Colonel Benjamin Tasker, Junior. was a politician in colonial Maryland, and Mayor of Annapolis from 1754 to 1755.
Background
He was the son of Benjamin Tasker, Senior, Provincial Governor of Maryland from 1752 to 1753 and Mayor of Annapolis on many occasions. Benjamin Tasker, Junior. was born in Maryland in 1720, the son of Ann Bladen and Benjamin Tasker, Senior, the Provincial Governor of Maryland from 1752 to 1753.
Career
Benjamin Tasker, Junior. was appointed by Provincial Governor of Maryland, Horatio Sharpe as Commissioner, to secure the assistance of The Six Nations, having been voted £500 by the Maryland General Assembly for this purpose. This commission resulted in the Confederacy of 1752, a union of colonial interests for defense about a quarter of a century before the United States Declaration of Independence. He was one of Maryland’s delegates to the Albany Congress of 1754, another attempt on the part of the colonists to deal jointly with a common problem.
He served on a committee at the Albany congress with Benjamin Franklin which was charged with the task of drawing up a plan for a central government of all the colonies.
Ath the adjournment of the congress, the plan adopted was submitted to the various legislatures for approval. While it was rejected, its goals were pursued later at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
In 1752 he helped to organize a lottery to pay for a town clock in Annapolis. He served as Mayor of Annapolis from 1754 to 1755.
He was dispatched to settle Cresap"s War between Maryland and Pennsylvania.
An owner of thoroughbred horses, Tasker is noted in horse racing circles for having imported from England the mare "Selima" between 1750 and 1752. Sired by Godolphin Arabian, "Selima" was raced until the end of the 1752 season then was sent to Samuel Ogle"s Belair Study in Collington, Maryland. As a broodmare, "Selima" produced ten foals that would become an important bloodline in American racing with important racing offspring such as "Hanover" and is even the ancestress of George Washington"s stallion, "Magnolia."
Tasker died on October 17, 1760, around 40 years of age.