Jared Benjamin

            JARED BENJAMIN was born October 10, 1820, in Fayette County, Ohio; his father, also Jared Benjamin, was born in Connecticut, February 16, 1782, and was reared, educated and afterward married, in Tompkins County, NY, to Miss Mary Hemingway, by which union they had five children. After Mrs. Benjamin’s death, Mr. Benjamin married Mary, daughter of Stephen and Abigail (Fountain) Yeoman. This union also gave issue to five children. Jared was married, September 10, 1848, to Lettie, daughter of Samuel and Susan (Webster) Halstead. They had the following children: Teresa, born June 17, 1849; Mary, born August 6, 1850; Martha, born March 18, 1852; and Clarissa, born August 8, 1853. Of these, Mary and Clarissa died in 1858; Teresa married John Martindale and had two children –Jared and Nina.

    Mr. Benjamin is one of the earliest settlers of the county, having come hither in 1838, and located on land vacated by the Indians, and on which are yet many traces of that people. He began life a poor boy, but has acquired a good farm and home and is an esteemed citizen. The grandfather of our subject, Stephen Yeoman, was a soldier and hero of the Revolutionary war; he was an unyielding Whig, and intensely hated by the Tories for his fealty to the Colonial Government. On one occasion, he was visited by a band of about ten Tories, who, finding him at the plow, took him to a tree for the purpose of hanging him, but, upon consultation, they agreed to lash him instead, and, having fastened him by his plow lines, each one then inflicted thirty lashes by means of straps, and fled. He was found bleeding and nearly insensible, from which horrible cruelty he never fully recovered. May his reward be as great as his glory is imperishable!

Source: Counties of Warren, Benton, Jasper and Newton, Indiana by F.A. Battey & Co., 1883. Page 557.