Margaret (Peggy) Shippen Arnold was born the youngest of three daughters to Judge Edward Shippen in 1760. She was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she met and married Benedict Arnold at the age of eighteen in April 1779. Benedict Arnold was then thirty-eight, a Colonel in the U.S. Army and widowed by his first wife, Margaret Mansfield Arnold, with whom he had three sons including Richard and Henry Arnold.

In May 1779 Benedict Arnold started negotiating with the British, and committed treason against the United States. He was forced to escape by a ship, called the Vulture. The family moved to England, then to Canada and back to England where he and Peggy settled in exile with their five children: Edward Shippen Arnold (1780-1813), James Robertson Arnold (1781-1854), George Arnold (1878-1828) Sophia Matilda Arnold (1785-1828), and William Fitch Arnold (1798-1846).

When Benedict Arnold died in 1801 he left his family in debt, and Peggy took on the burden of the family finances and educating her children. She died in 1804.

Copyright © 2003 University of Denver