George was the one who had the first itch to move on and in about 1850 with his third wife Eliza Miller, their daughter Harriet and his daughter Ellen from his first marriage to Florella Hart ended up in the small town of Jacksonville, Florida in 1851.

Meanwhile Henry married and raised his family in Ohio until about 1867 where he moved to the new communities around Council Bluffs, Iowa. He was followed there by his mother after John Benton’s death in 1867 and also followed by his sister Mary after the death of her husband Daniel Brown in Feb. 1868. The are several descendants of Henry Benton, many still living in Mills County, Iowa.

Mary had three children, Emily who remained in Ohio with her doctor husband Dr. Newton Rice; John Benton Brown who has been chronicled by me and Freeman Upson Benton who will marry twice but leave no issue.

Sister Harriet Benton will marry Edwin Loveland, move first to Iowa about 1853, then Omaha, Nebraska, and end up in South Dakota. There are no remaining members of this branch, the last passed away in the mid 1940’s.

For the family of G.W. Benton the story goes like this. He became a country doctor; with little if any formal education. After the Union Army took Jacksonville early in the Civil War, because George was a northerner he was given some options and one of those was to serve the Union at the new medical center on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.

On April 18, 1863 at the age of 56 he signed on as a Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon and sent his family back to Ohio to wait out the war with his father-in-law Richard Miller. George remained at Hilton Head long after the war ended, seemingly one of the last doctors to be on staff there and on November 20, 1867 George was finally relieved of his duties having served for 4 years and 7 months.

George brought his family back from Ohio at war’s end and settled in the Beaufort County, South Carolina area while he completed his service and in December of 1866 was the successful bidder on 160 acres on Port Royal Island that was being sold by the US Government for back taxes. There he built a big house that still stands today and expanded his land holdings and provided a home where his two sons would live and prosper for the next 50 years, becoming the leading truck farmers in the South Carolina lowlands.

George Washington Benton died July 8, 1879 of chronic diarrhea and is buried at his home in the family burial grounds facing the Broad River. He was two days shy of his 73rd. birthday.

Besides the previously named Harriet and Ellen, George and Eliza had two sons born in Florida; Sidney and Clarence. Sidney married but never had children and died in 1908. Clarence finally married in 1914 at nearly 59 to a 20 year old mountain girl named Celia Owen from North Carolina. They lived on the South Carolina farm until 1916 before venturing west; first to Denver and finally onto Los Angeles. Clarence died there in 1926. His half sister Ellen died 1920 in Florida. The fate of George’s daughter Harriet is a mystery.

My father Edward Benton, his two brothers, Clarence Jr. both born in North Carolina and Bramley born in Denver grew up in Los Angeles. Collectively ten children were born to the three brothers. Eight are still living of which I am the oldest.

Mary “Polly” M. Benton Brown raised her children in Trumbull County, Ohio but did move on to Iowa. There according to newspaper obituaries she died after a difficult illness. The line from John Benton Brown continued through William McCombs Brown who was born in Missouri and lived out his life in Ashtabula County, Ohio, a fruit farmer. He and his wife Ella had one son, Edward. Lillian Claire Brown was born in Missouri. She married George Traver Arthur and made their home in Ashtabula County, Ohio. They had six children. Lillian died of tuberculosis in 1917.

Bob Benton, La Verne CA

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