My Genealogy Hound

Dr. D. L. Benson, of Mountain Grove, Wright Co., Mo., was born in Perry County, Ill., in 1836, and is the son of Samuel and Mary (Baker) Benson, and grandson of Daniel Benson, who was a native of Ireland, and who immigrated to America, locating in Tennessee, where he died. Samuel Benson was a native of Bedford County, Tenn., born in 1806. When about eighteen years of age he immigrated to Boone County, Mo., and remained there for about two years, when he went to St. Louis and worked at his trade, that of a stone mason. While in St. Louis he married Miss Baker, and soon afterward moved to Perry County, Ill., where he followed agricultural pursuits the rest of his life. He died in March, 1888. Mary (Baker) Benson was born in Illinois in 1810, and died in 1886. They were the parents of thirteen children, three now living. Dr. D. L. Benson was the third child in order of birth. He grew to maturity on a farm in Illinois, and received his education in the common schools of his native county. Later he read medicine under a preceptor, but before practicing he married Miss Esther Staton, who was also born in Perry County, Ill., in 1842, and reared within half a mile of her husband. Dr. Benson practiced medicine in Perry County, Ill., and when forty years of age moved to Mountain Grove, Wright County, and his was the fifth family in the town. Here he continued the practice of his profession, and is next to the oldest practitioner in the place. He is strictly temperate in his habits, and has for many years been an elder in the Christian Church. Dr. Benson is an inveterate hunter, and every fall abandons his business and takes his annual hunt. During pioneer times he killed seventeen deer at one lick, from May until the 1st of August, and he has killed deer on what is now the public square of the town. He was surveyor of Perry County, Ill., for fourteen years, and is one of the successful practitioners of the town in which he now lives.