallis' surrender.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 77410295, in Find A Grave
   includes photo, last accessed Jul 2025.
2. ↑ New York. Surrogate's Court (New York County); New York. Prerogative Court; Robert H Kelby; and William Smith Pelletreau. Abstracts of wills on file in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, 1665-1801. (New York, New York: Printed for the New York Historical Society, 1893-1909 [i.e. 1913])
   14:167.
3. ↑ New York. Surrogate's Court (New York County); New York. Prerogative Court; Robert H Kelby; and William Smith Pelletreau. Abstracts of wills on file in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, 1665-1801. (New York, New York: Printed for the New York Historical Society, 1893-1909 [i.e. 1913])
   14:222-223.
4. ↑ New York. Surrogate's Court (New York County); New York. Prerogative Court; Robert H Kelby; and William Smith Pelletreau. Abstracts of wills on file in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, 1665-1801. (New York, New York: Printed for the New York Historical Society, 1893-1909 [i.e. 1913])
   14:283.
5. ↑ New York. Surrogate's Court (New York County); New York. Prerogative Court; Robert H Kelby; and William Smith Pelletreau. Abstracts of wills on file in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, 1665-1801. (New York, New York: Printed for the New York Historical Society, 1893-1909 [i.e. 1913])
   15:113.
6. ↑ Burials in the Dutch Church, New York, in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. (New York, New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society)
   75 (1944):129, 76 (1945).

   Benjamin Romaine's child.

7. ↑ ^7.0 7.1 Benjamin Romaine file; W18839; NARA Ser. M805; Roll 702.
8.   Olmsted, Henry King (1824-1896), and George Kemp Ward (1848-1937). Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America: Embracing the Descendants of James and Richard Olmstead and Covering a Period of Nearly Three Centuries, 1632-1912. (New York: A. T. DeLaMare, 1912)
   70 .

   (645) TIMOTHY OLMSTED, Phenix, Oswego Co., N.Y. ... m. (1) prob. 1821, Maria Romaine; d. abt. 1826; dau. of (Alderman) Benjamin Romaine, of New York City ...

9. ↑ ^9.0 9.1 Benjamin Romaine to Thomas Jefferson, 23 June 1813, in Founders Online website.

   ... Benjamin Romaine (1762–1844), politician and author, served as a sergeant in the Revolutionary War and operated a school in New York City from 1790 to about 1798, numbering Washington Irving among his students.
   
   In 1798 he became city collector.
   
   He was removed from office in 1806 for involvement in a fraudulent land acquisition, but he escaped prosecution and served as a city assessor in 1809 and 1810.
   
   Romaine was prominent in the Tammany Society of New York and held the office of grand sachem in 1809 and 1813. In this role he headed an effort to build a tomb for American seamen who died on British prison ships in New York’s Wallabout Bay during the Revolution.
   
   Romaine was deputy quartermaster general with the rank of major in the United States Army, 1814–15.
   
   His several pamphlets included
   - Observations, Reasons and Facts, Disproving Importation, and also, all Specific Personal Contagion in Yellow Fever, from any Local Origin, except that which arises from the common changes of the Atmosphere (New York, 1823) and
   - State Sovereignty, and a Certain Dissolution of the Union (1832), in which he opposed John C. Calhoun’s position on Nullification
   
   (DNA: RG 15, SRRWPBLW;
   William Cullen Bryant, A Discourse on the Life, Character and Genius of Washington Irving [1860], 11;
   New-York Directory and Register [New York, 1790], 85;
   Longworth’s New-York Directory [1798];
   Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784–1831 [1917–30], esp. 2:472, 4:302, 319, 5:561, 6:383;
   Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall [1917], 22, 23, 25, 33, 34, 61;
   JEP, 2:475, 501 [17, 28 Feb. 1814];
   Heitman, U.S. Army, 1:844;
   Cleveland Herald, 8 Feb. 1844). ...