Person:Benjamin Bedinger (2)

Benjamin Franklin Bedinger, M.D.

Most of George Michael's sons stayed in central Kentucky and operated various business ventures: saw mills, grist mills, the first store, the first ferry, salt production, bottled mineral water and a 300 room hotel resort at Blue Licks Springs (which was burned by the Union Army after the Civil War). His son Benjamin Franklin graduated from medical school and became acquainted with the well known Cincinnati physician, Dr. Drake. His oldest brother Daniel had married Dr. Drake's daughter. Franklin gave up the practice of medicine early in his career, to the disappointment of Dr. Drake who had a high opinion of his medical skills, as he was too kind hearted to do surgery without benefit of anesthesia. Pre Civil War medicine was not without pain. Franklin was 6 feet 8 inches tall and became so used to stooping to go through cabin doors on house calls that he would stoop to go through a gate. His son Everett described him “as large in mind and heart as he was in body.” Franklin married Sarah Everett Wade, daughter of David Everett Wade, a prominent Cincinnati businessman, city alderman and Presbyterian Church Elder. Her father had doubts about his daughter marrying a young country doctor and paid two of the workmen at his tannery to throw Franklin into the tanning vat. But Franklin, a very powerful young man, threw both of them into the vat instead. Another of his daughters also married a doctor and Mr. Wade eventually came to like and respect both of them. Sarah Everett was intelligent, educated, and dedicated to her perceived duty and to the church. She was known by all as deeply religious. Throughout their marriage Franklin's respect for his wife's wisdom was apparent. He was always involved in politics but declined public office due to a promise he had made to Sarah Everett. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Bedinger made Boone County his home. He was born in Blue Licks in 1797, graduated from medical school in 1818, married in 1820, lived first in Kenton County and bought a farm in Erlanger in 1826. In 1834 he moved with his family to Cincinnati for eight years in order for Sarah Everett to care for her father who had a stroke and was bedridden. Following her father's death in 1842 they lived in Covington for three years and then moved to Forest Home in Richwood for 16 years. As his six children married, like his father and grandfather before him, he gave them each a farm and built homes for them. When David Wade Bedinger married, Dr. Bedinger gave him 300 acres of his large estate, Forest Home on Richwood Road, and the family home. Dr Bedinger and his wife moved back to Erlanger and later bought the Bartlett Graves farm, Walnut Grove, and renamed it The Elms. He lived in Erlanger until his death in 1872 and Sarah Everett lived there until her death in 1880. The lives of Benjamin Franklin and Sarah Everett are well documented in the Centennial History of Erlanger, Kentucky. After Dr. Bedinger gave up the practice of medicine, he became active in the building of toll roads and in politics. He was influential in getting the charter for the Lexington Turnpike Company of which he was President for many years and on the Board of Directors throughout his life. He also acquired a great deal of land and in the 1850 census was listed as one of the two wealthiest men in Boone County. (James Gaines was the other one.) He was prominent in politics and an ardent Whig, holding the same political views as his father, George Michael. He was an influential member of the National Convention which nominated General Zachary Taylor from Kentucky for the presidency. Abraham Lincoln was a member of the same convention. Zackary Taylor became President in 1849 and favored free rather than slave status for new territories. He knew that Dr. Bedinger was of the same opinion and as a fellow Kentuckian asked him to be the Governor of the Territory of Oregon. Due to the promise he had made to his wife, Dr Bedinger declined but suggested his friend Major John Pollard Gaines, who accepted the appointment. Sarah Everett said that they would lose half of their children on such a long and dangerous journey. Major Gaines not only lost two of the daughters he took with him but his wife as well. There is a letter in the Boone County historical archives by a granddaughter of Dr. Bedinger describing the December 1849 dinner which the Bedingers gave in farewell to Major Gaines and invited the whole community. An ad was placed in the newspaper which read: "Any friend of Major Gaines is invited to eat dinner with him at Forest Home before he leaves for Oregon." More then five hundred people attended, coming from far and near. Dr. Bedinger's active role as a political advisor continued. His son Everett wrote in his