Person:William Benschoter (1)

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

WILLIAM MOSES V.B. was named after his two grandfathers. At the time of the departure of his father and his sister for Iowa he was attending school at Oberlin studying surveying and civil engineering, but this he then gave up in order to be at home; and during the winter of '56 he attended the Seminary at Berlin Heights, driving up and back morning and night. As already related he went with the family to Algona in the spring of 1857. Here it was the "wander thirst" took him.

In the following spring he bade good-by to his people and started westward with a company for Dakota Territory. At the new settlement of Sioux City it was learned that the treaty with the Indians had not yet been concluded, whereupon he and two of his companions made a raft out of five cottonwood logs and consigned themselves to the swift current of the Missouri. They landed at Omaha for a few days then journeyed on to St. Josephs. Here for several months William was seriously ill. No sooner was he about again than Pike's Peak and its gold excitement took possession of him, but the company he was going with backed out. Thereupon in April he joined a man bound for California with a drove of cattle. He drove six yoke of oxen on the provision wagon most of the way. The herd of some three hundred cattle gave them a deal of trouble through stampeding, especially on stormy nights. They had no difficulty with the Indians, though a few days ahead an entire train had perished at their hands. In the South Pass this little group of a dozen adventurers met a whole tribe of Pawnee savages — a great host — on the war-path, bound eastward to fight some other tribe. They were painted and feathered and looked their fiercest. William says, "We had to drive off to one side and make camp, our cattle were so afraid of them. It took them and their ponies a long time to go by us. A young chief came and staid close by our camp all the while. They asked for bread and ammunition but did not molest us."

When within five hundred miles of California, William and four others, dissatisfied, left the train and started independently. They were not on the main travelled trail — were about a day's journey from it, it was said. They were without food but knew by the dust west of them that there was a train ahead. This they overtook and camped with the first night, getting their evening and morning meals. Very early on the morrow they started on expecting to reach the main trail by noon; they travelled on and on; for three days and parts of the nights as well they tramped before reaching the stage route — did so without anything to eat though they encountered plenty of water. During the last day's travel three of the party were in such straits that they would frequently lie down and declare they could go no further.

Not so William and another who by their efforts managed to bring the whole party through. Once on the main trail provisions could be had "at fifty cents the pound." "We had revolvers," says William, " and saw plenty of sage-hens but somehow could not kill one of them. Before that we had thought we could shoot pretty well."

At another time, later, in going down the Humboldt Valley they walked twenty miles one afternoon to the next water. It was very warm, their canteens were soon emptied and their craving for water was intense. Once looking ahead they saw a streak of willows such as borders a watercourse." Think of the disappointment," writes William, "on reaching the willows of finding an alkali slough! Toward night three of our party — the same three who gave out for want of food — became delirious and urged us to go on without them. We would not leave them, and as I recollect it was about midnight when we finally arrived at water." He says, "I think I suffered more for want of water this time than I did in going three days without food."

"Soon after two of our party joined a train leaving only three of us. We walked all the way to California arriving in Placerville late in the fall and having been about seven months crossing the plains."

"I staid in California until the spring of '61; then went over into Nevada, to Aurora, Esmeralda Co., where the excitement at that time was great over silver mining. It was a booming camp. The town had sprang up as by magic, for most of the houses were built of canvas." An accident befell him here that came near being fatal. While working in a mine it caved in on him." I had no warning," he says, "and did not know what hurt me until told of it afterwards. My head and face were very badly cut and bruised, the bone over my left eye being cut through; my right eye was badly turned, and there were many lesser injuries. I was in truth badly knocked out, and it was a year before I was able to do much labor." While at Aurora he witnessed the hanging of four men by the Vigilance Committee for murder.

Another experience was this: "A party of five or six of us had located a mining district east of the White mountains, a range just east of Owens river. It was about one hundred and fifty miles from the place where we got our supplies. We had been in there all summer prospecting and trying to develop some of our claims, and as cold weather was near we decided to go out for the winter. We had just got out when the Indians took to the war-path. I myself went over the mountains into California but one of my partners who went down Owens valley was killed by the Indians and our camp and everything we had was destroyed by them."

He worked in the Red Woods that winter and in the spring "with one pony to ride and one to pack" he went back across the Sierras to Aurora. In the spring of 1865 he left Nevada and crossed the mountains again westward. In the crossing snow was met with deep enough to cover the telegraph poles; large log houses were so buried that they could only be located by the smoke from their fires coming up through the snow. Staging it all one night the next morning "we saw the pear and peach and other fruit trees in full bloom, and encountered the most delightful spring weather as we drove into Placerville."

From San Francisco he took passage for New York — a forty days' journey owing to the wrecking of a connecting steamer at the Isthmus. He stopped in Erie Co., N. Y., to visit two aunts; then in Ohio a while where relatives were many. This was his natal spot, the scene of his boyhood. There again were the "old black-cherry trees which Grandfather William had set out so long ago and which I once delighted in climbing; and the old twenty-acre apple-orchard still healthy and vigorous with whose special trees I had been so familiar." Finally he arrives at Algona; "I shall never forget," he says, "the disappointment in father's face as he looked at us in the stage and then remarked to the driver that he had thought his boy would be along this trip; but when I jumped out his recognition was quick enough."

In the spring of 1866 William bought himself a farm just over the line from Kossuth in Humboldt Co., and on May 2, married Sarah A. Chapin in Algona. The Pacific coast, however, for years kept beckoning to him and in 1875 he sold out his Iowa farm and moved permanently to California, and now he calls Boulder his home.

His wife Sarah, b. Nov. 18, 1845, m Rock Co., Wis., was the dau. of Judson and Caroline (Waterhouse) Chapin.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 McWhorter, Ray Seely. Van Benschoten, Benschoten, Seeley, Seely: the Benschoter line of Alice Esther Benschoter Seely. (R. S. McWhorter, 1971).
2. ↑ 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).