THE WAUPACA COUNTY POST

December 27, 1990

 

WHEN THEN WAS NOW

By Wayne A. Guyant

 

 

            Francis Marion Benedict, educator, archaeologist, farmer and teacher of penmanship, was born June 9, 1853, at Dale in Outagamie County, the son of William W. and Achsah H. (Hoar) Benedict.  The parents were both born in Delaware County, Ohio, where most of their eight children were born.

            In 1847 William Benedict and his wife and children came to Troy Center, Wis., where they remained until 1849 when they moved to Dale.  In 1853 William, the father, came to Waupca in search of some good land and in 1854 he moved his family to a farm of 160 acres located in Section 19, Township of Farmington.

            William Benedict was the chairman of the Town of Farmington for eight years.  During this time he laid out most of the roads in the area.  Achsah, the mother, died in 1881 and William died in 1893.  Both are buried in Sheridan Cemetery.

            Frances Marion Benedict, the subject of this article, was the sixth in line of the eight children.  As a boy growing up on the farm, Francis learned a great deal about nature around him and became quite a naturalist.  He once stated that he felt that he had the best teachers while growing up, and that it was the teachers rather than the schoolhouse or equipment which accounts for a true education.

            In 1870 Francis M. Benedict himself became a teacher.  He taught schools in Pleasant Valley and Parfreyville, both in the township of Dayton, and at Weyauwega High School.

            In 1870, while attending a teacher’s institute at Waupaca, he took a course in writing lessons from Prof. Walter C. Hooker.  During the following winters while he was teaching me made a special study in writing, not only practicing it himself, but instructing his students.  It was during this period of time that he developed a system of teaching penmanship that became called “Rythmic Writing,”  From 1880 to 1895 Mr. Benedict taught writing as a specialty.

            It was on September 16, 1874, that Francis M. Benedict was united in marriage to Millicent M. Taylor, a daughter of David and Mary (Radley) Taylor.  Seven children were born to this union.

            In 1878, Francis Benedict bought 125 acres of undeveloped land in Section 26, Township of Farmington.  This farm is located on State Highway 10, approximately one mile east of King.  Some will remember this farm as the John Montgomery, or the Carroll Christensen place.  Look for the tall water tower.  In every year from 1878 to 1880, when Mr. Benedict was teaching, he took his vacations between school terms working on his farm.  Here he put in much physical labor clearing out the trees and brush and removing the stumps until he had about 100 acres under cultivation.

            He received substantial returns from his farm, especially from his operations as a breeder of high grade Holstein cattle, and his thoroughbred Ancona chickens.  Mr. Benedict erected a fine set of buildings, and was supposed to have driven every nail in those buildings.  He had constructed one of the best built barns in Waupaca County at that time.  He acquired the water tank from the Cristy House property, in Waupaca, and set it upon a tall structure on his farm, using the lumber from the old water tower at the Wisconsin Veterans Home when it was razed in about 1906.

            At one time in his early life he was an emigration agent for 15 years for the Wisconsin Central Railroad, later the Soo Line.  He gave over 500 lectures to induce people to settle in the new districts of northern Wisconsin.

            He was an archaeologist and student of the Aboriginal remains found in Wisconsin.  F. M. Benedict located no less than 61 mounds around the Chain o’ Lakes, that he copyrighted in 1896.

            Mr. Benedict wrote several papers about these effigy mounds that were built by a pre-historic culture of which we know nothing, or very little.  The effigy mound builders inhabited this area, as well as some others, long before the Indians as we know them.  Their mounds gave our forefathers fits when settling in the new world.

            There is enough material that has been written by F. M. Benedict about the Indians and the prehistoric race in this area, that a complete story can be written in some later article.

            The Benedicts in America are descendents from Thomas Benedict, who came from Nottinghampshire, England, in 1638, landing at the Plymouth Rock settlement, 18 years after the original colony was established by the passengers from the Mayflower.