Benjamin Williams Crowninshield

Benjamin Williams Crowninshield (December 27, 1772 – February 3, 1851) served as the United States Secretary of the Navy between 1815 and 1818, during the administrations of Presidents James Madison and James Monroe.

Biography
Crowninshield was born in Salem, Massachusetts the son of a sea captain and merchant of the Boston Brahmin Crowninshield family. He worked in the family shipping business, Geo. Crowninshield & Sons, served at sea, and was also active in politics. His family owned the lands near Mineral Spring Pond, where the first Crowninshield family was cradled in the country. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1811 and the state Senate in 1812.

In 1810, Crowninshield builds a mansion at 180 Derby Street on the Salem Waterfront with Salem’s premier architect, Samuel McIntire. The house is currently called the The Brookhouse and provides quality support to senior women ans is located at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. The home that Crowninshield built at 180 Derby Street has had a marvelous history, Robert Brookhouse purchased the home and in 1861 gifted the home to the Association for the Relief of Aged Women.

Crowninshield became Secretary of the Navy in January 1815, a position almost held by his brother Jacob Crowninshield ten years earlier, at the end of the War of 1812 and managed the transition to a peacetime force. This included implementation of the new Board of Commissioners administrative system and the building of several ships of the line, the backbone of a much enhanced Navy. He also oversaw strategy and naval policy for the war with Algiers in 1815.

After leaving Navy office in 1818, Crowninshield returned to business and political affairs in Massachusetts, prospering in both. In addition to serving two more terms in the Massachusetts House, he was also elected to four terms the United States Congress from 1823 to 1831.

On his passing in 1851, Benjamin Williams Crowninshield was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Crowninshield was the great-great-grandfather of Charles Francis Adams III, also Secretary of the Navy from 1929 to 1933.

Namesake
The destroyer USS Crowninshield (DD-134) was named in his honor.