Church was briefly incarcerated in a room of the Henry Vassall House in Cambridge, where his carved name can be seen today.
(meta data) TITLE: Henry Vassall House (1746) |  (meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2008-12-01T07:16:09+00:00 14 captures 11 Jul 2011 - 12 Oct 2022 About this capture COLLECTED BY Organization: Internet Archive These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved. Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors. The goal is to fix all broken links on the web. Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. Collection: Wikipedia Near Real Time (from IRC) This is a collection of web page captures from links added to, or changed on, Wikipedia pages. The idea is to bring a reliability to Wikipedia outlinks so that if the pages referenced by Wikipedia articles are changed, or go away, a reader can permanently find what was originally referred to. This is part of the Internet Archive's attempt to rid the web of broken links. The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20171005152148/http://mass.historicbuildingsct.com/?p=107 ## Historic Buildings of Massachusetts # Henry Vassall House (1746) December 1, 2008 / By Daniel / In Cambridge, Colonial, Houses / Leave Comment The oldest part of the Henry Vassall House, on Brattle Street in Cambridge, may date to as early as 1636, although the date usually given today is 1746. In that year, the property was sold by John Vassall Sr., who had purchased it in 1737, to his younger brother Henry Vassall. John Vassall's son, Maj. John Vassall, built the nearby Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House. Henry Vassall was a loyalist at the time of the Revolutionary War and the Vassall House is one of several homes belonging to loyalists along the section of Brattle Street known as Tory Row. These homes were either sold by their owners or seized during the Revolution. Vassall had died in 1769 and in 1775, his widow, Penelope Royall Vassall, fled to Boston and then to her estates in Antigua. According to the Historic Guide to Cambridge (1907): "Just before sailing Madam Vassall petitioned the Provincial Congress, then sitting at Watertown, that she might be allowed to take with her some of her effects. Congress permitted her to take anything that she wanted except "provisions and her medicine chest." The estate was not confiscated, as it belonged to a widow who had taken no active part against the patriots." The Continental Army at the time had only one other medicine chest besides the one in the Vassall House. "From these two all the regimental surgeons had to supply their needs. The fact that the medicines were here, and that there were twenty available rooms, besides halls and out-houses, may have been the reason that this house became the medical headquarters." In 1775, Dr. Benjamin Church, who was effectively the first Surgeon General of the U.S. Army, was found to be sending secret letters to the British Commander, General Thomas Gage. Convicted of "communicating with the enemy," Dr. Church was held for a time in the Vassall House as a prisoner. The house has remained a private home, with a number of alterations and additions being made to it over the years. ### Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Name * Email * ### Search ### Become a Fan! 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train07372
Benjamin Church (physician)
Biography.:"Criminal correspondence" and court martial.
 She had before pressed Wainwood to take her to Captain Wallace, Mr. Dudley, the Collector, or George Rowe, which he declined. She gave him the letter with strict injunctions to deliver it to either of these gentleman.  He, suspecting some improper correspondence, kept the letter and after some time opened it, but not being able to read it, laid it up, where it remained until he received an obscure letter from the woman, expressing an anxiety as to the original letter. He then communicated the whole matter to Mr. Ward, who sent him up with the papers to me. I immediately secured the woman, but for a long time she was proof against every threat and persuasion to discover the author. However she was at length brought to a confession and named Doctor Church. I then immediately secured him and all his papers. Upon the first examination he readily acknowledged the letter and said that it was designed for his brother, etc. The army and country are exceedingly irritated. 
