Order Your Books…
In time for the 250th Birthday of the United States in 2026, DFCLT presents books that tell the True Stories of Two Patriots of the American Revolution, Bristol Budd Sampson and Abel Benson. With a narrative written in rhyming verse and beautifully illustrated, the books are perfect for children, yet share stories adults appreciate, too.
Abel Benson: Patriot of the American Revolution tells the dramatic story of Abel Benson, young African American boy from Framingham, Massachusetts who, on the night of April 18, 1775, was one of the relay riders, like Paul Revere, who helped launch the American Revolution. With a narrative written in rhyming verse, by Margaret Denise Dennis, and beautifully illustrated by Eric Battle, the book tells the true story of Abel Benson who was also a talented musician, as he rides on horseback and sounds the alarm with his trumpet, to alert the American colonists in Middlesex County that the British King’s Regulars are coming to confiscate the weapons stored at Concord.
Born in 1766, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to an African American father, William Benson, and Sarah Perry a white American mother from Sudbury, MA, Abel Benson was also the grandson of Nero Benson who had been a trumpeter in the Framingham Militia, in 1825. In 1781, when Abel was 14 years old, he enlisted in the Continental Army and served to the end of the Revolutionary War. After the war, he received a pension and a land grant, married, and had twelve children. Abel Benson is buried at the Old Burying Ground on Main Street in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, where one can view his headstone.
Abel Benson was the first cousin of Hannah Benson Dennis, who was born and married in Concord, MA and moved to Pennsylvania with her husband James Dennis, in 1818. Margaret “Denise” Dennis, the author of this book, is the 3x-great-granddaughter of Hannah Benson Dennis and Founding Chair & CEO of the Dennis Farm Charitable Land Trust, which is preserving the Dennis Farm as a cultural heritage and educational site.
The DFCLT team and booth at the American Library Association Conference, in Philadelphia, June 27-30, 2025.
The DFCLT hosted a booth at the American Library Association’s 2025 conference, June 27-30, to promote and sell Bristol Budd Sampson: Patriot of the American Revolution and Abel Benson: Patriot of the American Revolution, both by Margaret Denise Dennis. Bristol Budd Sampson is illustrated by Kimberley Lyles-Folkman and Abel Benson is illustrated by Eric J. Battle.
Bristol Budd Sampson:
Patriot of the American Revolution
By Margaret Denise Dennis
Illustrations By Kimberley Lyles-Folkman
Beautifully written by Margaret Denise Dennis and exquisitely illustrated by Kimberley Lyles-Folkman, Bristol Budd Sampson: Patriot of the American Revolution, tells the true story of Bristol Budd Sampson, an African American man from Connecticut who in March 1777, when he was a teenager, enlisted in the Continental Army and served in the 2nd Regiment of the Connecticut Line until the end of American Revolutionary War, in 1783. Written for a juvenile audience, the book is a rhyming, 31-verse, narrative poem of four lines per verse with fifteen full-color illustrations. It is based on Bristol Budd Sampson’s Revolutionary War Pension File and history books from the Northeast Pennsylvania county and township where lived from the early 19th century until he passed away in 1848.
In addition to his service, which included the skirmish at Whitemarsh, PA in 1777, the brutal winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, the 1778 Battle of Monmouth, NJ, and the Elite Light Infantry’s taking of Stony Point, NY, the book describes Sampson’s quest to receive his pension after the war. By 1818, when the US government made pensions available to disabled veterans of the Revolutionary War, Bristol Budd Sampson was blind and living with his in-laws, free African Americans, on their farm in Pennsylvania. The book reveals the determination he showed in petitioning for his pension and the arduous journey he made to New Canaan, Connecticut in order to secure written confirmation of his service from his former commanding officer. It also describes the final years of his life, when and his wife Phoebe Perkins Sampson lived with their children on a farm adjacent to her parents’ farm.
The book’s author, Margaret Denise Dennis, is a direct descendant of Bristol Budd Sampson’s in-laws and is President and CEO of The Dennis Farm Charitable Land Trust that maintains the family cemetery where he is buried, the Perkins-Dennis Cemetery, on The Dennis Farm in Pennsylvania. The Farm is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is her fourth book, the others including Black History for Beginners, are written under the name Denise Dennis.
Bristol Budd Sampson: Patriot of the American Revolution is now available in hardcover online.
Keystone College Press: www.keystone.edu
Amazon: Bristol Budd Sampson: Patriot of the American Revolution by Margaret Denise Dennis