Upshur County, West Virginia Biography of BENJAMIN F. MALONE This file was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: The submitter does not have a connection to the subject of this sketch. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 434-435 Upshur BENJAMIN F. MALONE, who is now living retired in the attractive little City of Buckhannon, Upshur County, was born at Malden in Kanawha County, Virginia (now West Virginia) on the 19th day of December, 1849, and is a son of William and Charlotte Brian Malone, natives of the Valley of Virginia, where the father followed farming until in middle life he became a stone and brick mason in Kanawha County. He was a soldier of the Union in the Civil war, and five of his sons likewise gave them- selves to the same service. Of these five young soldiers Benjamin F. Malone is the only one now living, the brother and three half brothers having answered the last roll-call. One sister, Mrs. R. C. Morrison, widow of the late L. W. Morrison, lives in Buckhannon. Benjamin P. Malone passed a part of his childhood and early youth on a farm and attended the common schools of his locality. On March 15, 1864, he enlisted in Company M, Third Regiment, West Virginia Cavalry, for the term of three years or during the war, and served until the discharge of his regiment June 30, 1865, having taken an active part in the Lynch- burg raid in Virginia, the historic Shenandoah Valley cam- paign under General Sheridan, and under the same com- mander in a movement beginning February 27, 1865, from winter quarters near Winchester, and ending so far as fighting was concerned with the surrender of the Con- federate Army of Northern Virginia, April 9, 1865. It is with pardonable pride that Private Malone recalls that as an unmounted cavalryman he "footed" a distance of 600 miles through the valleys and over the mountains of Virginia under General Hunter, rode other hundreds of miles with the distinguished officers Averell, Custer and Sheridan, meanwhile taking a man's part in several im- portant battles and numerous minor engagements, winding up with a day's duty with his regiment as escort to the great commander in chief, General Grant, on his way from near Burkeville to the place of Lee's surrender, a night of duty as picket guard between the lines on Appomattox field, and after a wearisome ride from near the southern boundary of Virginia through Petersburg and Richmond to the nation's capital and a place in Custer's Third Cavalry Division in the spectacular Grand Review on Pennsylvania Avenue on a glorious day in May. After his term of army service he attended school, clerked in a store, taught in the district schools of Upshur County, taught the first term of the public school for colored chil- dren in Buckhannon, and later taught a winter term in Mason County, and in 1870 went to Woodford County, Illi- nois, where he taught two terms of school in country dis- tricts. At the close of his first term of school in Woodford County, in March, 1871, he went to Chicago, where he was employed in the shipping room of a varnish factory until the great fire of October following, when he. returned to Woodford County and again tanght a short term of school, at the close of which»he returned to Chicago and found employment as store-keeper for a firm of lumber manufac- turers whose plant was located at Bluffton, near Muskegon, Michigan. At the expiration of his year's engagement and a change of the lumber business having intervened he returned to Chicago and again for about five and one-half years was employed in connection with light manufacturing concerns, later being for several years employed as a col- lector of Chicago and Cleveland firms and as such traveled extensively in Ohio and West Virginia. During the later period of his residence in Buckhannon and in the newer town of South Buckhannon he filled the responsible office of town sergeant for about eight years ind served a term as mayor of the new town of South Buckhannon. He was for about fourteen years connected with the West Virginia Humane Society and its successor, the State Board of Children's Guardians, most of that period as a local agent and later as a district agent, a placement officer in the state-work for children. For nearly twelve months in the years 1901 to 1902 he was a resident of Oklahoma, having attended one of the "drawings" of land in Caddo County. He was not suc- cessful in the great drawing, but profited somewhat in modest investment in town lots in Anadarko. Benjamin F. Malone is a republican and with ample in- dependence, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with firm opinions of his own, a past grand in the Inde- pendent Order of Odd Fellows, a past post commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a pensioner and a bachelor, a pioneer prohibitionist of Upshur County, and a woman suffragist from Susan B. Anthony to date.