Benjamin Bussey

Benjamin Bussey (1757—1842[1]) was a prosperous merchant, farmer, horticulturalist and patriot in Boston, Massachusetts, United States,[2] who made significant contributions to the creation of the Arnold Arboretum. He was said to be "a man of excellent business capacity."[3]

Benjamin Bussey

Personal life

Bussey was born on a farm in what is today Canton, Massachusetts, before it separated from Stoughton.[4] He received only a basic education.[4] After serving in the American Revolutionary War, Bussey moved to Dedham, Massachusetts.[4]

Bussey owned land in what is now the Forest Hills area of Jamaica Plain. In 1800, he inherited additional land from fellow patriot Eleazer Weld and further enlarged his estate between 1806 and 1837 by acquiring and consolidating various farms that had been established as early as the seventeenth century. His estate was known as "Woodland Hill". Bussey wrote an autobiography.[4] He died in 1842.[4]

Career

Bussey opened a gold and silversmith shop in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1778 where he made spurs, spoons, and other objects from metal.[1] He learned the trade from a Hessian soldier.[4] As his business on East Street prospered, he soon added general merchandise.[1] Between 1778 and 1790, Bussey accumulated $25,000 (roughly $700,000 in 2020 dollars).[4] Bussey took the $25,000 he made to Boston in 1790 where he ran a shipping and trading company for 16 years at five different locations.[1] He lived in a town house in the central part of the city.[4] As a businessman, he almost never accepted or asked for credit, preferring to operate in cash only.[4]

At the age of 49 he retired as one of the richest men in New England to a life raising Merino sheep on a 300 acre farm in Roxbury.[1][4] On his estate, which featured wallpaper views of Paris and French furniture, Bussey practiced scientific farming.[4]

He left retirement at the age of 62 to return to Dedham where he purchased the Norfolk Cotton Manufacturing Company on Maverick Street along Mother Brook.[1][5] The War of 1812 had brought ruin to the company,[3] and he purchased it in 1819 for a sum far below cost.[6] Bussey used the wool from his sheep, producing a high caliber product that sold well.[1]

Bussey then bought a failed woollen mill from the Dedham Worsted Company[nb 1] only three years after they opened on the street that now bears his name.[7] Bussey brought in the best equipment, and refurbished many of the old buildings.[1] He was one of the first to install water-powered broad looms, enabling him to spin and weave the raw wool into finished fabric.[4] It was said that the factories, dye houses, dwellings, and other buildings associated with the operation "of themselves constitute a little village."[8][4][9]

Bussey also bought vast tracts of land in Maine, and had a number of other business interests, including a private bank.[4]

Bequests

Bussey, according to the minister of the Canton church, was to "live of life gilded misery, give to Harvard College what must now amount to a million dollars,, because he could not carry it with him; and to the Hollis Street Church a set of the Ten Commandments, because he could not keep them with him."[4] Though he called his mills along Mother Brook to be his most "valuable and productive property]], he did not give any large sums of money to causes in Dedham.[4]

He bequeathed his land and part of his fortune to Harvard University "for instruction in agriculture, horticulture, and related subjects". Harvard used this land for the creation of the Bussey Institute, which was dedicated to agricultural experimentation.[1] The first Bussey Institute building was completed in 1871 and served as headquarters for an undergraduate school of agriculture.

One half of the income from Bussey's estates and property endowed professorships and scholarships[10] in the Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Law School, while the other half supported the Institute.

Sixteen years after Bussey's death, James Arnold, a New Bedford, Massachusetts whaling merchant, specified that a portion of his estate was to be used for "...the promotion of Agricultural, or Horticultural improvements". In 1872, when the trustees of the will of James Arnold transferred his estate to Harvard University, Arnold’s gift was combined with 120 acres (0.5 km²) of the former Bussey estate to create the Arnold Arboretum.[4]

The arboretum's Bussey Hill and Bussey Brook (formerly Sawmill Brook), and the adjacent Bussey Street still bear his name. Bussey Street in Dedham, Massachusetts, where he owned mills, is also named for him. A plaster bust of him is housed at the Dedham Historical Society and Museum.[2]

Notes

1. Incorporated principally by William Phillips and Jabez Chickering[6]

References

1. "Spotlighting Benjamin Bussey" (PDF). Dedham Historical Society Newsletter. Dedham Historical Society (May). 2017.
2. "Old Dedham". Boston Post. April 2, 1890. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com.
3. Worthington 1900, p. 11.
4. Neiswander, Judy (May 1, 2020). "Tales from Mother Brook: Part 3 - The Early Mills". The Dedham Times. 28 (18). p. 6.
5. Worthington 1900, p. 10.
6. Worthington 1900, p. 5.
7. Wilson, Mary Jane (2006). "Benjamin Bussey, Woodland Hill, and the Creation of the Arnold Arboretum" (PDF). Arnoldia. Vol. 64 no. 1. Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University.
8. Tritsch 1986, p. 13.
9. Neiswander, Judy (May 15, 2020). "Tales from Mother Brook: Part 5 - Citizens". The Dedham Times. 28 (20). p. 8.
10. Wilson, Mary Jane (2006). "Benjamin Bussey, Woodland Hill, and the Creation of the Arnold Arboretum" (PDF). Arnoldia. Vol. 64 no. 1. Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University. First, he directed a large portion of his estate to Harvard’s schools of law and theology, the two branches of education he considered most important in advancing “the prosperity and happiness of our common country.” … One-half of the income from his estates and property was to be used to support the institution [the Bussey Institute]; the other half was for the endowment of professorships or scholarships in the law and divinity schools.

Works cited

• Worthington, Erastus (1900). Historical sketch of Mother Brook, Dedham, Mass: compiled from various records and papers, showing the diversion of a portion of the Charles River into the Neponset River and the manufactures on the stream, from 1639 to 1900. Dedham, MA: C.G. Wheeler.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

• Tritsch, Electa Kane (1986). Building Dedham. Dedham Historical Society.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

External links

• Benjamin Bussey collection, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.
• The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University
• Jamaica Plain Historical Society, "Weld Family"