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Biography:
From: "Standard History of Waupaca County, Wisconsin" Edited by John M. Ware 1917.
FRANCIS M. BENEDICT of Farmington Township has played several roles, and every one most creditably. Perhaps the majority of people in Waupaca County know him as a practical farmer, one who has created his fine place out of the wilderness, and takes the greater pleasure in it because he has done most of the constructive work himself. For many years Mr. Benedict was an educator and as a teacher of penmanship he probably had no equal in the entire State of Wisconsin. He was colonizer for the Soo lines for fifteen years and has been influential in settling a great many families on homes of their own in Northern Wisconsin. His interests are exceedingly varied. He can talk entertainingly on many subjects and many know him as an archaeologist and student of the aboriginal remains found in Wisconsin.
Mr. Benedict was born at Dale in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, June 9, 1853. His parents were William W. and Achsah (Hoar) Benedict. His mother was a cousin of the noted Senator Hoar of Massachusetts. Both his parents were born in Delaware County, Ohio. His father was born April 13, 1816, and his mother March 16, 1818. They were married in Ohio May 5, 1835. Several of their children were born in the Buckeye State and in 1847 they came as a family to Southern Wisconsin. They spent one winter at Troy Center in Walworth County, and then removed to Outagamie County, and in 1849 located at Dale. William W. Benedict bought forty acres of land and it was on that place, still not far removed from its wilderness condition, that Francis M. Benedict was born. In 1854, when the latter was about one year old, the family came to Waupaca County, locating in section 19 of Farmington Township. In the fall of 1853 William Benedict had come to this section and had located his 160 acres. He made the journey from Dale through Oshkosh and Berlin, and crossed the Fox River into the "Indian Land" ceded to the United States in 1848, part of which constitutes Waupaca County, which was at the time a very sparsely settled wilderness. As a farmer he developed his quarter section, erecting substantial buildings; and that homestead was the scene of his labors until his death. His wife passed away in December, 1881. William Benedict was a man of consequence in his community. For eight years he was chairman of the Township of Farmington and he laid out most of the roads in that locality. In religion he was a member of the Friends Church.
Some individual mention is required of the children, of whom there were eight. Oscar A., who was born January 9, 1837, enlisted for service in the Union army as first sergeant of Company E of the Thirtyeighth Wisconsin Infantry, going to the front in the winter of 1863 and serving until the midsummer of 1865, having been a participant in the grand review at Washington. He married Miss Bell A. Arnold of Deerfield, Massachusetts, and their children were: Mary E., born October 4, 1867, Julia, Grace and Paul. Francis F., second of the family, was born June 1, 1841, and died in 1842. Josiah Hoar was born Februaty 9, 1843, and died January 1, 1845. Walter Lester, who was born in Ohio March 19, 1846, now lives at Marshfield, Wisconsin, is a railroad man, being employed in the running of a commissary train. By his marriage in April, 1870, to Sarah J. Cormican, he is the father of several children-Nettie, Roy L. and Winnifred. Alice Almeda, born Januarv 28, 1848, in Walworth County, Wisconsin, shortly after her parents had arrived there with ox teams after five weeks overland journey from Ohio. She was married July 4, 1867, to Edwin Emmons of Dayton, Wisconsin, and she is now deceased, her husband having died in 1910. Judge William Marion Emmons, who is now probate judge of Waupaca County and was born April 21, 1871, is a son of the late Edwin and Alice (Benedict) Emmons. The sixth child of the family is Francis Marion Benedict. Ella Albina, who was born August 14, 1855, and died January 11, 1906, married James McCunn of Portage County. James McCunn was born and reared in Glasgow, Scotland, and before settling in Wisconsin worked as a cabin boy on a ship plying between Glasgow and New York City. Orloff Aurelius, the youngest of the family, was born March 10, 1859, and has been twice married. His first wife was Aurelia Beales of Oshkosh, and she left a son Marion who now lives at Spokane, Washington. By the second marriage to Nettie Archer, at Moscow, September 15, 1891, there are children as follows: Orwin A., Hazel Maud, Thurston Paul, Don Huber, Mary Euphemma, Devere Delancey, Almeda Ethabell.
As a boy on the farm in Waupaca County, Francis M. Benedict learned the wholesome lessons of nature and he also had exceptional advantages at a public school conducted in district No. 2 of Farmington Township. It is doubtful if a district school was ever presided over during any period of years by a more distinguished body of teachers than was the school which Mr. Benedict attended as a boy. His first teacher there was Duncan McGregor, who for over thirty years was president of the Platteville Normal School. The next teacher was John McGregor and following him came A. J. Hutton, Jennie Hutton, now Mrs. Alex. McGregor, Arch McArthur, Susan, Mary and Belle Buchanan, the latter now Mrs. Chris Johnson of. Sheridan and Sarah Van Horn, who married John K. McGregor., It is the teacher rather than the schoolhouse or the equipment which counts in true education, and under such noble men and women Mr. Benedict had every encouragement and inspiration and the best of his talents and capabilities were drawn out and were refined under their teaching.
