Henry Knox Henry Knox ( July 25 , 1750 – October 25 , 1806 ) was a military officer of the Continental Army and later the United States Army , and also served as the first United States Secretary of War . Born and raised in Boston , Massachusetts , he owned and operated a bookstore there , cultivating an interest in military history and joining a local artillery company . When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775 , he befriended General George Washington , and quickly rose to become the chief artillery officer of the Continental Army . In this role he accompanied Washington on most of his campaigns , and had some involvement in many major actions of the war . He established training centers for artillerymen and manufacturing facilities for weaponry that were valuable assets to the fledgling nation . Following the adoption of the United States Constitution , he became President Washington ' s Secretary of War . In this role he oversaw the development of coastal fortifications , worked to improve the preparedness of local militia , and oversaw the nation ' s military activity in the Northwest Indian War . He was formally responsible for the nation ' s relationship with the Indian population in the territories it claimed , articulating a policy that established federal government supremacy over the states in relating to Indian nations , and called for treating Indian nations as sovereign . Knox ' s idealistic views on the subject were frustrated by ongoing illegal settlements and fraudulent land transfers involving Indian lands . He retired to what is now Thomaston , Maine in 1795 , where he oversaw the rise of a business empire built on borrowed money . He died in 1806 from an infection received after swallowing a chicken bone , leaving an estate that was bankrupt . Early life and marriage . The parents of Henry Knox ( William Knox and Mary ( née Campbell ) ) were of Scotch - Irish origin . His father was a ship builder who , due to financial reverses , left the family for St Eustatius in the West Indies where he died in 1759 of unknown causes . Henry was admitted to the Boston Latin School , where he studied Greek , Latin , arithmetic , and European history . Since he was the oldest son still at home when his father died , he left school at the age of 12 and became a clerk in a bookstore to support his mother . The shop ' s owner , Nicholas Bowes , became a surrogate father figure for the boy . However , Knox was also involved in Boston ' s street gangs , becoming one of the toughest fighters in his neighborhood . Impressed by a militiary demonstration , he joined a local artillery company called The Train at 18 . On March 5 , 1770 Knox was a witness to the Boston massacre . According to his affidavit , he attempted to defuse the situation , trying to convince the British soldiers to return to their quarters . He also testified at the trials of the soldiers , in which all but two were acquitted . In 1771 he opened his own bookshop , the " London Book Store " , in Boston " opposite William ' s Court in Cornhill . " Largely self - educated , he stocked books on military science , and also questioned soldiers who frequented his shop in military matters . In 1772 he cofounded the Boston Grenadier Corps as an offshoot of The Train , and served as its second in command . Shortly before his 23rd birthday Knox accidentally discharged a shotgun , shooting two fingers off his left hand . He managed to bind the wound up and reach a doctor , who sewed the wound up . Knox supported the Sons of Liberty , an organization of agitators against what they considered repressive British colonial policies . It is unknown if he participated in the 1773 Boston Tea Party , but he did serve on guard duty before the incident to make sure no tea was unloaded from the " Dartmouth " , one of the ships involved . The next year he refused a consignment of tea sent to him by James Rivington , a Loyalist in New York . Henry married Lucy Flucker ( 1756 – 1824 ) , the daughter of Boston Loyalists , on June 16 , 1774 , despite opposition from her father that was due to their differing political views . Lucy ' s brother served in the British Army , and her family attempted to lure Knox to service there . Despite long separations due to his military service , the couple were devoted to one another for the rest of his life , and carried on an extensive correspondence . Since the couple fled Boston in 1775 , she remained essentially homeless until the British evacuated the city in March 1776 . Even afterward , she often traveled to visit Knox in the field . Her parents left , never to return , with the British during their withdrawal from Boston after the Continental Army fortified Dorchester Heights , a success that ironically hinged upon Knox ' s Ticonderoga expedition . Military career . Siege of Boston . When the war broke out with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19 , 1775 , Knox and Lucy sneaked out of Boston , and Knox joined the militia army besieging the city . His abandoned bookshop was looted and all of its stock destroyed or stolen . He served under General Artemas Ward , putting his acquired engineering skills to use developing fortifications around the city . He directed rebel cannon fire at the Battle of Bunker Hill . When General George Washington arrived in July 1775 to take command of the army , he was impressed by the work Knox had done . The two also