(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
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Thomas Benton was born on September 5, 1816, in Williamson County, Tennessee, United States, the son of Samuel Benton who was also a man of more than ordinary ability, well educated for his time, a leader among his fellows, active in the Texas Revolution, and a member of congress in that republic. Benton was of English-Scotch ancestry, his grandfather being Jesse Benton, who in 1765 came from England to North Carolina as private secretary to William Tryon.
First instructed by his father, Thomas later attended an academy at Huntington, Tennessee, and then Marion College in Missouri, attaining proficiency in the classics.
Benton went into the Iowa country in 1837 while it was yet a part of Wisconsin, and settled in Dubuque, a frontier town of 1, 200 inhabitants. Here in 1838-1839 he conducted what was probably the first classical school in Iowa. On the organization of the State of Iowa, 1846, he was elected to the Senate, serving as chairman of the committee on schools, and securing the legislation upon which has been built the public-school system of the state. In 1848 he was elected to the office of state superintendent of public instruction. He served for two terms, six years, declined reelection, and entered the banking business in Council Bluffs and Omaha.
In 1857 Iowa adopted a new constitution, in which public education was organized under a state board with an executive secretary. To this secretaryship Benton was called in 1858, a position which he filled until 1862, when he was commissioned colonel of the 29th Iowa Infantry. He served throughout the Civil War and was mustered out in 1865 with a brevet title of brigadier-general. He immediately accepted nomination for the governorship of Iowa on a soldiers' platform, opposed to negro suffrage, and though defeated by the Republican candidate, received a large vote. In 1866 he moved to Marshalltown as collector of United States revenue in the sixth congressional district, serving during the administration of President Johnson. For several years after the death of his wife, 1869, he lived in Cedar Rapids, as auditor of a railroad. He died at the home of his sister in St. Louis, Missouri, and was buried with Masonic honors at Marshalltown, Iowa.
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
Thomas Benton was a member of the Democratic Party; the Iowa Senate (1846-1854).
Thomas Benton married in 1851 Susan Culbertson of Boalsburg, Pennsylvania.
