Berry Benson (1843-1923), was born in Hamburg, SC in 1843, the son of Abraham Madison Benson (1818-1860) and Nancy Harmon (1814-1857). His father, Abraham Benson lived in California for a few years during the California Gold Rush, around 1849. Benson was a legend during the Civil War (1861-1865). He and his brother, Blackwood, joined the Hamburg Minutemen and were mustered in the First South Carolina Volunteer Regiment in Charleston. Benson accompanied his regiment to Virginia and enlisted for the duration of the Civil War after his six-month enlistment expired. Although just eighteen, Benson was named corporal of Company H, First South Carolina Regiment. Campaigning as part of General A. P. Hill's Light Division in 1862, Benson saw action during the Seven Days Battles and at Second Manassas, both in Virginia; at Antietam, in Maryland; and at Fredericksburg, in Virginia. Following the Civil War, the Ladies Memorial Association of Augusta selected Benson to serve as the model for the statue of an anonymous enlisted man on the Confederate Monumnet that the Association worked to commission and build on Broad Street, in downtown Augusta, GA. Benson also served as one of the officers of the Confederate Survivors Association upon it's creation in 1878. In 1868, Benson married Jeannie Oliver, and the couple had at least 5 children: Jeanie Benson (b. 1868), Arthur Benson (b. 1870), Pauline Benson (b. 1872), Olive Benson (b. 1875), and Louis Williams Benson (b. 1879). The family lived briefly in Texas before Benson settled in Augusta to work as an accountant. Benson recieved national attention for his defense of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager in Augusta who was convicted on the testimony of a janitor who had a record for murdering a 13 year old factory worker. Benson wrote editiorials on the anti-semitism he saw in the case, which were published in newspapers across the country. These editorials later had an impact on Governor John M. Slaton's eventual commutation of Leo Frank's death sentence to life in prison instead. Benson remained active in the Augusta community, in the Confederate Survivors Association, and the local Boy Scout groups, until his death on January 1, 1923. Source: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/berry-benson-1843-1923 http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/charles-c-jones-jr-1831-1893

Note written by Compiled by Tammy Westafer and Kara Flynn