Benjamin Randall

Benjamin Randall (February 7, 1749 - October 22, 1808) was the main organizer of the Freewill Baptists (Randall Line) in the northeastern United States.

Benjamin Randall III was born February 7, 1749, at New Castle, New Hampshire to sea captain Benjamin Randall, Jr. (born 1712), and his wife, the former Margaret Mordantt. He was the oldest of 9 children born to the pair, both of whom were of ethnic English heritage.

Randall was provided with a "good commercial education" in the primitive public schools of the day, supplemented with extensive personal reading. A considerable part of Randall's youth was spent as a cabin boy aboard his father's ship, but he did not enjoy the experience, being a sensitive and pious youth who read the Bible daily.

At the age of 17 Randall was apprenticed to a sailmaker in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with whom he remained until the age of 21. He parlayed the sewing skills he developed as a sailmaker to the profession of tailoring, becoming proficient at the craft, and occasionally venturing to the related craft of tent-making when such work was to be found.

On September 23, 1770, Christian evangelist George Whitefield paid a visit to Portsmouth as part of his last speaking tour of the country, arriving barely a week before his death. Randall heard Whitefield's sermons several times and was shaken and moved by news of his death. A short period of religious meditation followed with the effect that Randall's piety was awakened and he was himself energized as an evangelist of Christianity.

Despite his religious awakening, Randall continued to work in Marblehead and Salem, Massachusetts during 1871, returning to his native New Castle in the fall of that year to set up shop as a sailmaker in October of that year. In November 1871 he married Joanna Oram (born 1748) of Kittery, Maine, the daughter of another sea captain.

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