{"id":1183,"date":"2017-12-11T14:49:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T20:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/?p=1183"},"modified":"2019-02-19T11:59:45","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T17:59:45","slug":"stephenson-benjamin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/stephenson-benjamin\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephenson, Benjamin (1769 – 1822)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benjamin Stephenson (1769-1822) was a prominent citizen of frontier Illinois and Edwardsville. During his career he served as sheriff of Randolph County, Illinois territorial representative to Congress during the War of 1812, and Receiver of Public Money in the Federal Land District Office in Edwardsville<\/a>. He also opened a General Store in Edwardsville.<\/p>\n

\"Stephenson<\/a><\/p>\n

Portrait of Benjamin Stephenson
\nFrom\u00a0RoxAnn Raisner<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Benjamin Stephenson was a child of the American Revolution. He celebrated his eighth birthday only four days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 Two years later the British occupied Philadelphia, and the Continental Congress fled to the town of York, only a few miles from Stephenson\u2019s home in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Benjamin was born July 8, 1769 in York County, Pennsylvania to James and Mary Reed and was the youngest boy of seven children.\u00a0 Around 1790, the Stephenson family moved to Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), where he would meet and marry Lucy Swearingen<\/a> by April 1799.\u00a0 Lucy was 10, and he was 30. The young couple moved to Harper\u2019s Ferry, Virginia where their first daughter, Julia, was born in 1803.\u00a0 Later that same year, the family moved to Russellville, Kentucky.\u00a0 During an 1806 visit to Virginia, their first son, James, was born.<\/p>\n

Life in Kentucky and Association with Ninian Edwards<\/h3>\n

Little is known about Stephenson\u2019s career in Kentucky.\u00a0The family lived in Kentucky for about six years. Benjamin and Lucy lived in Logan County and Benjamin became one of the original members of the Russellville Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons.<\/p>\n

While living near Russellville in 1809, their second daughter, Elvira, was born.\u00a0 It was probably during this period that Benjamin and Ninian Edwards became close friends and political allies.\u00a0 The alliance was cemented by both politics and by family.<\/p>\n

In 1809 President James Madison appointed Ninian Edwards as the governor of the newly founded Illinois Territory; one of governor Ninian\u2019s first acts was to appoint Benjamin as sheriff of Randolph County, Illinois.<\/p>\n

Life in Kaskaskia<\/h3>\n

Between 1809 and 1816 the Stephensons lived in Kaskaskia, capitol of the Illinois Territory.\u00a0 Benjamin V., the last of their four children, was born there in 1812.<\/p>\n

Although Stephenson\u2019s duties as sheriff were largely confined to property assessment, the collection of property taxes, and the organization of land sales to settle delinquent taxes, Stephenson still held a position of considerable public significance.\u00a0 Due to unsettled land laws at the time and unsettled claims of French residents in the area, many large parcels of land were sold through this process.\u00a0 Also, because of his official position, Stephenson was closely connected to Governor Ninian Edwards, Territorial Secretary Nathanial Pope, and the three judges of the Territorial Court. Initially, there was no Territorial Legislature and all laws were written, approved, and enforced by the governor and the three judges.\u00a0 Consequently, Stephenson worked daily with the five most powerful people in the Illinois Territory.<\/p>\n

Congress<\/h3>\n

In October of 1814, Shadrack Bond, Illinois\u2019 territorial representative to the 13th<\/sup> U.S. Congress, resigned his position to become the Receiver of Public Money at the Federal Land Office in Kaskaskia.\u00a0 Governor Edwards appointed Benjamin Stephenson to complete Bond\u2019s term. Stephenson was already elected to succeed Bond in the 14th<\/sup> Congress scheduled to convene in 1815. Under normal circumstances, Stephenson would not have served in the 13th<\/sup> Congress because both sessions of the 13th<\/sup> Congress had already adjourned. However, because of the War of 1812 a third session of the 13th<\/sup> Congress was called, and Stephenson took his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives on November 14, 1814. Stephenson arrived in Washington only two and a half months after it was burned by the British.<\/p>\n

Stephenson\u2019s initial focus in the House of Representatives was the defense of the frontier from Native American attacks.\u00a0 He and Rufus Easton, the territorial representative from Missouri, actively lobbied for more federal troops on the frontier. They wrote a joint letter to President Madison laying out the problems on the frontier and met with the president on several occasions. A second major concern was the issue of militia pay.\u00a0 Largely because of Stephenson\u2019s work, the War Department finally paid Illinois militia.\u00a0 Stephenson himself collected the money from the War Department and personally brought the money back to Illinois.<\/p>\n

By the time Stephenson\u2019s elected term in the House began in 1815, the War of 1812 was over.\u00a0 With the removal of British influence among the Indians on the frontier, the threat of Indian attack was so reduced that Stephenson\u2019s focus changed from the defense of the frontier to numerous social issues. Even though a territorial representative had no vote in Congress, and thus had little power, Stephenson compiled an impressive record of legislative success.\u00a0 Among his accomplishments was a legislative act, which gave the vote to all white males who had resided in the Illinois territory for a year.\u00a0 Under the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance that established the Northwest Territory, only Freeholders (those who owned at least 50 acres of land) could vote.\u00a0 Stephenson argued that most of those who had served in the militia during the war of 1812 were not land owners. Nevertheless, they had defended the territory as members of the militia and, therefore, deserved the vote. The Congress changed the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance to allow voting by non-Freeholders.<\/p>\n