immediately developed a liking for one another , and Knox began to interact regularly with Washington and the other generals of the developing Continental Army . Knox did not have a commission in the army , but John Adams in particular worked in the Second Continental Congress to acquire for him a commission as colonel of the army ' s artillery regiment . Knox bolstered his own case by writing to Adams that Richard Gridley , the older leader of the artillery under Ward , was disliked by his men and in poor health . As the siege wore on , the idea arose that cannons recently captured at the fall of forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point in upstate New York could have a decisive impact on its outcome . Knox is generally credited with suggesting the prospect to Washington , who thereupon put him in charge of an expedition to retrieve them even though Knox ' s commission had not yet arrived . Reaching Ticonderoga on December 5 , Knox commenced what came to be known as the noble train of artillery , hauling by ox - drawn sled 60 tons of cannons and other armaments across some of ice - covered rivers and snow - draped Berkshire Mountains to the Boston siege camps . The region was lightly populated and Knox had to overcome difficulties hiring personnel and draft animals . On several occasions cannons crashed through the ice on river crossings , but the detail ' s men were always able to recover them . In the end , what Knox had expected to take just two weeks actually took more than six , and he was finally able to report the arrival of the weapons train to Washington on January 27 , 1776 . Called by historian Victor Brooks " one of the most stupendous feats of logistics " of the entire war , Knox ' s effort is commemorated by a series of plaques marking the Henry Knox Trail in New York and Massachusetts . Upon the cannons ' arrival in Cambridge they were immediately deployed to fortify the Dorchester Heights recently taken by Washington . So commanding was the new battery over Boston harbor the British withdrew their fleet to Halifax . With the siege ended , Knox undertook the improvement of defenses in Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New York City in anticipation of British attack there . In New York he met Alexander Hamilton , commander of the local artillery . The two men formed a close friendship that lasted until Hamilton ' s death in 1804 . During his military service Knox also established a close friendship with fellow Massachusetts native Benjamin Lincoln . New York and New Jersey campaign . Knox was with Washington ' s army during the New York and New Jersey campaign , including most of the major engagements resulting in the loss of New York City . He narrowly escaped capture following the British invasion of Manhattan , only making it back to the main Continental Army lines through the offices of Aaron Burr . He was in charge of logistics in the critical crossing of the Delaware River that preceded the December 26 , 1776 at the Battle of Trenton . Though hampered by ice and cold , with John Glover ' s Marbleheaders ( 14th Continental Regiment ) manning the boats , he got the attack force of men , horses and artillery across the river without loss . Following the battle he returned the same force , along with hundreds of prisoners , captured supplies and all the boats back across the river by the afternoon of December 26 . Knox was promoted to brigadier general for this accomplishment , and given command of an artillery corps expanded to five regiments . The army again crossed the river a few days later after the decision to make a stand at Trenton . Knox was with the army at the January 2 , 1777 at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek , and again the next day at Princeton . In 1777 while the army was in winter quarters at Morristown , New Jersey , Knox returned to Massachusetts to improve the Army ' s artillery manufacturing capability . He raised an additional battalion of artillerymen and established an armory at Springfield , Massachusetts before returning to the main army in the spring . That armory , and a second at Yorktown , Pennsylvania established by one of his subordinates , remained valuable sources of war material for the rest of the war . Philadelphia campaign . Knox returned to the main army for the 1777 campaign . In June he learned that Congress had appointed Philippe Charles Tronson du Coudray , a French soldier of fortune , to command the artillery . Du Coudray ' s appointment upset not only Knox , who immediately threatened his resignation to Congress , but also John Sullivan and Nathanael Greene , who also protested the politically motivated appointment . Du Coudray was subsequently reassigned to the post of inspector general , and died in a fall from his horse while crossing the Schuylkill River in September 1777 . Knox was present at Brandywine , the first major battle of the Philadelphia campaign , and at Germantown . At Germantown he made the critical suggestion , approved by Washington , to capture rather than bypass the Chew House , a stone mansion that the British had occupied as a strong defensive position . This turned out to significantly delay the army ' s advance and gave the British an opportunity to reform their lines . Knox afterward wrote to Lucy , " To [ morning fog and ] the enemy ' s taking possession of some stone buildings in Germantown , is to be ascribed the loss of