General Notes
He was in William Cobb's Company, John Mitchell's Regiment, discharged November 26, 1779.
He was also in the 7th Company, 8th Regiment, Colonel Michael Jackson, service 9 months, 8 days: roll dated April 1783. He enlisted in Captain Amos Coggswell's Company, Colonel Jackson's Regiment, July 8, 1781, and served until December 23, 1783. He was in the battle of Kingsbridge.
On May 8, 1818, he made application for a pension, which was allowed him for 2 years actual service. At this time he was 56 and resided in Genesee County. He was of Clarenden, New York in 1829.
From his obituary — Another Revolutionary Soldier Gone Died.
At his residence in Clarenden, on the the fourth of the present month, Benjamin Pettengell, in the 83rd year of his age. He was born at Yarmouth, Maine, in the year 1761, and at the age of 20, enlisted in the United States Service as a soldier where he performed with fidelity and courage the severest hardships and trials during three long years of, bloody warfare, Colonial defense against British cruelty and tyrannical oppression without compensation for his service.
The Unequal contest being gloriously ended, and America declared free and independent, he returned in joy to his native Province, with the precious boon of freedom spreading over our delightful country, and destined to encircle the world in it's embrace.
When returning from the service of his country, he endured the frownings of cold and unfeeling selfishness for cordiality and penuriousness instead of needed hospitality and consolation. He was even spurned from the doors of his fellow citizens with contempt and abhorrance, having only the impartial canopy of heaven for this nightly covering, or an airy barn as his nocturnal abode.
In the year 1810, he emigrated to Western New York, then called Genesse County, almost an entire wilderness, inhabited by wild beasts, ferocious savages, with now and then a few rude log huts interspersed over the now beautifuly cultivated domain which we inhabit. Parma was the first place of his residence in New York. He shortly moved to the town of Ogden, and from thence to Clarende, Orleans County, where he lived for the last seventeen years of his life. Up to his seventy-eighth year he gave his ballot as a free citizen to support that government he had so faithfully defended in his youth. Not only did he serve his country in her struggle for Liberty, but, when called upon to defend our northern frontier in the LAST war, he left his family and friends to preserve our national honor and teach Great Britian that the same spirit that inspired the fathers of '76 was still remembered by themselves and their patriotic sons.
The last four years of his life was embittered by the loss of reason gradually declining from honorable old age down to the unconscious, helpless state of infancy. While blessed with reason he was unwavering in the cause of Christianity and virtue, beloved in society and a sincere, devoted member of the Methodist Church.
"In the death of this Soldier, Christian and Friend, our town has been deprived of the last remaining Pensioner — religion of an ornament and helper — society of a friend — an aged companion of a husband — and a mourning circle of children and relatives, of their father and protector in infancy."
(Our Colonial Lines, pp. 82-83)
Birth Notes
now North Yarmouth, Cumberland County, Maine, USA
