Benjamin Young Prime
Benjamin Young Prime was an early American physician and poet born in 1733 in Huntington, Long Island, New York. He was the son of a Congregational minister and pursued a career in medicine, serving as a tutor at the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University. After studying further in London, he published his first volume of poetry, *The Patriot Muse*, in 1764, reflecting on contemporary events like the French and Indian War. Initially loyal to Britain, Prime's views shifted towards American nationalism following the Stamp Act, leading him to express passionate support for American liberties through his writings, such as the poem "Sons of Liberty."
As tensions escalated during the American Revolutionary War, he and his family relocated to Connecticut to escape British troops. His literary contributions included *The Fall of Lucifer*, responding to Benedict Arnold's defection, and *Columbia's Glory*, which features a notable elegy for George Washington. Throughout his life, Prime remained active in medicine and was fluent in multiple languages, with a collection of his works preserved at the Princeton Theological Seminary. He had five children, including Nathaniel Prime, who later published an edition of his father's previously unpublished poems.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Benjamin Young Prime
Poet
- Born: December 20, 1733
- Birthplace: Huntington, Long Island, New York
- Died: October 31, 1791
Biography
Early American physician and poet Benjamin Young Prime was born in Huntington, Long Island, New York, in 1733, the son of a Congregational minister. Prime studied medicine and served as a tutor at the College of New Jersey, which moved to Princeton during his tenure there, around 1755. After leaving Princeton in 1756, he practiced medicine in Long Island. He received an honorary master’s degree from his father’s alma mater, Yale University, in 1760.
In 1762, Prime traveled to London to pursue further medical study. He had consistently written poetry throughout his life, but his first volume of verse, The Patriot Muse, or Poems on Some Principal Events of the Late War. . . , was printed in London in 1764. The war of the volume’s title was the French and Indian War, and the “patriotism” mentioned is loyalty to Britain, not commitment to American independence. Prime completed a doctoral dissertation in London, receiving an M.D. from the University of Leyden in 1764.
Although educated in Britain and loyal to the crown, the passage of the Stamp Act shortly after his return to New York turned Prime on the path to American nationalism. During the second half of the 1760’s, Prime’s published writings, in particular his poem “Sons of Liberty,” written in direct response to the Stamp Act, were so passionate on the subject of American liberties that he was afraid of “drubbing” (beating) and imprisonment. He and his family fled to Connecticut, leaving behind a number of valuable possessions, when the British arrived in Long Island early in the Revolutionary War. His wife, Mary Wheelwright Prime, hid her family’s silver service in the well behind their house and was able to recover it when the family returned after the war.
In 1781, Prime published The Fall of Lucifer on the scandal of Benedict Arnold’s defection, the only poem he published during the Revolutionary War. The final work published during his lifetime, completed just before his death in 1791, was Columbia’s Glory, a historical poem on the Revolution War, one quarter of which is a critically praised elegy for George Washington. Prime was fluent in several modern languages and Latin and his papers, housed at the Princeton Theological Seminary, contain numerous translations and religious poetry, including a Latinate exercise on a Psalm, rendering it in meters used in the odes of Horace. Prime continued practicing medicine throughout his life. He had five children, including the author and Minister Nathaniel Prime, who published an edition of his father’s then-unpublished poems in 1840 and an ecclesiastical history of Long Island in 1845.