autobiography: "I was with my father when he and Lincoln met in 1858 at a hotel in Bloomington, Illinois. They spent the greater part of the evening discussing the political situation, Dr. Bedinger warning Mr. Lincoln of the dreadful results that would follow the success of his new (Republican) party. Mr. Lincoln little thought that the loss of his own life would be one of those dreadful results." After the Civil War, Dr Bedinger became a Democrat because of the way the Republican Congress mistreated the south, including Kentucky. During the post war period the Republican Congress impeached the Democratic President, Andrew Johnson, but failed to remove him from office. Although Dr. Bedinger and Major Gaines were neighbors, friends and political allies in the Whig party, they had very different views on the issues of war and slavery. In a letter to Major Gaines during the Mexican American War Dr. Bedinger wrote: "You know how much I disapprove of this war and whilst I feel for the brave men and poor soldiers who are suffering, pining, and dying from sickness, wounds and exposure and whilst I wish success to the aims of my country; I still doubt the propriety and patriotism of Whigs uniting with and risking their health and lives lifting this infernal Administration out of its difficulties and covering the one man's power and the one man's war with the glorious results of their suffering and valor thus sanctifying the usurpations of that last of little men, James K. Polk, and enabling him and his army of plunderers at Washington to fatten on the spoils of the nation, to triumph over the constitution, the liberties of the people, and the prosperity of the country. Would that all good Whigs were at home and out of danger, I think it would not be long before Democrats would be damming the man who had got them into a scrape in which they, unassisted by the Whigs, would never obtain either honor or glory." As a post script he adds "Though my wife still insists that you deserve some punishment for leaving the joys and comforts of home to go into such a war as this and she says further that she doubts not that you have been fully punished for it." On the issue of slavery, U S Congressman Gaines voted for the extension of slavery into the western territories, unlike U S Congressman Bedinger's determined opposition to slavery. Unlike the Gaines families, the Bedingers had no mulatto slaves. No Bedinger testified at the Margaret Garner trial in Archibald's defense. Dr. Bedinger's son Everett was an Elder in the Richwood Presbyterian Church during the escape, capture, child murder and trial. The following was entered into the Session Book by him as Clerk of Session. "Sunday - June Ist 1856 - Session met and made the following order - In view of the remarkably low state of piety; and the many sins with which we as a people and church have provoked with the withdrawal of the Divine favor and influence from our midst, and especially in view of the cold and lanquial state of our zeal for the service of the Lord and bearing in mind the many exhortations of the Devine Word thereto - We the Session of this church do hereby appoint Friday the 13th day of June as a day of solemn fasting and humiliation before God on account of our sins and departures from Him as a congregation and as individual members of the visible church - And we do hereby by virtue of the authority of this church - over whom God has placed us as overseers for edification - that they lay apart on that day their ordinary avocations and repair to the house of God for solemn worship, confession of sins and deep humiliation before God and invocation of the return of the Devine favor - And we do most solemnly recommend and enjoin it upon the consciences of all God's professing people to practice such bodily abstinence on that day as shall be suitable to their abasing themselves in the dust before the Great God whom we have offended and the supplication of his benign return to us, in reviving and quickening our own graces, and in granting us to see the return of his Spirit in giving efficacy to the means of grace in the conversion of others. - - After which Session adj'd. Opened & closed with prayer - Everett W. Bedinger, Cl'k pro tem." Olivia Bedinger wrote: "My grandfather (Benjamin Franklin Bedinger, M.D.) was brought up to think slavery a great evil and reared his family in the same belief.” These views made Dr. Bedinger unpopular with those of his neighbors who thought differently. When Humphrey, one of his slaves, married a woman belonging to a neighbor, Dr Bedinger offered to buy her. The neighbor refused saying he would never sell a slave to an abolitionist. During the Civil War, after Humphrey was freed and living in Cincinnati, he was drafted. He came in terror to "Marse Franklin" and offered to return and work for