Lamberton, Benjamin Peffer

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1862
    Full name
    Benjamin Peffer Lamberton
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    3
    Family
    Elizabeth Stedman (wife, 1873)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Other
    Other Education
    Carlisle High School, PA; Naval Academy
    Occupation
    Military
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Military
    Union Navy
    US military (Post-Civil War)

    Benjamin Peffer Lamberton (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    Benjamin Lamberton was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on February 25, 1844.  He attended Carlisle High School and the Dickinson Preparatory School before spending three years as a member of the Dickinson College class of 1862.  He was a member of Belles Lettres Literary Society.

    Lamberton decided on a naval career and in 1861 transferred to the Naval Academy, graduating in time to see active service on the U.S.S. America as it pursued the Confederate raiders Florida and Tallahassee in 1864.  He served with the rank of lieutenant commander from 1868 to 1885 when he was promoted to commander and assigned to the Lighthouse Board in Charleston as an inspector.  In 1898 Lamberton was ordered to command the cruiser Boston of the Asiatic Squadron, but upon arrival in Hong Kong he was appointed as chief of staff to Commodore Dewey.  He fought alongside Dewey at the Battle of Manila and later acted as naval representative to the negotiating of the Spanish surrender.  He was promoted to captain soon after and took command of the U.S.S. Olympia.  In 1903, he became a rear admiral with the command of the South Atlantic Squadron.  His final post was as chairman of the Lighthouse Board from which he retired on his sixty-second birthday.

    He married Elizabeth Stedman of Boston in 1873.  He lived in Washington, D.C. during his retirement, duck hunting and fishing with his friend President Cleveland.  Benjamin Lamberton died in Washington on June 9, 1912.
    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “Benjamin Peffer Lamberton,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/l/ed_lambertonB.htm.
    How to Cite This Page: "Lamberton, Benjamin Peffer," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/6053.