One of the eleven or more children of Joseph and Alsa (or Elsie) Sherman Slade of Swansea, Massachusetts, Benjamin Slade is said to have been a fervent patriot. He named his first son Lafayette, and painted the house he built above Waterford, New York, in the colors of the American flag--hence earning for it the name "Red, White and Blue House". Benjamin Slade inherited a portrait of his father (now in the NGA), painted in 1816 by one of the best known of the American naive painters, Ammi Phillips. A "Slade-Babcock Genealogical Newsletter" existed as of 1968; copies of it were sent to the New England Historical Society and the Library of Congress.