him forever (sell himself back into slavery) if he would get him out of the draft. Dr. Bedinger bought a substitute for Humphrey for $1,000 and sent him back to freedom in Ohio. He also bought substitutes for his sons as they were drafted as he did not believe in the war. Long after the Civil War ended, the family teased Daniel Bedinger that he should be dead as his substitute was killed in battle. George Michael, Dr. Bedinger's oldest son, wrote that his father was an abolitionist and freed his slaves, giving each of them money and a horse. There was one slave he could not free because the man had lost a leg so Dr Bedinger sold him to his own mother for a dollar - which Dr. Bedinger gave to her. Both the man and his mother remained and worked for money but were still counted on the census as slaves in order to stay in Kentucky. George remembered as a child complaining to his father that Humphrey, a slave, had spanked him. His father asked no questions but said: "If Humphrey spanked you, then you deserved it." Dr. Bedinger wrote a letter to the editor of the Covington Journal dated May 1, 1849 in response to a printed request by voters of Boone County who asked him to state his views on constitutional reform, emancipation and slavery. He wrote that the present constitution of Kentucky was inferior, "involving as master and slave nearly one half the population of the state, which many of our citizens consider a crying evil, dangerous to liberty, opposed to good morals, injurious to the welfare of the great mass of the white laborers of the State, prejudicial to the power and influence of the State as a member of the Union, incompatible with the rights and destructive of the true interest of man - bond and free, master and slave." During the time Benjamin Franklin and Sarah Everett lived at Forest Home they did much to promote education. A Sunday School was started at Richwood Church and Sarah Everett donated the money for books. This was recorded in Session minutes. Family history is that Sarah Everett, who had her own inheritance, donated the money to buy the land for Richwood Cemetery and Richwood Church when it was rebuilt in its present location. There is no record of this or where the money came from in the Session Books. The original 1842 deed was for one half acre sold to Richwood Church by William Mosely on land across Richwood Road and on the opposite side of the creek at the north east comer of the intersection of the current Richwood Road and Chambers Lane, where Benjamin Franklin was later granted use of Richwood Church property to build a school for neighborhood children. They were viewed as good parents. Their only daughter, Olivia, died when her son was eight months old. This child was raised by Benjamin Franklin and Sarah Everett. When Major Gaines returned from Oregon for a visit after his wife’s death he left his youngest daughter Matilda at Forest Home, not with his brother Archibald at Maplewood. When a younger brother, George Michael Jr, was dying at his home in Boone County near Big Bone of cholera, he said "Tell that best of men, that dear brother Franklin, to take my child and care for him. Tell his grandmothers both they must not think hard of me for not leaving my child to them, but I think my brother is more capable of raising him." This child was named for his uncle Franklin and in the 1850 census there are three Benjamin Franklins listed at Forest Home - father, son and nephew. Another aspect of Franklin's life was religion. He had been raised with religious instruction, married to a devout Christian, knew the Bible well and attended the Presbyterian Church with his wife and children. He was extremely well read and had an inquiring, scientific mind. He was in all ways a moral and ethical man but had difficulty reconciling reason with faith. After the death of his only daughter he found God in his grief. In reading the Bible he found revelation and comfort and became convinced the Bible was God's word. He was ordained an elder in the Richwood Presbyterian Church and built churches in several Kentucky towns. On his death bed he told his sons to read the Bible carefully and they too would find it to be God's word. Few men were as well known or as well respected as Dr. Bedinger. His obituary in the local newspaper stated that his convictions were most decided and he would make no concession of principle or tolerate any concealment of opinion. To write under an assumed name is inconsistent with Dr. Bedinger's known character, as stated in this obituary. Mr. Weisenburger attributes articles in the Covington Journal written during Margaret's trial under the pen name of Justice to Dr. Bedinger - without any proof. Justice has been identified as a man living in Dover, Kentucky. He confuses ownership of the Covington Journal, a weekly not a