the victory . " Knox was also present at the Battle of Monmouth in July 1778 , where Washington commended him for the artillery ' s performance . The army saw no further action that year , but privateer s that Knox and fellow Massachusetts native Henry Jackson invested in were not as successful as they hoped ; many of them were captured by the British . Artillery training school and Yorktown . Knox and the artillery established a winter cantonment at Pluckemin ( a hamlet of Bedminster , New Jersey ) . There Knox established the Continental Army ' s first school for artillery and officer training . This facility is considered the precursor to the United States Military Academy at West Point , New York . While there , through the summer of 1779 , General Knox spent most of his time training more than 1 , 000 soldiers in conditions of low morale and scarce supplies . Conditions were exceptionally harsh in the winter of 1779 – 80 , and Washington ' s army was again largely inactive in 1780 while the main action in the war moved south . In late September 1780 Knox was a member of the court martial that convicted Major John André , the British officer whose arrest exposed the treachery of Benedict Arnold . ( Knox had , in an interesting twist , briefly shared accommodations with André while en route to Ticonderoga in 1775 , when the latter was traveling south on parole after being captured near Montreal . ) During these years of relative inaction Knox made several trips to the northern states as Washington ' s representative to increase the flow of men and supplies to the army . In 1781 Knox accompanied Washington ' s army south and participated in the decisive Siege of Yorktown . He was personally active in the field , directing the placement and aiming of the artillery . The Marquis de Chastellux , with whom Knox established a good friendship , wrote of Knox , " We cannot sufficiently admire the intelligence and activity with which he collected from different places and transported to the batteries more than thirty pieces . . . " , and " one - half has been said in commending his military genius . Washington specifically called out both Knox and the French artillery chief for their roles in the siege , and recommended to Congress that Knox be promoted . Demobilization . Knox was promoted to major general on March 22 , 1782 ; he became the army ' s youngest major general . He and Congressman Gouverneur Morris were assigned to negotiate prisoner exchanges with the British . These negotiations failed because the sides could not agree on processes and terms for matching various classes of captives . He joined the main army at Newburgh , New York , and inspected the facilities at West Point , considered a crucial defensive position . After enumerating its defects and needs , Washington appointed him its commander in August 1782 . The next month he was devastated by the death of his nine - month - old son , and fell into a depression . He soldiered on , however , becoming involved in negotiations with the Confederation Congress and Secretary at War Benjamin Lincoln over the issue of pensions and overdue compensation for the military . Knox wrote a memorial , signed by a number of high - profile officers , suggesting that Congress pay all back pay immediately and offer a lump - sum pension rather than providing half - pay for life . The unwillingness of Congress to deal with the issue prompted Knox to write a warning letter , in which he wrote " I consider the reputation of the American army as one of the most immaculate things on earth , and that we should even suffer wrongs and injuries to the utmost verge of toleration rather than sully it in the least degree . But there is a point beyond which there is no sufferance . I pray we will sincerely not pass it . " When rumors of mutiny in the higher rank circulated in March 1783 , Washington held a meeting in which he made an impassioned plea for restraint . In the meeting , Knox introduced motions reaffirming the officers ' attachment to Washington and Congress , helping to defuse the crisis . Because of the unresolved issues , however , Knox and others became vigorous proponents of a stronger national government , something which leading political leaders ( including Thomas Jefferson , John Hancock , and Samuel Adams ) opposed at the time . With the arrival of news of a preliminary peace in April 1783 Congress began to order the demobilization of the army , and Washington gave Knox day - to - day command of what remained of the army . During this time Knox organized the Society of the Cincinnati , a hereditary fraternity of Revolutionary War officers that survives to this day . The hereditary nature of its membership raised some eyebrows , but it was generally well received . He also drafted plans for the establishment of a peacetime army , many of whose provisions were eventually implemented . These plans included two military academies ( one naval and one army , the latter occupying the critical base at West Point ) , and bodies of troops to maintain the nation ' s borders . When the British withdrew the last of their troops from New York on November 21 , 1783 , Knox was at the head of the American forces that took over . He stood next to Washington during the latter ' s farewell address on December 4 at Fraunces Tavern . After Washington retired , Knox became the senior officer of the army . The post of Secretary at War became