Benjamin Britton

The phrase, “a lot” has a lot of applications. In this story the first use of the term is about a parcel of land which had previously been a parking lot. It was being excavated in 2016 and 2017 as part of a construction project when a lot of human remains and coffins were uncovered. 

When archeologists had finished on January 2, 2018, the last coffin they found had Benjamin Britton’s name on it. His coffin and remains were one of only three to be positively identified with a named individual. 

That particular lot had been the burial ground of First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, located at 218 Arch Street. The church moved to a new sanctuary and wanted to sell the property, so a contractor was hired to remove all the graves in 1860. The church purchased Section 112 at Mount Moriah where they were to be reburied. Needless to say, an unknown number of graves, estimated at more than 2,000, were left behind. 

Site construction in 2017 had some delays but the developer cooperated as archaeologists raced to collect and containerize as much as they could. Arrows in this photo show wood and multiple “voids” indicating grave sites. The remains of 496 church members were cleaned,  categorized, bagged, analyzed, and documented before they came to their final rest here in 2024.

Much of the biography that follows was researched and carefully described by Kathryn Pyle Hartmann, a sixth-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Britton. While working on her family genealogy in 2023, she searched for his name on the internet and found a trove of stories about the excavation. She shared this story of a Colonial business owner and eyewitness to history:

 

His Time

Her ancestor’s place of birth and the names of his parents are unknown, but the family homeland was England, since he mentioned his brother in his will as living there. Nothing is known of Benjamin’s youth or when he came to America. Even his date of birth is uncertain. 

The nameplate on his coffin indicated his death was in 1782 at “78 years of age,” but that numeral after the 7 could be a zero. Letters of Administration were issued by the Probate Court on October 3, 1782, so the best guess is he died in September. The very fact that he left a will indicates he was a man of some wealth, and he did have ‘a lot’ of land and possessions to leave to others.

Documentation regarding his second wife, Mary Johnson, is the primary source of information about Benjamin’s life. All that is known of his first marriage is that it produced a daughter, Sarah, perhaps around 1740. As for Mary, she was born in 1710 and first married a baker named Thomas Lacey in 1726. They had seven children during their 15 years together but two of them died while very young.

After Thomas’ death in 1741 she married another man in late 1742 who was a baker, but he only lived another 18 months. Benjamin may or may not have been a baker before he met Mary. Maybe she just preferred men who could cook. They were married sometime around 1745 or 1746 and had two children: Hannah was born in 1748 and Abraham lived from 1750 to just before Benjamin died in 1782.

His Work

As a result of his marriage, Benjamin became the de facto co-administrator of the estate of her first husband, who didn’t leave a will. It took Mary and Benjamin until about 1751 to successfully finalize that estate. Thomas had multiple properties, so while she may have been an illiterate widow, Mary learned how to pay bills and collect rent payments to provide for her household. She developed a good sense of business, especially with Benjamin’s help. 

He also came to her aid in settling another estate, that of her father. The Johnson line goes back to Claes Jansen, one of the original Swedish colonists and he had left more than 500 acres of property to be divided or disposed of. Benjamin coordinated a series of transactions that resolved the wishes of his father-in-law while leaving the Brittons with a lot of real estate as well.

Upon joining hands in marriage, the bakery business run by Mary’s first two husbands was now in Benjamin’s hands. Mary’s house sat on a narrow lot adjoining the bake house on the southwest corner of 4th and Chestnut Street, which is now a part of Independence National Historic Park.

Kathryn Hartmann gave this insight into his business: “He was self-described as a ‘baker and bolter’ when he advertised in June, 1749 in The Pennsylvania Gazette that he was in ‘the business of bisket baking…. by wholesale or retail’ including hard and soft bread, flour and middlings, and ship bread.

“Middlings are a form of coarser ground grain, typically used as fodder for livestock. Ship bread is made of only flour, water and salt and is also known as hardtack, used for long sea voyages and military campaigns. A baker would clearly be expected to provide baked goods (breads, biscuits, rolls, etc.) but a bolter also sold bags of flour or other ground grains – a middleman between the miller and the city dweller. So Benjamin catered to a very broad range of consumers.” 