daily newspaper, between Dr. Bedinger and his son, George Bedinger, who was in fact co-owner and coeditor of the Covington Journal for a brief period of time, from 1848 to 1850. Although I have had time to tell you about only two of my Bedinger ancestors, George Michael and Benjamin Franklin and their views on slavery, I want to mention what several of their descendants have done since the Civil War for civil rights. When the Bedingers built a school for neighborhood children, they provided education for the black children as well. Elizabeth Ann, David Bedinger's widow, was from Cincinnati and was not liked by some of the neighbors for her northern views. She hired a black teacher from Cincinnati who lived half of the school year at Forest Home and the other half at Crescent Hill, home of her sister Mary and brother-in-law Daniel Bedinger. Elizabeth Ann and Daniel convinced Judge Lassing, Boone County Administrator, to build a school (which was also used as a church) in Burlington for the black children. The black children of the railroad workers joined the black children from the Richwood farms and were taught in this school. Education for black children was always important to the Bedinger family. When I was in grade school at New Haven School in the 1940's, the black children in Richwood were unable to go to their school in Burlington as there was no money to pay a driver for their bus. My mother, Sarah Elizabeth Roberts Cox, drove the school bus for the black children for six weeks and then spent the day at the Burlington Court House lobbying with Judge Cooper, Boone County Administrator, on behalf of the black children. She also spoke at the PTA meeting at New Haven School about this injustice. She was undeterred by a burnt out cross that the neighbor across the road showed her he had found in our front field. Money was found to hire a bus driver. When the son of one of the neighborhood black families decided to buy his own farm, I was with my grandmother, Agnes Bedinger Roberts, when she withdrew money from the Walton Bank for a loan for Matthew Sleet in order for him to buy a farm with a cash discount. He had 75% of the cash purchase price and my grandmother loaned him the balance, which he repaid the following year. When I grew up at Forest Home in Richwood the black families in the neighborhood were farmers, landowners, respected members of the community, and family friends. I learned about racism when I went north to Cincinnati to Jr. High School and High School. When you study history you have to understand people in the context of the culture of the time. You would not call Jesus a sexist because all of his disciples were men. In the same cultural context you cannot call all slave owners racists. There were enough white Christians in the churches, enough white authors and public crusaders, and enough white men in government who believed slavery was wrong to end it. Slavery was the major moral, social, economic and political issue during the time between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The Bedingers were politically active in effecting changes in the laws regarding slavery, both on a state and federal level. They knew the economic advantage of free or indentured labor and treated their slaves as servants, paid them wages, and freed them after a period of service. Socially their roots were in Pennsylvania, not Virginia; they married northern women; lived in Kentucky, a state that was neutral at the onset of the Civil War; and were members of the Presbyterian Church, which advocated church membership, education and gradual emancipation of slaves. Their moral opposition to slavery was taught to their children and practiced in their religious and personal lives. At the same time they worked within the political and social systems to abolish slavery, the Bedingers prepared their own slaves educationally, vocationally and financially for the freedom they gave them as adults. A defining characteristic of the Bedingers was their opposition to slavery and they should not be vilified by an author who failed to research history. I believe that as residents of Boone County we have reason to be proud of our heritage - not to stand by while others distort our history or defame our ancestors.

References and Resources Bales, Kevin; Disposable People - New Slaves in the Global Economy; University of California Press; Berkeley, CA; 1999. Bedinger, Everett Wade; A History of the Yale Class of 1851; Autobiography; Yale University: New Haven, CON; 1891 ______ Letters; 1800's and 1900's. ______ Interviews; 1900's. Belue, Ted Franklin; The Hunters of Kentucky, A Narrative History of American’s First Far West, 1750-1792; Stackpole Books; Mechanicsburg, PA; 2003. Boone County

Source: http://www.boonecountyheritage.org/content/History/SlaveryKentucky.pdf