Benjamin Kent

Benjamin Kent (1708–1788) was an American minister and later a lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts.

Kent began work as a lawyer sometime before 1739, at which period there were seven lawyers in Boston. He handled the case of a slave Pompey suing his master Benjamin Faneuil for his freedom. Later he won a case for Governor Shirley against the lawyer Benjamin Prat. He was occasionally a guest at the Old Colony Club, amusing among others a young John Adams. On the eve of the American Revolution he was a member of more town committees than any other Bostonian.

The loyalist Sampson Salter Blowers was son-in-law to Kent. Kent eventually was forced to put Blowers in jail. Kent's wife and children later moved with Blowers to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Kent took over the abandoned Blowers mansion.

Governor Thomas Cushing sent Kent to Halifax to retrieve the probate records for Suffolk County, Massachusetts after the Revolution in 1784. The records had been taken by the loyalist Foster Hutchinson when he left Boston on the eve of the Revolution (1776).

Kent eventually followed his family to Halifax, in 1785. He is buried, along with Blowers, in the Old Burying Ground there.

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