Person:Oliver Benschoter (2)

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

OLIVER V.B.'s youth was entirely a frontier one, and he used to relate how when a boy he had frequently bridled a horse, put a sack of grain on his back, mounted behind the sack and ridden thirty miles through the forest to a mill to get the grain ground. There were no roads then in the Western Reserve, nothing but deer-trails to follow.
Oliver early took to blacksmithing and quickly made a name for himself as a thorough, expert workman. He continued at home until that household was broken up by his mother's death. On Nov. 5, 1835, he m. Martha Kemp, b. Mar. 24, 1819, dau. of Moses Kemp, and the fire passed to a hearthstone of his own. His son William says: " Soon after father and mother were married father took a span of good horses — he was always fond of such — and drove out to the Rock River country of Illinois prospecting. He came back through Chicago then a small town just laid out. He was greatly taken with the Rock River region and wished to move at once but his wife's people dissuaded him and he continued on in Ohio for some twenty years more." In this interval his skill and reputation as a blacksmith grew; men used to come long distances to get him to shoe their horses when there was anything wrong with their feet. He had early moved up to Vermillion and back again where he had the job of ironing a couple of schooners. William remembers that when he was a good-sized lad his "father went up to the Straits of Mackinaw and helped build a lighthouse and did all the iron-work on it."
Oliver had long run a farm as well as kept a shop. Says George Peake: "A better cradler never entered the field, — in fact he was a famous workman in all ways;" adding, "he was rather heady, though, as a blacksmith and inclined to have his own way," — a trait, broadly speaking, characteristic of many prime mechanics who can ill brook instructions from the average man. "The next thing I recall of importance," says William, "was his selling his farm in Ohio, and of his making a trip to Kossuth county, Iowa, in the fall of 1856, his securing a claim at Algona and then returning to Ohio for his family. He and Alice started west very late that fall purposing to build and make ready for the rest of us who were to follow the next spring with horses, wagons and such household goods as it seemed best to take; I was attending school at Oberlin that year and when father started for Iowa I had to leave and take charge at home."
Now in the fall of that year, 1856, the Indians in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa went on the war-path and nearly all the settlers forty miles north of Algona were massacred or driven from their homes, and for miles and miles around most of the settlers fled. But at Algona the pioneers had built a stockade the year before and were prepared to fight it out. Fortunately the Indians did not molest them. "When we went out the next spring (1857) long before we got to Algona we found abandoned houses from which the owners had fled during the Indian scare and had not got back to yet," says William.
Of that family journey taken in the spring of 1857, here is Evaline Carlisle's childhood recollection: "We went as far as Dubuque by rail, then unloaded the car, put the three seated wagon together, and Mother, William, Polly, George, Grant and I started for north-western Iowa. We had a jolly time; none of the water-courses were bridged so we had to ford them; and Oh, the places we had to sleep in at night! We had been used to a good home and plenty to eat, but I wish you could have stayed one night at any of those places! The geese and ducks and cats and dogs were right under our beds squealing and fighting much of the time and every now and then Grant and I would run these animals out. Really I believe I never had so much fun in my life before. I tell you we had one long frolic. Mother had rare government over us but we got away from her control at such times. But the journey was hard for mother, always used to every comfort; for we could not get a decent bed, let alone anything fit to eat." The "fun" became an old story even to children of ten and eight for Eva adds, "we were all glad to reach Algona."
Oliver and his daughter Alice, after a short winter in Delaware county and after tedious journeying through deep snow in February in a country where there were very few settlers indeed, had at last reached Fort Dodge whence they had made the remaining forty miles of the journey by river. Oliver at once went to building a cabin to live in and utilized a deserted log hut as a blacksmith shop. His industrious spirit had full swing and he worked very hard. "I have known him," says Grant, "to work until twelve o'clock at night and to be up and at it again by four in the morning. I remember one time when there was an Indian out-break north of us and there was a company of cavalry organized and stationed about fifty miles away father took the job of shoeing their horses. In those days a smith had to make his own shoes and nails, and father worked nearly day and night to get the shoes ready and I had to swing the sledge to turn the shoes. When everything was ready he would load up and start for the camp across the line into Minnesota. Sometimes it was very cold but he always went through." * * "I have heard him say that he had shod sixteen teams in one day. He was a very strong man and the horse he could not handle was a bad one." Grant goes on to say that "at that time there was no other shop within forty miles, and I have known men to come thirty-five miles with an ox-team to get their work done and to stay two or three days they had brought so much work with them. And father would keep them while he was doing this work, so generous-hearted a man was he." It is said Oliver was on occasion a very passionate man though never inclined to hold a grudge. "I have known," says Grant, "men to come to the shop when father was pressed with business and want a piece of work done 'right away;' whereat he would get angry and damn them; and then before they got out of hearing he would call them back and do their work for them in a happy spirit."
He kept a hotel in Algona at that time and he always had some good horses in his stable. He used to do much long-distance carting of goods even from Mankato some eighty miles away in Minnesota; made, at least one such trip, when the mercury stood at 35° below zero. He early pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres of land and in time acquired considerable property in Algona. He served as sheriff for six years. After Grant married he lived near his father and worked a great deal with him in winter. Not only were they often together thus in the shop, but "we used to go into the woods together," says Grant, "to get our fire-wood. He was a good hand with the axe and I thought I was for I stood six feet in my socks and weighed two hundred pounds. When we had felled a tree he would tell me to get up on it and he would 'butt' me, that is he would chop the butt cut sooner than I could the next smaller and I must own he nearly always did it, and he over sixty at the time."
Oliver was a large, fine-looking man but blacksmithing, it is said, had somewhat rounded his shoulders. He was a man of lively spirits — good company for young people as well as old and extremely hospitable — seems, in fact, to have had a good measure of his father's spirit. He was a Republican from the starting of the party," says his daughter, Mrs. Carlisle, "and we all stay by his politics." He bravely came to the rescue of the family name in his father's line.
In 1889 Oliver removed to Center Chain, Martin Co., Minn., where he located on a quarter section of land. Here it was he died Sep. 17, 1895. His wife Martha had died Sept. 1, 1858; and on Dec. 11, 1862, he had married Sarah Crose, b. June 30, 1841, dau. of Phillip and Mary (Crouch) Crose.