In 1870 Mr. Benedict became a teacher himself. He taught his first term in the Pleasant Valley District in Dayton Township, and subsequently for ten terms he presided over the Parfreyville School, and was also a teacher in the Weyauwega High School. Every winter up to 1880 he engaged in teaching. In 1870, while attending a teachers' institute at Waupaca, Mr. Benedict took a course of writing lessons from Prof. Walter C. Hooker. During the succeeding winters while he was teaching he made a special study of writing, not only practicing it himself but also instructing his scholars. In that ten years he developed a system of teaching penmanship which has effected almost a revolution in the methods of acquiring that art. It is called "Rythmic Writing," and is one of the methods that has thoroughly stood the test of experience as to practical results. From 1880 to 1895 Mr. Benedict taught writing as a specialty.
When he was twenty years of age he bought 125 acres of wild land in section 26 of Farmington Township. It was worth little or nothing as a source of production for crops, but every vacation between school terms he went out to his farm and put in days of the hardest physical labor in clearing and carrying off the trees and brush and in digging the stumps. Gradually this land took form as a first class farm, and today 100 acres of it are under cultivation. Mr. Benedict has erected a set of fine farm buildings, and has driven every nail in those buildings. He has one of the best made barns in Waupaca County. For many years he has been getting substantial returns from this farm, especially from his operations as a breeder of high grade Holstein cattle, and of thorough-bred Ancona chickens. He has a poultry farm of about 1,000 chickens, and that has been one of the most profitable features.
Mr. Benedict has served for the past fifteen years as emigration agent for the Wisconsin Central, now the Soo Line Railway, and in that time has introduced many hundreds of worthy settlers into the newer districts of Northern Wisconsin, and has given more than 500 lectures to further. colonization. Mr. Benedict is author of the map of the "Chain o' Lakes" known as the Killarneys of America, published and distributed by the Soo Line Railway. These lakes are situated on the Soo Line 223 miles from Chicago. The absorbing recreation of Mr. Benedict aside from his business as a farmer has been archaelogical investigation. He has given much time to this work, and the magnificent collection gathered by him has been placed in the museum at Milwaukee and is pronounced to be one of the finest exhibitions of America in the West. Mr. Benedict is a progressive republican. He served several years as township clerk, and was United States census enumerator of his district in 1890 and for the State of Wisconsin in 1895.
On September 16, 1874, he married Millicent M. Taylor, daughter of David and Mary Taylor of Farmington Township. Seven children were born to their happy marriage. Mrs. Benedict died March 27, 1888. The oldest of the children is Frances Myrtle, wife of Allen E. Barrington, who now lives with his family at Liberty, Missouri. Mr. and Mrs. Barrington have the following children: Victor, who died in infancy; Ardis; Agnes and Eunice, twins; Gordon and Frances. Walter Rufus, the oldest son, is associated with his father in the railroad emigration work. He married September 11, 1901, Harriet Gardiner, by whom lie had one child Nita, born October 18, 1902, and for his second wife he married Marie Williams of Louisville, Kentucky; the children of this second union being Jane, Rufus and Charles. Bertha, third in order of birth, is the wife of William H. Harley, a druggist at Waldo, Wisconsin, and they have one child, Dorothea. Alice Millicent is the wife of Fred W. Kast formerly of Shawano, now Waupaca; their children are Marguerite and Birchard. Edwin Marion is a locomotive engineer with the Oregon Short Line Railway, and lives at Salt Lake City, Utah. He married Lindsay Champney, and they have one child, Edwin Jr. Belle, is now in a nurses' training school at Chicago. Irma is a graduate nurse of St. Luke's Hospital Training School at Chicago, and has been in the active practice of her profession for the past three years.
On March 5, 1889, Mr. Benedict married for his present wife Miss Emilie A. KAST She was born in Stephens Point, Wisconsin, July 11, 1859, a daughter of John David and Margaret (Beyer) Kast. Her father was born in Baden, Germany. Her mother was born on an island near Kiel, Germany, and was educated in the City of Kiel, and after marriage they came to the United States in 1852 and became pioneers in Portage County, Wisconsin. John D. Kast built several grist mills in this section of the state, and he built and operated such a mill at Parfreyville. His last years were spent at Shawano, where he died February, 10, 1900. His wife passed away March 22, 1897. Mr. Kast served six years in the German army and a part of this service was as
orderly" sergeant for the Kaiser Wilhelm I.
The Benedicts in America are descended from Thomas Benedict, who came from Nottinghampshire, England, in the year 1638, landing at Plymouth Rock Settlement eighteen years after that colony was established by the passengers from the Mayflower. From that time to the present the ancestors of Francis M. Benedict have been like those of most colonial families identified with the settlement of the country to the westward from Massachusetts, Long Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, and through cne brother, of Minnesota, and through his brother Orloff A. of Idaho. The genealogy of this family covers the settlement and development of the United States.
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The H600 Project Genealogy DB
1853 - 1921 (68 years)