America’s Most Famous Spy — Dr. Benjamin Church

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Long before Benedict Arnold defected to the British, Benjamin Rush committed treason against the Continental Congress and the Army. Like Arnold, Benjamin Church seemed the paragon of the patriot cause but he was likely paid for his treason and ultimately died in disgrace.

Church was a member of the Sons of Liberty, the first Surgeon General of the Continental Army, and a personal friend of John Adams and Joseph Warren.  After the Boston Massacre in March of 1770, he not only examined the body of Crispus Attucks but spoke out against the British occupation of Boston, referring to the Tories of Boston as “Can it possibly be conceived that they would voluntarily be enslaved, by a power of their own creation?”  He was on the surface a well-respected citizen and a prominent Whig.  No one suspected Church was actually exchanging covert correspondence with General Thomas Gage, a British general charged with trying to put down the revolution before it began.

In 1774 he was elected to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and appointed to a committee “to consider what method is proper to take to supply the hospitals” for the army.  In July 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of a Medical Department and Church was selected to serve as Director General, a role which ultimately made him the first Surgeon General.  He served that role for three months, however, before he was court-martialed on accusations of treason.

Church communicated with General Gage through coded letters, informing the British on the location of arsenals and troop movements and plans.  After a trip to Philadelphia, Church attempted to send a ciphered letter to Gage through a series of messengers who were to transport the letter by boat to the British army and then to its intended recipient. However, Church’s first messenger in this chain, gave the letter to a Rhode Island baker and Patriot, Godfrey Wenwood. Instead of passing the letter along the chain, Wenwood gave the letter to General Nathanael Greene who immediately forwarded it to George Washington. When the letter was decoded, it was found to contain information about Continental Troops around Boston.  Church was court marshaled, removed from his post as Director General, and arrested. He was briefly jailed in Norwich, Connecticut, until January 1776 until he got ill and was allowed to live under house arrest at his home in Massachusetts until 1778 when he was named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act, forcing those who supported the British or “joined the enemies thereof” to leave the United States. He sailed from Boston headed for the Caribbean, but the ship was lost at sea, and Church likely perished along with it.

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