Dudley Benge

son of Ware Benge

Dudley Benge, his parents and two brothers moved to Graham, Texas. Dudley moved to Seymour and his parents followed later.

Dudley Benge married Sallie Green Bedford on 22 July 1884 at Seymour, Texas. They were married in a triple wedding ceremony. Dudley and Sallie started housekeeping on a small farm her father gave them and a few cattle. Dudley did carpenter work but in the drought of 1886 and the hard freeze of 1887, the couple sold and moved west to Benjamin. At Benjamin, as a new town, there was a lot of carpenter work to be done.

In March 1889, Dudley bought a section of land on the Knox and Baylor county line. In the fall, he built one room, moved his family and lived there until he got a house built. Most of the lumber was hauled by freight wagons from Wichita Falls. They lived there until Myra was old enough for school. Their neighbors were: Jackson, Durham, Propp, Spink, Bussell and Beck. The group built a one room school house and soon outgrew that school. Dudley and Sallie moved to Benjamin so Myra could go to school. During vacation, they went back to the farm till the farm term.

In 1904, the Benge family moved to Seymour and still till 1910, when they moved back to the farm. In 1915, they built the house they would live in until their deaths.

Sallie Benge is buried in the Seymour Cemetery. She had stood many hardships but never gave up and grew to a ripe old age.

Dudley was a carpenter by trade. He served as Baylor County Treasurer from 1887-1889. Many of the older homes in Seymour and the FIrst Methodist Church building were built by Dudley Ware. He built the benches as well. Dudley Ware did some of the wood work on the old courthouse which was torn down. When the First Methodist Church built their second building, the church at Vera got the pews from the first church building.

In 1938, the school consolidated with the Vera School. In 1960, the Vera school closed and the students went to Seymour, Goree or Benjamin.

There were two children born into the family. Mrs. Myra Alford died in 1926 and her four children lived with their grandparents; Mrs. E.A. Beck who lives in California.

Mr. Benge does not belong to any church or lodge. He does not fish and sleeps for recreation.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Mar 27 2017, 18:23:36 UTC