In the bitter cold of the new year Benedict packed up his clothes and his books, reluctantly turned his back on his Canterbury school, and journeyed home to Norwich. The bleak, frosty weather mirrored his mood. The contrast between the bustling life at the Canterbury school and the grim reality of his home was stark. No more lively society of boys living away from home, bubbling over with chatter and pranks. No more camaraderie chafing under the discipline of the Reverend Cogswell, laboring over the subjects necessary to make them educated men. The arrival of his mother’s letters had linked the two worlds and punctured his Canterbury existence from time to time, bringing news of the troubles at home. But Norwich had seemed very distant, quite out of sight, and could be forgotten for hours at a stretch in the press of school activities. Now there was no escape. As soon as he arrived he was engulfed by those family problems, but too young to help resolve them. Worse, his mere presence was a constant reminder to his mother and father of their own failure.
The spacious Arnold home seemed silent and empty without Mary and Elizabeth. The survivors, Benedict and Hannah, were grateful for each other’s company, but the sad loss of their little sisters was impossible to forget. Benedict’s father, with whom he had shared wonderful summers sailing in the family’s vessels to exotic ports, had been transformed from a successful merchant and respected town official to a sick and irascible man, sunk in depression. Alcohol was robbing him of his personality and competence, yet his family could not stop him from dulling his mind with drink. Benedict’s loving and kindly mother was preoccupied, frantically attempting to keep the shipping business and shop functioning, while running the household and struggling to pay the bills. When Benedict could be of no help to her it seemed best he stay out of the way. He wandered the town and its woodlands and meadows. He met the Mohegan Indian Chief Benjamin Uncas who befriended the boy and taught him native ways of fishing and hunting, of horseback riding and canoeing.1 This very different education, more active and exciting, helped shape him into the confident warrior and outdoorsman he was destined to become. It also distracted him from the increasing anxiety he and his family were enduring.
The Arnold family’s slide into indebtedness and disgrace might have passed undetected in a large city, but in Norwich little escaped public notice. Neighbors knew each other well. They met weekly in church and almost daily at the market or down by the docks. They enjoyed a good gossip. Public shame for questionable acts helped ensure that the people of Norwich behaved in a proper and moral manner. Morality encompassed the virtues of sobriety, piety, and fiscal responsibility. In this setting it was nearly impossible to disguise business failure or moral failings, especially any slippage by someone who had been prosperous and prominent, someone of whom more was expected. There was general sympathy for Benedict’s long-suffering mother. But Arnold’s father was a relative newcomer, a cooper who had married into money and position. That fact would not have passed unremarked.
This puritanical streak in its citizenry had not abated much from Connecticut’s earliest days. The tendency was fortified and perpetuated by the colony’s assembly that continued to demand godly behavior through relentless and detailed social legislation. Local justices of the peace were kept busy ruling on instances of alleged impropriety. The efforts of Richard Hide, a justice of the peace in mid-eighteenth-century Norwich, demonstrates what the Arnolds could expect. The case of a resident presented “for profane swearing” because he had “been heard to say at the public house—damn me,” was typical. For this outburst he was fined six shillings and had to pay court costs of six shillings, three pence.2 Another blasphemer received the same six-shilling fine for blurting out, “Go to the devil.” In 1771 two women reported a young woman for laughing during a religious service. Hide showed mercy to the young woman in question and she was dismissed with a reprimand. Ebenezer Waterman Jr. did not get off so lightly. He was hauled before a grand jury for profaning the Sabbath by talking “in the time of divine service in a merry manner, to make sport.” He pleaded guilty and was fined ten shillings.
It was not just during church services that good deportment was expected. The entire Sabbath day was to be spent in religious observance or quiet activity. Five young residents—Asa Fuller, an apprentice, Ede Trap, Lemuel Wentworth, Hannah Forsey, and Elizabeth Winship, a minor—were hauled before Justice Hide after witnesses reported that “on the evening following the 27th of May last, it being Sabbath, or Lord’s Day evening,” the youngsters did “meet and convene together, and walk in the street in company, upon no religious occasion, all which is contrary to the statute of this colony in such case.” It was in this setting Hannah Arnold and her two children were trying to shield Captain Arnold’s alcoholism from public scrutiny and the disgrace and punishment that must follow.
The year Benedict turned fourteen events came to a head. Hannah’s attempt to run the family business with her husband’s fitful help and to pay the bills failed, and that failure set in motion a new plan for Benedict’s future. If any woman could have salvaged the Arnold business, Hannah was that woman. Under the law married women had little control over their own property, let alone an opportunity for business activity. Of course Hannah was better educated than most women and a capable and well-respected member of the community. Moreover, like many wives of seafaring merchants gone for months at a time, she had needed to assume financial responsibility when Captain Arnold was away.3 As an Englishman explained it at the time, while a married woman’s property rights were limited, a woman “in her husband’s absence is wife and deputy-husband, which makes her double the files of her diligence.”4 Now, as her husband became less and less able to manage himself let alone his business, she took over as much as she could. The accounting and record-keeping could be managed, and maybe basic buying and selling.5 The voyages were another thing. A great deal had depended on the Captain’s quick eye for a bargain and his contacts among producers and other merchants. In the end Hannah was unable to keep the shipping business afloat. In a time of booming sea trade the Arnold business collapsed. Benedict’s father could no longer pay his debts.
