BENJAMIN F. DOUGLASS

FROM: The History of Gallatin, Saline, Hamilton, Franklin, and Williamson Counties, Illinois (Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1887).  P. 694-695.

          Benjamin F. Douglass, farmer and stock raiser, was born near Broughton in 1841, the third of twelve children of James and Elizabeth (Gregg) Douglass.  The father, born in Tennessee in 1811, of Scotch origin, is the son of John Douglass, a soldier under Jackson at New Orleans in the war of 1812.  John settled in Maury County, Tenn, where he remained until 1825, when he removed to what is now Saline County, Ill., and continued farming and stock raising until his death in 1846.  With ordinary school advantages, James came with his parents to Illinois, married when twenty-six, and settled near Broughton.  He has since made his home in Hamilton County with the exception of a year in Saline County.  In 1865 he located on his present farm near Walpole.  He served as associate justice in the county court.  The mother, born in Saline County in 1814, died in 1875.  Educated in the log schoolhouse, and three terms a teacher, our subject with eight others made a 112-days' overland journey to Virginia City.  After four years he boarded a steamer in the headwaters of the Missouri River, and twenty-one days later he landed at St. Louis.  After two years' farming at home he was four years engaged in merchandising at Walpole.  He then spent a few months in California, but returned to Hamilton County, where he engaged in merchandising until 1885, since which time he has been a farmer, and always succeeded so that he now owns 130 acres of choice improved land.  He is a Democrat and first voted for Tilden.  Since 1869 he has been a Mason.  In 1872 he married Margery, daughter of Anthony W. and Lucinda Gott, a native of Hamilton County.  Their six children are Lawrence (deceased, buried in Oregon), Otta M., John F., Susan E., Amy and James H.