Bussey, Benjamin, 1757-1842.

Benjamin Bussey was born in 1757 in Stoughton (later Canton), Massachusetts. He served in the American Revolution seeing service at Saratoga and rising to the rank of Quartermaster. About 1779 he went into business as a silversmith in Dedham, Massachusetts and he married in 1780. By 1792, when he moved to Boston, his business had expanded into trading in a variety of goods. He was highly sucessful and in the following years engaged in overseas trade as well. He retired from business in 1806 and bought an estate in Roxbury, Massachusetts, turing to his interests in farming and manufacturing. He established woolen mills in Dedham and bought extensive properties in Maine. In 1815 he built a mansion on his Roxbury property where he resided until his death in 1842.

In his will, Bussey gave his Roxbury property to Harvard University for the "instruction in practical agriculture, in useful and ornamental gardening, in botany, and in such other branches of natural science as may tend to promote a knowledge of practical agriculture, and the various arts subservient thereto and connected therewith." A number of years would elapse before Harvard could act upon the bequest. By 1871 the Bussey Institution had been established to carry out the terms of the will. The rest of Bussey's bequest was organized in to the Arnold Arboretum in 1872.

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