Failure to pay a debt was not just an embarrassment, it was a crime. There was no public bankruptcy law in Connecticut.6 Men unable to pay their business or private debts were sent to prison until they could pay. Conditions in these prisons were awful. There were no separate prisons for the scores of convicted debtors unable to meet their obligations. They were simply tossed in with ordinary criminals to languish until somehow rescued.
The awful reckoning came one morning. The sheriff knocked at the door of the fine house Captain Arnold had built, demanding payment of the family debts.7 They had to tell him they simply did not have the money. He immediately began seizing and removing their personal possessions to the value of the money owed. The Arnolds were able to keep basic items, since the law stipulated that a debtor was to be left “bedding, tools, arms, and implements of his household necessary for upholding his life.”8 The seizure of their possessions was very upsetting and very public. The sheriff warned that worse was in store. Unless Captain Arnold could come up with the funds he owed in twenty days his property would be sold at public auction.
In this wretched circumstance Hannah was either sufficiently desperate to plead for help from her Lathrop relatives, or they came forward unasked to spare her and her family the misery of public disgrace. Whichever it was, her Lathrop relatives came to the rescue. The Lathrops were an extraordinarily prosperous and generous family, especially brothers Daniel and Joshua Lathrop. Both had been educated at Yale College and Daniel had then sailed to England where he spent three years studying medicine. He had returned to set up an apothecary business with Joshua. The two were not only the first pharmacists in Norwich, but Dr. Daniel Lathrop was the first trained pharmacist in all of Connecticut. The business he and Joshua established was the sole apothecary business along the entire route from Boston to New York.9 It provided a crucial service and the brothers prospered accordingly. They purchased shiploads of medical goods from England and grew their own medicinal herbs in large gardens. Gossip reported that a single shipment of drugs they imported was worth £8,000.10
With a close relative about to be dispossessed and jailed for debt, Daniel Lathrop agreed to pay the £300 needed to keep Captain Arnold out of prison and save his possessions from public auction.11 The Lathrops also took over the mortgage on the Arnold house to ensure the family would not lose their home. But their timely rescue also involved young Benedict. The Lathrops accepted the fourteen-year-old Benedict as an apprentice. They promised to look after him and instruct him in their trade. Benedict’s parents readily agreed and signed a standard seven-year apprenticeship contract that would provide their only son preparation for a lucrative career. It would also bind him to work for the Lathrops until he was twenty-one.
For Benedict this was a dramatic transition. It meant moving from his tense and depressing family home to Dr. Daniel Lathrop’s waterfront Georgian mansion with its lavish formal gardens, and beginning professional training. If Benedict’s parents were unable to give him a university education, they were at least providing him something far better than the training his own father had. The apothecary profession was respected and respectable. The Lathrops would also teach Benedict how to run a business. He would start out in life far better off than any cooper’s apprentice. Leaving home was also a financial relief for his hard-pressed parents. And he hadn’t moved far. He remained in the same town as his family and could keep in close contact. However he may have felt about his father’s behavior and incompetence, however much he regretted being deprived of higher education, Benedict never uttered any condemnation of the man whose weaknesses led to the family ruin and his own diminished hopes.
Life with the Lathrops was more than comfortable. Both Daniel and his wife Jerusha treated him like a son.12 The couple had no children of their own. Their wealth hadn’t spared them from domestic tragedy. Some years before Benedict’s arrival their own three little children had died in infancy. Daniel and Jerusha were happy to have youngsters to raise and were ready to lavish their affection upon them. Benedict was very fortunate. Jerusha was the daughter of Joseph Talcott, the first native-born governor of Connecticut.13 She was a few years younger than Benedict’s mother, but like Hannah, she was an educated and cultivated woman. The latest books filled the house. While Benedict missed the opportunity for a formal university education he was being schooled in the behavior and culture of a gentleman. There was another boy, Solomon Smith, who was also being trained by the Lathrops in the apothecary trade along with Benedict. How strange to be living in luxury not far from where his parents and sister were struggling to make ends meet and to avoid further shame. It was important to make a success of his training and through his own hard work repay the Lathrops for their loan and kindness, and benefit himself and his mother, father, and sister.
Life went on. The Arnold family scrimped, tried to control the Captain’s drinking, and managed. Benedict worked hard for the Lathrops. He was attentive and serious about learning the basic concepts and particulars of their interesting profession. He had to memorize the virtues and composition of a great variety of medicines. The apothecary workshop was full of the scent of drying herbs and lined with shelf after shelf crowded with bottles of elixirs and powders. Observing how the Lathrop brothers ran their booming business was also fascinating. There was constant activity. Ships unloaded cargoes and set sail again. Their warehouses were kept busy receiving and unpacking stock, then packing wagons for delivery to customers along the coast and into the interior. It was complex and interesting work. Between his responsibilities as an apprentice and his efforts to help his family he was fully occupied. But when Benedict was sixteen the outside world suddenly intruded.
Military disaster loomed. The French were threatening to seize control of New York, imperiling New England. He was old enough to enlist in the Connecticut militia and anxious to participate. This first military experience would be brief. Yet the terrible events that occasioned his service and the furious anti-French feelings they provoked colored the rest of his life. Years later when Arnold wrote to his fellow Americans to explain why he had abandoned their cause, he was to blame it on the alliance they had forged with the French.