available when Benjamin Lincoln resigned in November 1783 , and Lincoln had recommended Knox to follow him . Although the Confederation Congress had been aware of Lincoln ' s intent to resign when the formal peace arrived , it had not named a successor . Knox had been considered for the job when it was given to Lincoln in 1781 , and expressed his interest in succeeding Lincoln . However , in the absence of a guiding hand in the War Department , Congress attempted to implement an idea for a standing militia force as a peacetime army . Knox resigned his army commission in early 1784 , " well satisfied to be excluded from any responsibility in arrangements which it is impossible to execute " , and Congress ' idea failed . Knox returned to Massachusetts , where the family established a home in Dorchester . Knox worked to reassemble a large parcel of land in Maine ( parts of what are sometimes called the Waldo Patent and the Bingham Purchase ) that had been confiscated from his Loyalist in - laws . He was able to assemble a vast multi - million acre real estate empire in Maine , including almost all of the old Flucker holdings , in part by getting appointed the state ' s official for disposing of seized lands , and then rigging the sale of his in - laws ' lands to a straw buyer acting on his behalf . He was also appointed to a state commission responsible for negotiating treaty provisions with the Penobscot Indians of central Maine . This commission also became involved in investigating issues surrounding the eastern border with Nova Scotia ( now New Brunswick ) , a matter that would not be resolved until the 1842 Webster - Ashburton Treaty . Secretary of War . Congress finally appointed Knox the nation ' s second Secretary at War on March 8 , 1785 , after considering a number of other candidates . The army was by then a fraction of its former size , and the new nation ' s westward expansion was exacerbating frontier conflicts with Indian tribes . The War Department Knox took over had two civilian employees and a single small regiment . Congress in 1785 authorized the establishment of a 700 man army . Knox was only able to recruit six of the authorized ten companies , which were stationed on the western frontier . Some members of the Confederation Congress opposed the establishment of a peacetime army , and also opposed the establishment of a military academy ( one of Knox ' s key proposals ) on the basis that it would establish an egalitarian military class capable of dominating society . Knox first proposed an army mainly composed of state militia , specifically seeking to change attitudes in Congress about a democratically managed military . Although the plan was initially rejected , many of its details were eventually adopted in the formation and administration of the United States Army . The need for an enhanced military role took on some urgency in 1786 when Shays ' Rebellion broke out in Massachusetts , threatening the Springfield Armory . Knox personally went to Springfield to see to its defense . Although Benjamin Lincoln raised a militia force and put down the rebellion , it highlighted the weakness of both the military and defects in the Articles of Confederation that hampered Congressional ability to act on the matter . In the rebellion ' s aftermath Congress called what became known as the Constitutional Convention , in which the current United States Constitution was drafted . Knox in early 1787 sent George Washington a draft proposal for a government that bears significant resemblance to what was eventually adopted . When Washington asked Knox if he should attend the convention , Knox urged him to do so : " It would be circumstance highly honorable to your fame , in the judgment of the present and future ages , and double entitle you to the glorious epithet — Father of Your Country . " This is possibly the earliest documented application of the phrase " Father of His Country " to Washington . Knox actively promoted the adoption of the new constitution , engaging correspondents in many colonies on the subject , but especially concentrating on achieving its adoption by Massachusetts , where its support was seen as weak . After its adoption he was considered by some to be a viable candidate for , but he preferred to remain the war office , and the office went to John Adams . With the adoption of the new constitution and the establishment of the War Department , Knox ' s title changed to Secretary of War . As part of his duties as Secretary of War , Knox was responsible for implementation of the Militia Act of 1792 . This included his evaluation of the arms and readiness of the militia finding that only 20 % of the 450 , 000 members of the militia were capable of arming themselves at their own expense for militia service as required by the act . To resolve this arms shortage , Knox recommended to Congress that the federal government increase the purchase of imported weapons , ban the export of domestically produced weapons and establish facilities for the domestic production and stockpiling of weapons . These facilities included the existing Springfield Armory and another at Harpers Ferry , Virginia . In 1792 Congress , acting on a detailed proposal from Knox , created the short - lived Legion of the United States . When the French Revolutionary Wars broke out in 1793 , American merchant shipping began to be affected after Washington formally declared neutrality in