U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Stanton, Benjamin (1809-1872) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Men of West Virginia, Volume II Biographical Publishing Company George Richmond, Pres.: C. R. Arnold, Sec'y and Treas. Chicago, Illinois, 1903 Pages 552-555 HON. BENJAMIN STANTON, lawyer and statesman, was born at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, June 4, 1809, and died at Wheeling, West Virginia, June 2, 1872. He was the only child of Elias Stanton and his wife Martha, who was a daughter of William and Elizabeth Wilson. His parents were members of the Society of Friends, and their marriage contract, dated October 22, 1807, is still in the possession of his family. The names of a large number of pioneer Ohio Friends and Quakers are subscribed to that contract, as witnesses, among them, David Stanton, who was the father of Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, and a cousin of Elias Stanton. Mr. Stanton's childhood was spent on a farm near Mount Pleasant, and when a youth he first learned the trade of a tailor, and then studied law with Stokely & Marsh in Steubenville, Ohio. He married Nancy Davis at Mount Pleasant, in January, 1830, and was admitted to practice law at Steubenville in the fall of 1833. In April, 1834, he removed to Bellefontaine, Ohio, where he resided until he removed to West Virginia in 1866. Hon. William Lawrence (U. S. Comptroller of the Currency), who was a contemporary of Mr. Stanton at Bellefontaine, says, in a sketch of Mr. Stanton's life, that he was the leading lawyer in that part of Ohio for 25 years prior to 1866. In 1841, Mr. Stanton was elected to the Senate of Ohio, having prior to that time served as prosecuting attorney of his county. With other Whigs he resigned his office as senator in the summer of 1842 in order to break a quorum in the Senate, and thus prevent a Democratic gerrymander of the State, and his course was approved by his re-election in the fall of 1842. In January, 1851, he formed a law partnership with C. W. B. Allison, under the firm name of Stanton & Allison, which continued until his death. In the year 1850, he was a member of the convention that framed the Ohio Constitution, and he was also chosen to represent the Eighth Congressional District of Ohio in the 32nd Congress. He was not a member of the next Congress, but was re-elected in 1854, and served through successive re-elections until the close of the thirty-sixth Congress on the 4th of March, 1861. He was, during the 35th Congress, appointed one of the regents of the Smithsonian Institution and was chosen chairman of the committee on military affairs during the last Congress before the War of the Rebellion. The records of Congress, while he was a member, show that he took an active part in the stirring debates prior to the war, and that he was one of the Republican leaders in the House of Representatives. In 1860, he was strongly supported for United States Senator from Ohio, but the choice fell to Hon. John Sherman, who thereafter served so long and eminently in that capacity as to be known wherever the Senate is known. Mr. Stanton received the unsought Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Ohio in 1862, and was elected on the same ticket with David Tod for Governor, serving two years. At the close of the war, a majority of the able lawyers of the State of West Virginia were prevented from practicing their profession because they could not take the "test oath" (that they had not borne arms against the United States or aided or supported the Confederate cause), and Mr. Stanton and his partner determined to remove to this State where professional ability was in demand and where there was a wide field for legal practice in business involving greater amounts generally than the business in their portion of Ohio. Accordingly, in the spring of 1866, the firm of Stanton & Allison opened an office in Martinsburg in charge of Mr. Stanton, and another office in Wheeling, in charge of Mr. Allison. In the spring of 1867, the Martinsburg office was closed, and thereafter the members of the firm continued together at Wheeling. The first five volumes of the decisions of the Supreme Court of West Virginia show that during the time that Mr. Stanton practiced law in West Virginia he was of counsel in a larger number of cases in that court than any lawyer in the State, and he was also of counsel in nearly every case that went to the Supreme Court of the United States from this State during that period. In the aforesaid sketch, Judge Lawrence says: "For native ability and power in debate, Mr. Stanton has rarely been excelled in Ohio, or indeed in the nation." In an editorial after Mr. Stanton's death, the Toledo Commercial said: "Mr. Stanton was not only a man of very strong intellectual powers, with extensive knowledge upon all questions of public interest, but his reputation for honesty and fidelity in the discharge of official duties was above even the taint of suspicion." A long editorial on the death of Mr. Stanton in the Wheeling Daily Register of June 4, 1872, includes the following: "He was a fine advocate, one of the best that has ever spoken at the bar in this county, and all his speeches, whether in court or in the political forum, were marked by a clearness of statement and an apparent earnestness and sincerity and honesty of purpose that rendered them unusually effective. He took an active part in whatever concerned the public welfare and was always ready to devote his time and labor to the discharge of whatever duty his fellow citizens imposed upon him. It has been our fortune to differ with him, both politically and upon many questions of local importance, and to know how great an influence he wielded and what a strong hold he had upon the public mind. His private character was above reproach. He has been for many years a member of the Methodist Church and in all the social relations of life has enjoyed the warm friendship of all who knew him. Kind hearted, generous, affable and courteous, he had attached to himself hosts of friends and was admired no less for his brilliant talents than for his estimable qualities as a man. The death of such a man is always a public calamity, and we feel sure that we but express the sentiment of the entire community when we say that without distinction or exception the citizens of Wheeling mourn his death. From the midst of his activity and his usefulness he has passed away, leaving behind him the perfume of a well spent life and the commendation of his fellow men." Mr. Stanton left surviving him a widow, who died May 16, 1886, a daughter of Mrs. Mary Stanton Allison (the wife of his law partner), who died October 13, 1899, and two sons, James D. and Frank, who still reside in Wheeling. Another son (Capt. Alexander H. Stanton) had died shortly before his father's demise, leaving a widow and one son (Edwin L.), who are still living. ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you've reached this file through a SEARCH, you can access other biographies for Ohio County, WV by going to the following URL: http://www.us-data.org/wv/ohio/bios.html -------------------------------------------------------------------