Rockingham County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Harman, Benjamin Franklin 1833 - December 23, 1910 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: George Griffin scidata@earthlink.net May 19, 2007, 5:09 pm Author: George B. Griffin Benjamin Franklin Harman, c. 1833 - December 23, 1910 Benjamin Franklin Harman was born in 1833 in Rockingham Co., VA, one of at least 18 children of John Harman Sr. (b.1785) in PA and his two wives, Rachel Rader (b 1785, d. 1825) and Susannah McLaughlin (b. 1805). Susannah was Benjamin's mother. In the 1850 census for Rockingham Co., Benjamin is listed as 17 years old and living in his father's household. His occupation is listed as "laborer." The woman who would become his wife five years later, Sarah Jane Bierly, is listed in another part of the same 1850 census for Rockingham Co., as a 19-year-old girl living in the household of her father, Joseph Bierly. A certificate of marriage, dated June 13, 1855, records the marriage of Benjamin F. Harmon, 22, and Sarah Jane Bierly, 24, on Page 161, Line 1 of the marriage records of the Clerk of the Circuit Court, Rockingham County, VA. The birthplaces of both Benjamin and Sarah are recorded as Rockingham County, VA. Their parents, "Jno. Harmon and S. McGlaughlin" and "Jos. Bierly and E. Burner" also are recorded, as is the person who performed the ceremony, "Martin Miller" and the person reporting the marriage, "L.W. Gambill." Benjamin's occupation is listed as "house joiner." For a time, the couple moved from Rockingham Co., to Augusta Co., VA, where Benjamin worked as a laborer. On October 10, 1857, Sarah gave birth to her first daughter, Ialla Thrush Harman. But her joy in her daughter's birth was short lived. Ten days later, on October 20, the infant girl died. Benjamin and Sarah are next recorded living in Rockingham Co., VA, in the 1860 census, at Harrisonburg, dwelling #1232 and family #1197. Living with them are two children, William Harman, 5, and Ward Harman, 1. Subsequent research and documentation, including marriage and internment records, show Ward's full name was Joseph Ward Harman. In later years, the Harmans spelled their name Harman and Harmon at different times. Benjamin and Sarah were soon to have their lives irrevocably altered by events outside the cloister of their Shenandoah Valley home. The opening of the War Between the States with the firing on Fort Sumter in the Charleston, S.C. harbor, April 11, 1861, pushed Virginia, which until then had not seceded from the union, into the Confederacy. Three other wavering states, Tennessee, North Carolina and Arkansas, also seceded. On April 18, one week after the opening shot of war, Benjamin left Sarah and his two young sons and joined Company D, 10th Virginia Infantry, CSA. Company D, known as the Bridgewater Grays, was one of five companies made up of men from Harrisonburg and Rockingham County that became part of the 10th Virginia Infantry. (Source: "10th Virginia Infantry - Virginia Regimental History Series, " by Terrence V. Murphy, pub. H.E. Howard Inc., Lynchburg, VA, 1989.) Benjamin's company was sent first to Harper's Ferry, then moved slowly up the Shenandoah Valley to counter Union troop incursions into the area. By mid July 1861, Confederate commanders realized they would have to fight a sizeable entrenched Union army at Manassas. The 10th Virginia began to move out on the 18th. Several units of the 10th Virginia, including Company D, were loaded onto freight trains in an attempt to get them to the battle in time. Benjamin's unit detrained about noon July 21, and quick marched into the thick of the battle. They immediately came under withering fire from Union soldiers and artillery. One soldier in Benjamin's company, John Haney, in a letter three days after the battle, wrote, "the bullets feld arond us like hail..." The Confederate battle line surged forward and when the first battle of Manassas was ended, the Southerners had swept the Union army from the field. Benjamin's superiors must have been pleased with his conduct on the battlefield. On August 4, 1861, he was promoted from private to 1st corporal. By December of that year, the Rockingham County companies were closer to home, and Benjamin apparently took leave to visit his home. It was sometime in December 1861 that Sarah became pregnant with their second daughter, Mary Catherine Harman, who was born August 9, 1862. August 9, 1862 also was a fateful day for Benjamin, for it found him on the Culpepper Road just south of the town of Culpepper by a hill called Cedar Mountain. It was there that the 10th Virginia and other units under the command of Stonewall Jackson attacked Union armies under the command of General Pope. The Battle of Cedar Mountain, which was the opening engagement leading to the second Battle of Manassas, was a victory for Jackson's regiment. It also apparently was Benjamin's last battle. Somewhere in a cornfield by the Culpepper Road, Benjamin was shot as the battle raged. His name appears on a list of killed and wounded of Jackson's Regiment, CSA, preserved in the National Archives. Benjamin's military records show that he was admitted to the C.S.A. General Hospital, Charlottesville, VA, on Aug. 13, 1862 and furloughed on October 9. His wounds, though not fatal, were apparently serious enough to keep him out of the active fighting. Company muster rolls show Benjamin assigned to light duty details in Harrisonburg and Staunton because of his wounds for the remainder of the war. The final military record for him is dated February 23, 1865, less than two months before the final defeat of the South and General Lee's surrender April 9, 1865. Apparently, as the military situation in Virginia worsened, soldiers who still could serve were called up to duty. Benjamin was sent to Richmond, where he was assigned to duty at the Receiving and Wayside Hospital, or General Hospital No. 9. After the war, Benjamin and Sarah returned to their home in Harrisonburg. But evidently conditions during the Reconstruction were such that they and others in their family decided to leave. In 1868, Benjamin and Sarah Harman, and their children, as well as Sarah's father, John C. Bierly and his family, left Virginia for good, reaching Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, in December of that year. The trip apparently was a hard one on some of the family members. Sarah's father, died May 2, 1869, about six months after arriving in Lawrence. Both Benjamin and Sarah lived their remaining years in Lawrence. Their remaining children, Elizabeth, Charles, Robert and Hattie may have been born in Kansas. Research is incomplete on these children. Benjamin worked as a carpenter and house builder and is listed in Lawrence City Directories from the early 1870s through about 1910. Sarah died January 8, 1901 of stomach cancer and is buried in the family plot at Maple Grove Cemetery in Lawrence. Benjamin died December 23,1910 and is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery. Records of the Lawrence, Kansas, City Clerk list Benjamin's cause of death as "old age." File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/rockingham/bios/harman12gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/vafiles/ File size: 7.5 Kb