Benjamin Church, the Sons of Liberty Leader Who Wrote Coded Letters to the British

Posthumous portrait of Dr. Benjamin Church (National Library of Medicine, via the National Park Service's page).

Dr. Benjamin Church was one of the prominent leaders of the Sons of Liberty, trusted by Joseph Warren, Sam Adams, John Adams and Paul Revere. By early 1775, according to the National Park Service, he had begun selling information in coded letters to General Thomas Gage, commander in chief of the British forces in America. One of those letters was found and brought to General George Washington's attention.

The meeting

On October 3, 1775, Washington and his leading advisors met at headquarters, now Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, to discuss Church's suspected treason. Church admitted writing the coded letter but said he had done it to obtain intelligence from the British army for the Continental Army. Was he a traitor? The Park Service poses that question to visitors, who are invited to decode the letter with Church's cipher and decide for themselves.

The cipher used by Benjamin Church to code his secret messages (NPS photo).

What the letter said

The decoded lines of the six coded messages read:

What became of him

Church was put on trial and imprisoned across the street from headquarters. He was eventually banished from the colony and presumably sailed for the West Indies. The ship disappeared, and he was never heard from again.

Sources

• National Park Service, Traitor! Decoding Benjamin Church; rewritten in hubnx's own words.