Fredrick William Benton

GEDCOM Note

BIOGRAPHY Fredrick was a sewing machine and organ agent (traveling salesman). The company he worked for sent him and his family from Illinois to Southern Kansas near Wellington where they lived on a farm. The kids attended a district four-room school. His first wife Lovina Jane played the organ both at home and at church. Fredrick was away from home a great deal. Lovina Jane died here.

On Apri 22,1889 Fredrick made the Oklahoma Land run and opened up a homestead. He staked a 160 acre claim in Canadian County on the bank of a St. John's Creek. He dug a cave into the bank which was his home. After staying there the required length of time to establish a homestead, Fredrick returned to Kansas to get his family. Upon returning to Oklahoma, Fredrick built a four room house, drilled a well, and built a barn on his homestead.

The house was a log cabin built with the logs vertical. Each room was a add-on. It took about three years to build the four room house. There were a lot of cotton-wood trees on his homestead and most of the land was bottom land.

The first year in Oklahoma, his two children walked two miles to attended school in a "Sod House" which was about 12 x 20 feet. By the second school year the district had built a wood frame building. This building also served as a church. All eight grades in the school were taught by the same teacher.

Shortly after marrying Minnie Brown, Fredrick sent his two children back to Berea, Ohio to live with their grandparents. The children never returned to Oklahoma.