A few years later the house and lot next to the bakery was advertised for sale. Coincidentally, the publisher put his own notice and name (the more famous Benjamin) in the space underneath.

The family moved to Oxford Township which, since 1854, has been that part of the city north of Frankford, south of Cottman Avenue, and east of Tacony Creek. Benjamin acquired that land by foreclosing on a mortgage on a 60-acre farm, but then he bought additional acreage from the family who defaulted on the loan. More land was purchased in Bristol Township in Bucks County.

Having resolved property matters with the relatives, did Benjamin feel a certain desire to continue in the buying and selling of real estate? Or, did he resign himself to a daily commute to his center-city bakery?  He did keep on baking but, at the same time, he prospered as a landowner and landlord. Perhaps the revenue from tenant farmers exceeded that of the bakery. Perhaps he even had a vertically integrated operation, purchasing the farmers’ wheat grown on land he owned to be used at the bakery or sold as flour.

But he was, first and foremost, a baker. He may have even sold his bread to the 56 delegates who were staying in town for the First Continental Congress in 1774, since they were meeting across 4th Street at Carpenter’s Hall. The bakery was also just a block away from the State House (known today as Independence Hall) where the Second Continental Congress convened.

His Views

A landowner at that time and, in that culture, would likely mean being a slave owner. In fact, it was prior to his land acquisitions that he placed advertisements in the paper like this for the sale of one female enslaved person and a male indentured servant. Whether he continued in that practice in later years is unknown.

There is also nothing to indicate his view of politics and the growing discord prior to the war except for one signature. As Kathryn describes it, “There is no letter or diary or ‘letter to the editor’ to give any insight to Benjamin’s views about the Declaration of Independence. No record tells us about the impact on his home or business during the British occupation of Philadelphia for nine long months in 1777. 

“The British army finally left Philadelphia and returned to New York City after the French joined the war in support of the Americans. On June 13, 1777, the General Assembly of Pennsylvania passed an act requiring all males over the age of eighteen to go before a Justice of the Peace and swear or affirm allegiance to the United States of America. Benjamin signed that oath just 19 days after it became law.” 

His Will

So much more is learned about a person through what they leave behind. Mary wasn’t mentioned in his will so it’s assumed she predeceased him. Since their son, Abraham, died in June of 1782, Benjamin left 249 acres in Bristol Township in Bucks County to Abraham’s son, Benjamin Washington Britton. Their daughter, Hannah, was given 177 acres in Bensalem Township, Bucks County. To his daughter from his first marriage, Sarah, he left the 73 acres where he lived in Oxford Township.

Items of personal property mentioned in his will reveal a man of means. Benjamin thoughtfully wrote very explicit instructions for the disposal of his possessions, including an eight-day (grandfather) clock, a silver watch, a large library, and both a silver coffee pot and a silver teapot. That was unusual since coffee was not yet the most popular drink of American adults, and most tea pots were made of pewter or glazed earthenware. He bequeathed cash payments to certain relatives and to two Baptist churches.

His Body

Benjamin’s story doesn’t end with the reading of his last wishes, thanks to the discovery of his coffin. A lot of questions about his life remain unanswered, but a lot has been discovered about the man himself, thanks to 21st century forensic archaeology. 

At six feet tall, he was above average in height. He had an extra set of ribs, thirteen in all. That’s a skeletal anomaly that occurs in about one of every two hundred persons, plus there was an extra vertebra. Although  there were only nine remaining teeth in his jaws, a prominent pipe tooth (a notch ground into the tooth from clenching a pipe) indicated he had a long history of tobacco use. At some time in his life, his right collar bone was broken, but healed before his death. His skeleton also suggests that he suffered from arthritis and had a gallstone. 

His Final Destination

So what is the procedure for handling human remains that were unexpectedly excavated from private land? There are no laws to govern such a situation, so the (appropriately named) Orphans Court of Philadelphia took responsibility and set the rules for re-interment. The remains were buried in Section 112 in July of 2024, and a memorial service was held that November.

PMC Property Group, the developer of 218 Arch Street, graciously provided this stone to mark the final resting place of Benjamin Britton and 495 others. It was 164 years late, but better late than never, for them and their descendants.