Brown County MN Archives Biographies.....Benham, Frederick Fletcher 1830 - 1889
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 27, 2014, 1:13 pm

Source: See Below
Author: L. A. Fritsche

FREDERICK FLETCHER BENHAM.

    Among the early residents of Stark township, this county, there were few who
exerted a wider or more potent influence for good in that community than did the
late Frederick Fletcher Benham, for years a well-to-do farmer of that township,
one time county commissioner and rural postmaster, who did well his part in the
work of developing the better interests of the neighborhood in which he and his
wife settled in pioneer days. Mr. Benham died in 1889 and his widow continued to
operate the farm until 1901, in which year she moved to Sleepy Eye, where she is
now living and where she is very pleasantly and comfortably situated.

    Frederick F. Benham was born in the state of Vermont on July 25, 1830, son
of Philander and Relief Benham, of English descent, and was the last born of the
six children horn to his parents, the others having been Silas, Eli, Phoebe,
Eliza and Hannah. He was but a child when his parents moved West and settled in
Indiana, where they lived for a time, later moving to Michigan, where they spent
the remainder of their lives, and his education therefore was received in the
schools of Indiana and Michigan. He remained on the farm until he was twenty
years old and then took up the carpenter trade, at which he worked for seven or
eight years in Indiana. When he was twenty-three years old he married an Indiana
girl and some years later came up into the Northwest, locating at the town of
West Union, in Fayette county, Iowa, where he worked at his trade for about two
years, at the end of which time he moved over into Minnesota. There Mr. Benham
homesteaded a farm in Houston county, Minnesota, on which he lived for nine
years. Disposing of the homestead farm in 1864 he bought a farm of three hundred
and seventy acres in Stark township, Brown county, and here spent the remainder
of his life, his death occurring on January 1, 1889. Mr. Benham was a good
farmer and early came to be recognized as one of the most substantial and
influential residents of that community. He was a Republican and for several
years served the public in the important capacity of county commissioner. He
also for years was postmaster of his local postoffice and in other ways made
himself useful in the community. He was a prominent member of the Grange and was
one of the most active promoters of the interests of that organization
hereabout. He and his wife were earnest members of the Christian church and ever
took an earnest interest in the advancement of all good causes in their
neighborhood. After her husband's death Mrs. Benham continued to make her home
on the farm until 1901, since which time she had been living in Sleepy Eye.

     It was in 1853 that Frederick F. Benham was united in marriage, in Cass
county, Indiana, to Elvina Snethen, daughter of the Rev. Abraham and Lydia
Snethen, prominent farming people of that county, the former of whom also was a
well-known pioneer minister of the Christian church in that part of Indiana.
Elvina Snethen was the tenth in order of birth of the twelve children born to
her parents, the others having been Eliza, Ruth, Hannah, John, James, Louisa,
Vernia, M. C., Greenhut, Ezekiel and Hanna. She received an excellent education,
continuing in school until she was nineteen years old, and remained at home
until her marriage to Mr. Benham.

     To Frederick F. and Elvina (Snethen) Benham five children were born, as
follow: Carrie, who married Myron McKown and has six children, Myrtle, Hattie,
May, Fred, Edna and Silas; Laura, who married William Carpenter and has two
children, Paul and Fred; May, who married Elmer Ingram, now living in Idaho, and
has one child, Evlyn; Alice, who married Walter Jones, a California ranchman,
and Emma, who married Joseph Sherman, a Wisconsin farmer, and has two children,
Dorothy and Denwood, twins.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:
HISTORY OF BROWN COUNTY MINNESOTA
ITS PEOPLE, INDUSTRIES AND INSTITUTIONS

L. A. FRITSCHE. M. D.
Editor

With Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens and Genealogical Records
of Many of the Old Families

VOLUME II
B. F. BOWEN & COMPANY, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana


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