Person:Grant Benschoter (1)

From "Concerning the Van Bunschoten or Van Benschoten Family in America":

C. GRANT V.B., attended his first school in a small building early put up inside the fort at Algona and which served for a few years as school, meeting-house and general assembly place. "When seventeen years old I started out for myself with nothing but the clothes on my back, plenty of muscle and a de termination to make my own way," says Grant. For six years he worked out — always on the land ; he writes : "I never liked any other kind of work. When I was twenty years of age I bought eighty acres of land but was not able to build on it for several years. After marriage I rented land and worked very hard. In 1874 we moved on to our own property where we still reside. In time I bought more acres and worked still harder and finally came my reward. Not long since I had four hundred acres of land well improved and free from debt, but lately I have given my son one hundred and sixty acres of this." He is now one of the solid men of Kossuth Co., Iowa. In 1901, after a visit to his brother William in California, he writes: "William is very enthusiastic over your undertaking and wants to resume the full name again. And we all want to do the same —" for they had dropped the use of the "Van." He m. Apr. 13, 1872, Frances E. Ferguson, b. Aug. 19, 1855, in Fulton Co., N.Y., dau. of P. F. Ferguson and Emeline Dingman. His farm is at Sexton, but he now lives in Algona, Ia.

1. ↑ McWhorter, Ray Seely. Van Benschoten, Benschoten, Seeley, Seely: the Benschoter line of Alice Esther Benschoter Seely. (R. S. McWhorter, 1971).
2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 Charles Grant Benschoter, in Find A Grave.
3. ↑ Van Benschoten, William Henry. Concerning the Van Bunschoten or Van Benschoten family in America: A Genealogy and Brief History. (Poughkeepsie, NY: A. V. Haight Co. Printers, 1907)
   p. 298, 304.