Benjamin Arnold (1741 - 1801) was an American military officer who served during the Revolutionary War; he fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose to the rank of major general before defecting to the British side of the conflict in 1780 and was considered a traitor to the American cause after that. Before the Revolutionary War, he was a successful merchant and smuggler, and this documents his business activities in 1771, before the war had even begun. Arnold was forced to end his schooling at age 14 when his father, a merchant seaman, fell on hard times and slipped into alcoholism. The young Arnold spent the next eight years as an apprentice to an apothecary in New Haven, Connecticut, where he opened his own general store. By his mid-20s, he had purchased three sailing sloops and started a thriving business as a sea trader in Canada and the Caribbean. Arnold’s profits dried up with the introduction of the hated Sugar and Stamp Acts in the 1760’s, but like many colonial businessmen, he flouted the laws and took to smuggling rum and molasses; he was in the West Indies when the Boston Massacre took place in 1770, and this document shows he was in the process of procuring lumber in 1771, possibly for his small fleet of ships that formed the core of his business, and by 1775, when the war began, he was a merchant operating ships in the Atlantic Ocean. The document is not signed by Arnold, but his name is on the second line of the document and shows his occupation as a lumber merchant engaging in business before he ever entered the military. The document says that twenty three planks of mahogany were received from the Unity, a ship captained by Robert Norris, from Jamaica, and being charged to the account of Benedict Arnold, a merchant from New Haven, in August 1771, and the money for the planks was due in three months. The price seems to have been based on board feet and came to £ 17.16.3, or 17 pounds, 16 shillings, and 3 pence, and there was an allowance for damage to one plank because it had been used as a rudder. There was an expense for hiring someone to measure the planks and a commission on top of that, and the bill mentions Liverpool and debt outstanding from August 2 of 1771. The document is 7 1/4 x 8” high and attached at the corners on the backside to the typed notes that go with the document, and it clearly shows that Arnold needed lumber for his shipping business, well before the start of the Revolutionary War, and well before he turned traitor to the American cause at West Point. #3546 #81