From "History of Kossuth, Hancock, and Winnebago Counties, Iowa":

Oliver Benschoter was born Oct 21, 1816. In the latter part of 1817 his father removed to what is now Erie Co., Ohio, where he resided until death called him away to a better land. Oliver continued to live with his mother until 1833, when she too passed away into a better world. The subject of our sketch remained in Erie county until 1856, when he started west. He stopped in Delaware Co., Iowa, that winter, and in the spring of 1857 came to Kossuth county and located in Algona. He immediately started a blacksmith shop, being the pioneer blacksmith of the county. He ran his shop in Algona for several years. In 1861 he preempted the farm in Portland township, where he now lives, section 32, township 96, range 28. He has 160 acres of land, he also has twenty-four acres of timber on his place. He held the office of sheriff of Kossuth county from 1860 to 1866. In 1836 he was united in marriage with Martha Kemp, of Ohio. She was born in Vermont, in 1819. She died in 1859, leaving six children — William, Alice, Polly, George, Grant and Evaline. On Dec.11,1862, Mr. Benschoter was married to Sarah Crose, born in Indiana, June 30, 1841. By this union there were ten children — Frank, Ned and Nellie, twins, Jennie, Herbert, Olive, Louisa and George. One of Mr. Benschoter’s sons enlisted during the War of the Rebellion and died at Little Rock, Ark., in 1863. Mr. Benschoter is a republican. He is truly a pioneer of Kossuth county, and is most highly respected by his fellow citizens and neighbors.

1.   History of Kossuth, Hancock and Winnebago counties, Iowa: together with sketches of their cities, villages and townships; history of Iowa. (Springfield, Illinois: Union Pub. Co., 1884)
   pp. 517,8.
2. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 821, in 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. 294, 296-298.
3.   2892, in Gorton, Adelos. The Life and Times of Samuel Gorton: the Founders and the Founding of the Republic, a Section of Early United States History, and a History of the Colony of Providence and Rhode Island Plantations in the Narragansett Indian Country, Now the State of Rhode Island, 1592-1636-1677-1687 : With a Genealogy of Samuel Gortons's Descendants to the Present Time, Compiled from Various Accounts, Histories, Letters, and Published and Unpublished Records. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: George S. Ferguson, 1907)
   p. 293.

   Oliver A. Van Benschotten, born October 21, 23, 1816, married Martha Kemp.