Benjamin Williams Crowninshield (1772–1851), businessman and public official, belonged to a family of merchant-seamen in his native Salem, Massachusetts. He was a partner in his father’s firm, George Crowninshield & Sons and its successors, a business that prospered during the War of 1812 but dissolved in 1817. Crowninshield was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1811 and to the state senate the following year. President James Madison appointed him secretary of the navy late in 1814. Although at first declining the position, Crowninshield soon consented and remained in office until his resignation in 1818. Thereafter he returned to his business pursuits, having been elected president of the Merchants Bank of Salem in 1811. Crowninshield became a director of the Second Bank of the United States in 1822 and remained connected to that institution until its charter expired in 1836. He reentered the political arena with election to the Massachusetts House in 1821, and he sat in the United States House of Representatives, 1823–31, where he aligned himself politically with John Quincy Adams. In 1833 Crowninshield served one final term in the Massachusetts House before retiring to Boston, where he died (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 2:595, 597, 3:142 [16, 19 Dec. 1814, 27 Nov. 1818]; Boston New-England Palladium, 26 July 1811; Salem Gazette, 22 Jan. 1822; New-Bedford Mercury, 26 Feb. 1836; Boston Daily Atlas, 4 Feb. 1851).

In a letter written to Martha Jefferson Randolph from Washington, 17 Feb. [1816], Ellen W. Randolph (Coolidge) commented on seeing Thomas Mann Randolph (1798–1835), the son of Thomas Eston Randolph, who had come to that city seeking a midshipman’s warrant. She noted that although Randolph had other letters of recommendation, Crowninshield told him that “Mr Jefferson’s is sufficient” and promised to award the young man the next vacancy (RC in ViU: Coolidge Correspondence; partially dated).

Crowninshield’s deceased brother Jacob Crowninshield, who declined TJ’s nomination in 1805 to serve as secretary of the navy, sat in the United States House of Representatives from 1803 until his death in 1808 (DAB).