Stephenson was also instrumental in the establishment of the Circuit Court system.\u00a0 The original Northwest Ordinance established a three-judge court for the territory.\u00a0 The judges in Illinois believed that they could meet wherever they wanted and, since they lived in Kaskaskia, they only met at Kaskaskia.\u00a0 A citizen living anywhere in the territory with court business had to travel to Kaskaskia and that might take many days. The Illinois Legislature and the governor wanted to change the system so that the judges would go to the people rather than the other way around.\u00a0 The judges argued that the Northwest Ordinance was a federal law and the territorial legislature and governor could not pass any law which superseded federal law. Stephenson convinced the U.S. Congress to pass an act that sided with the legislature and the governor rather than the three judges; thus, judges were required to hold court in each county in the territory.\u00a0 Finally, Stephenson shepherded through Congress numerous changes in the laws governing the sale of public land.\u00a0 He also clarified the boundaries of the territory.\u00a0 For example, the line between Illinois and Missouri was declared to be the middle of the Mississippi River and that islands in the river would be allocated to either territory by their location with regard to this line.<\/p>\n

In a long letter to the editor of the Western Intelligencer<\/em> in the June 19th<\/sup>, 1816, edition of the paper, Stephenson laid out his legislative successes and announced that he would not seek re-election.\u00a0 In the introduction to Stephenson\u2019s letter, Daniel Cook commented on Stephenson\u2019s success in Congress.\u00a0 Cook said, \u201cHe made no parade of extravagant promises, but he has shown emphatically his faith by his works.\u201d In other words, Stephenson was a politician who promised little but produced much.<\/p>\n

Merchant and Receiver of Public Money<\/h3>\n

Stephenson returned to Kaskaskia from Congress in May 1816.\u00a0 In June his appointment as Receiver of Public Money in the new Federal Land District Office in Edwardsville was announced. He and his family moved to Edwardsville shortly after the appointment.\u00a0 At the same time, Stephenson opened a general store in Edwardsville. Ads for the Edwardsville store began to appear in the Kaskaskia newspaper in November 1816. These ads ran in issues of the Western Intelligencer<\/em> for a full year.\u00a0 The newspaper ads said that Benjamin Stephenson was opening a new store in Edwardsville featuring merchandise recently imported from Philadelphia and Baltimore.\u00a0 In November 1817 a new ad started to appear and continued until April 1818, when the last ad for the store appeared.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Stephenson<\/a><\/p>\n

The Stephenson House<\/a> in Edwardsville in the 21st century
\nFrom\u00a0RoxAnn Raisner<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

While the store was one aspect of his life, the job as Receiver of Public Moneys for the Edwardsville Land District was without question his principal job. Stephenson served as Receiver of Public Moneys from late 1816 until his death in October 1822.\u00a0 In that time the land office sold 3446 parcels of land valued at $832,699.94.\u00a0 A total of 426,701 acres of land was sold in the Edwardsville office during Stephenson\u2019s tenure.\u00a0 The land offices were enormously important to the federal government and the local economies of the territories.\u00a0 At the end of the American Revolution, the government was deeply in debt and had few sources of income.\u00a0 The one thing the government had in great abundance was land; consequently, the government began to sell the public lands in Ohio and westward.\u00a0 The first office in Illinois opened in Kaskaskia in 1804 and the second opened in Shawneetown in 1812. Due to the tangled land claims cases in the old French district around Kaskaskia, no land was sold at the Kaskaskia office until 1814, ten years after its establishment. \u00a0The Edwardsville office, established in late 1816, soon dwarfed the other offices in the volume of sales.\u00a0 The sale of land had many benefits to Americans.\u00a0 First, new settlers could serve as a buffer against Indian attacks for the more settled east.\u00a0 Second, the displacement of Indians deprived the English of a valued ally.\u00a0 Third, the sale of land provided a source of funds for the government at a time when funding options were limited. Finally, the land offices raised money on the frontier where almost no one had any.\u00a0 The land office in Edwardsville was the largest business in Edwardsville from its inception and remained significant until it closed in the 1850s.\u00a0 Since the land office was the major source of funds in the area and Stephenson controlled the money, he quickly became \u201cThe Paymaster of the Frontier.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Death of Benjamin Stephenson<\/h3>\n

Benjamin Stephenson died on October 10, 1822.\u00a0 There is little information about his death, but the probate records show that, during the months leading up to his death, the family bought quantities of \u201cYellow Bark.\u201d\u00a0 Yellow Bark, or \u201cPeruvian Bark,\u201d was the bark of the Cinchona tree and the source of quinine used to treat malaria.\u00a0 Malaria was a significant problem throughout the south and reached even as far north as Illinois; thus, the available evidence points to malaria as the cause of Stephenson\u2019s death.\u00a0 He was only 54 years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benjamin Stephenson (1769-1822) was a prominent citizen of frontier Illinois and Edwardsville. During his career he served as sheriff of Randolph County, Illinois territorial representative to Congress during the War of 1812, and Receiver of Public Money in the Federal Land District Office in Edwardsville. He also opened a General Store in Edwardsville. Portrait of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"article.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,22],"tags":[],"coauthors":[71],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-19th-century","category-edwardsville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2366,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/2366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madison-historical.siue.edu\/encyclopedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}