In addition, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village deaccessioned in 2002
two Benton models which had lost their original musical attachments and labels, the
Laura steamship model and a second steamship model of uncertain name. Vallejo
Antiques, which owns the second of these models, believes the model may depict the
steamship George Q. Whitney, but as Benton is not known to have made two models for
any one vessel and Christie’s stated in _____ that Benton’s Whitney model was privately
owned, the attribution may not be secure.
Benton collectors and the dealers and auction houses which have handled Benton
models often ask: “How many models did John Dean Benton construct?”
Benton was far more productive than previously estimated. The New York Times
stated on February 27, 1879:”A Providence machinist has made $360,000 worth of gold
and silver models of locomotives, ships, palace cars, &c. The number is 56.” Although
Benton’s name was not mentioned, this was unquestionably a reference to him. The
Boston Evening Transcript stated in October 20, 1890, two days after Benton’s death: “He set to work making models, and in all turned out 125 different working automata of
the nickel-in-the-slot order.”
The truth may lie somewhere between these two numbers. Although Benton is known
to have made coin-operated models during the last working years of his career, little is
known about these and only one can even be identified in contemporary newspaper
references from the 1880s. It seems safe to conclude that Benton must have made at least
75 models, though the actual number may be far higher.
Many aspects of Benton’s working career remain unclear. But certain facts can be stated.
John Dean Benton was born in Boston Harbor in 1824, in a federal fortification where his
father Joseph Dean Benton was an Army officer. By 1828, Joseph Dean Benton was
living in Providence, Rhode Island, where he died in October 1862 and was buried in
Swan Point Cemetery; John Dean Benton’s mother Jane Whalen Clark Benton had
already died in October 1849.
John Dean Benton was apprenticed to a Providence jewelry firm, and that apprenticeship
ended about 1844, when Benton is first separately listed in a Providence city directory as
a “carpenter.” Benton married Caroline Elizabeth Manchester on July 8, 1845, and they
became the parents of two children, a son born in October 1853 who died young in
January 1855 and a daughter named Jennie who survived childhood and whose husband
Frank H. Gladding apparently did engraving work for Benton in both Philadelphia and
Providence.
Until 1863, very little can be known about Benton’s working career. He may have
been living in New York City in 1860, and was certainly living in Rochester, NY for two
years during the 1850s. Otherwise Benton appears in Providence city directories.
Benton enlisted in Company K of the Second Rhode Island Infantry Regiment on August
1, 1861, but contracted rheumatism while serving at Camp Brightwood in the District of
Columbia and was given a disability discharge on January 24, 1862. Benton’s Civil War
pension file at National Archives documents in considerable detail his progressive
worsening medical condition from 1878 until 1889 but says almost nothing about his
working career.
Benton next went to Wilmington, Delaware, perhaps to help make surgical
instruments. The Harlan & Hollingsworth shipbuilding firm had received a contract to
construct one of the nine ironclad monitor vessels for the second generation of monitors
in the federal Navy. This was the Patapsco, launched in late September 1862.
According to several obituaries, Benton was asked to make a miniature model of this
monitor in gold as an item of personal jewelry and did so, to much praise because the tiny
golden vessel had moving parts.
By the spring of 1863, Benton had received a commission from Novelty Iron Works in
_____, NY to make a much larger scale model of the iron-clad vessel Roanoke. This was
the first Benton model to receive widespread publicity. By the time this model, which
was 18 inches in length, had been completed in April 1863, Benton already had a second commission, to make for a group of shipbuilding firms a “golden” monitor for
presentation to Captain John Ericsson, the inventor of the original Monitor and the
designer of the second generation of monitors. This monitor model, which like most later
Benton models sat atop a music box and had moving parts “powered” by the motion of
the turning musical cylinder, appears to have been destroyed by Ericsson early in 1881,
when it was melted on his instructions.
Between 1863 and 1870, the story of Benton’s various models is relatively clear,
though probably not all models made during this period can be securely documented.
Benton would complete a model and arrange for an exhibition of several hours or even
several days in the window of a friendly local merchant. The models were such
extravagantly novel objects that local newspapers were quick to describe them in some
detail, sometimes even naming the tunes the music box could play. These descriptions
might also state the scale to which a model had been made, its length, and the weights of
gold and silver used in its construction. Benton exhibited several of the models made
during this period in more than one city.
Benton achieved a degree of international recognition in 1867 when Tiffany &
Company sent two Benton steamship models (the Commonwealth and the Vanderbilt) to
the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The Tiffany & Company exhibit received a
bronze medal, but it is far from clear whether this medal was awarded because of the
Tiffany silver or because of the Benton models.