Colman was born in Boston, October 28, 1710, the tenth child of John Colman and Judith Hobby Colman. John Colman was the elder brother of Reverend Dr. Benjamin Colman of the Church in Brattle Square whose portrait Smibert painted in 1734. Benjamin graduated from Harvard in 1727 and ranked among a handful of families at the pinnacle of Boston society.(1) On March 24, 1736, he married Deborah Oulton, daughter of John and Deborah (Legge) Oulton of Marblehead. On October 12, 1738, she died shortly after having given birth to their second child. Within less than a year Colman married Hannah Pemberton, a daughter of James and Hannah (Penhallow) Pemberton. Smibert had painted her portrait (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) in July 1734. Benjamin's portrait was apparently done to commemorate this second marriage. Colman fathered eleven children by his two wives. Like his father, Benjamin was a merchant. In 1741 he formed a partnership with Nathaniel Sparhawk, and five years later they reached the height of their activity and commercial success, when they supplied the uniforms to the Massachusetts troops assaulting Louisbourg and workmen, supplies, and construction material to the forces that remained there. Their financial success, however, was short lived, and by 1758 Colman's firm declared bankruptcy. Colman's death on April 20, 1765, his obituary identified him as "formerly a noted Merchant in this Town."

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