the conflict . Both France and Britain began interfering with American shipping . Most of the Continental Navy ' s few ships were sold off at the end of the revolutionary war , leaving the nation ' s merchant fleet without any defenses against piracy or seizure on the high seas . Knox urged and presided over the creation of a regular United States Navy and the establishment of a series of coastal fortifications . Indian diplomacy and war . Knox was responsible for managing the nation ' s relations with the Native Americans resident in lands it claimed , following a 1789 act of U . S . Congress . Knox , in several documents drafted for Washington and Congress , articulated the nation ' s early Native American policy . He stated that Indian nations were sovereign and possessed the land they occupied , and that the federal government ( and not the states ) should therefore be responsible for dealings with them . These policies were implemented in part by the passage of the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 , which forbade the sale of Native American lands except in connection with a treaty with the federal government . Knox wrote , " The Indians , being the prior occupants , possess the right to the soil . It cannot be taken from them except by their consent , or by rights of conquest in case of a just war . To dispossess them on any other principle would be a great violation of the fundamental laws of nature . " Historian Robert Miller claims that statements like these seem to support indigenous rights to land , but were ignored in the practice of the Doctrine of Discovery , which came to govern the taking of Native lands . American Indian wars , including the Chickamauga Wars ( 1776 – 1794 ) and the Northwest Indian War , would occupy much of his tenure . During the years of the Confederation , there had been insufficient Congressional support for any significant action against the Nations on the western frontier . The British supported the northwestern tribes from frontier bases that they continued to occupy after the Revolutionary War ended ( in violation of the Treaty of Paris ) , and the Cherokee and Creek continued to contest illegal encroachment of colonial settlers on their lands . In October 1790 Knox organized a campaign led by General Josiah Harmar into the Northwest Territory in retaliation for Native American raids against colonial settlers in that territory and that of present - day Kentucky . That campaign , and a second one in 1791 led by territorial Governor Arthur St . Clair , both failed in the objective of pacifying the Native Americans , and Knox was widely blamed for the failure to protect the frontier . Seeking to close the issue before he left office , he organized an expedition led by Anthony Wayne that brought the conflict to a meaningful end with the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers . Wayne ' s " troops had burned ' immense fields of corn ' for a stretch of about fifty miles along the river " , in a move that affected civilian non - combatants . The result of American military action in the Northwest led to the Treaty of Greenville , which forced the defeated Native Americans to cede lands in the Ohio area . The bloody campaigns that Secretary Knox oversaw in some cases involved armies many times larger than later battles in the 1870s . The Native American nations refused to be removed from their lands without a fight , and they opposed the Americans ' attempts to forcefully remove them in warfare , by trickery or by treaties , since they had owned and lived on the lands for thousands of years . One group of Americans wanted direct " Indian Removal " and the mass extermination of any tribe on land it wanted ; Washington and Secretary Knox also wanted the lands . They generally ( though not always ) felt the use of force would be too costly to Americans , and sought other means to take Native American lands . Instead , Knox at first recommended a continuation of British policies , furnishing the Native nations with livestock , farming implements , and missionaries , in order to pacify them . After failing to appease the Cherokee and Creek with a large cache of gifts in 1789 , Knox eventually signed the Treaty of New York on behalf of the nation in 1790 , ending conflict with some , but not all , Cherokee tribal units . Of the genocide of the native populations in the nation ' s most heavily populated areas , Knox wrote , " A future historian may mark the causes of this destruction of the human race in sable colors . " Noam Chomsky claims that the nation ' s leaders " knew what they were doing " , and often used language saying they were the natives ' " benefactors " , " philanthropists and humanitarians " , when in reality they were engaged in the " genocidal practices " of extermination and " Indian Removal " . In fact , Knox said what the Europeans and Americans were doing to the native nations was so harmful that " our modes . . . have been more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru " . He went on to cite the fact that where there was white civilization , there was " the utter extirpation " of natives , or almost none left . Regardless of whether the Americans wanted to obtain Native American lands by purchase , conquest or other means , " there would be no lasting peace while land remained the object of American Indian policy " , which continued after Knox left office . Washington ' s policies , as carried out by Secretary Knox , set the stage for the rise of Tecumseh . Many thousands of Native Americans refused to accept treaties , claiming that they had not approved them and that their only purpose was to remove them from their lands . They specifically cited the Treaty of Greenville , and reoccupied ancestral lands , beginning renewed resistance in the Northwest that was finally crushed in the War of 1812 . On January 2 , 1795 , Knox left the government and returned to his home at Thomaston ( now in Maine , but then still a part of Massachusetts ) , to devote himself to caring for his growing family . He was succeeded in the post of Secretary of War by Timothy Pickering . Business ventures and land speculation . Knox settled in Thomaston , and built a magnificent three story mansion surrounded by outbuildings called Montpelier , the whole of " a beauty , symmetry and magnificence " said to be unequaled in the Commonwealth . He spent the rest of his life engaged in cattle farming , ship building , brick making and real estate speculation . Connections formed during the war years served Knox well , as he invested widely in frontier real estate , from the Ohio valley to Maine ( although his largest holdings by far were those in Maine ) . Although he claimed to treat settlers on his Maine lands fairly , he used intermediaries to evict those who did not pay their rents or squatted on the land . These tactics upset those settlers to the point where they once threatened to burn Montpelier down . One of the people Knox took land from was Joseph Plumb Martin , a soldier who settled in Maine and wrote a memoir of his war experiences . Knox briefly represented Thomaston in the Massachusetts General Court , but he eventually became so unpopular that he lost the seat to a local blacksmith . Many incidents in Knox ' s career attest to his character , both good and bad . As one example , when he and Lucy were forced to leave Boston in 1775 , his home was used to house British officers who looted his bookstore . In spite of personal financial hardships , he managed to make the last payment of £1 , 000 to Longman Printers in London to cover the price of a shipment of books that he never received . In Maine , however , he would be remembered as a grasping tyrant and was forever immortalized in Nathanial Hawthorne ' s " The House of the Seven Gables " , for which he served as the model for Col . Pyncheon . Knox was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1805 . As well as building a landed estate , Knox attempted to enlarge his fortune through industrial craft enterprises . He had interests in lumbering , ship building , stock raising and brick manufacturing . Unfortunately for him , these businesses failed ( due in part to a lack of focused investment ) , and Knox built up significant debts . Knox was forced to sell large tracts of land in Maine to satisfy some of his creditors . The purchaser of his Maine lands was a Pennsylvania banker named William Bingham , leading those tracts to become known locally as the Bingham Purchase . Death . In 1806 while visiting a friend Knox swallowed a chicken bone , which lodged in his throat and became infected . He died at home three days later , on October 25 , 1806 , and was buried on his estate in Thomaston with full military honors . Lucy died in 1824 , having sold off more portions of the family properties to pay the creditors of Knox ' s insolvent estate . The couple had 13 children although only one son , Henry Jackson Knox , survived to adulthood , and he was known for his drinking and scandalous behavior . Repenting and " impressed with a deep sense of his own unworthiness , ' upon his death in 1832 the wastrel son Henry requested that his remains not be interred with his honored relatives but deposited in a common burial ground " with no stone to tell where . " Montpelier remained in the family until it was demolished in 1871 to make way for the Brunswick - Rockland railroad line . The only surviving structure is an outbuilding that currently houses the Thomaston Historical Society . The current Montpelier Museum is a 20th - century reconstruction not far from the original ' s site . Honors . Towns and cities in Maine , Indiana , Iowa , Illinois , and Tennessee are named Knox or Knoxville in his honor . There are counties named for Knox in Illinois , Indiana , Kentucky , Maine , Missouri , Nebraska , Ohio , Tennessee and Texas . The house he used as a headquarters in New Windsor , New York during the Revolution has been preserved as Knox ' s Headquarters State Historic Site , and has been declared a National Historic Landmark . Knox Township , Illinois is named after Knox , as is Knox Place in The Bronx , New York . Knox has been honored by the United States Postal Service with an 8¢ Great Americans series postage stamp . Two forts , one in Kentucky and another in Maine were named after him . Knox Hall at Fort Sill , Oklahoma , home of the United States Army Field Artillery School , is named in his honor , as is an annual award recognizing the performance of United States artillery batteries . The Major General Nathanael Greene class large coastal tug USAV Major General Henry Knox ( LT - 802 ) is named in honor of Knox . His papers have been preserved at the Massachusetts Historical Society , and his personal library resides in the Boston Athenaeum in proximity to that of his friend , George Washington .