Ancestors

Capt. Benjamin John Franklin Hanna

Benjamin John Franklin Hanna was born on 24 February 1825 at Golconda, in Pope County, Illinois. He was "the only son of John C. and Lucy G. Hanna," according to a sketch of his life published in 1883 in Cutler's History of the State of Kansas. His father was a Tennessean. His mother was born in Mercer County, Kentucky. He had an older sister, Mary Elisabeth Frances, born in 1823.

From 1841 to 1845 he worked on the farm and taught school in the winters. He then learned the printing trade at Sparta, Illinois. In 1849 he founded a newspaper, the Chester Herald, at Chester in Randolph County. The office burned the next year, and he started the paper again.

At Chester, in August 1849, he married Margaret C. Phillips. She had been born at Paisley in Scotland and had come to Randolph County with her parents about 1839. Cutler gives the wedding day as the 3rd of August; the Illinois county marriage index gives the 7th. Edwin was born at Chester in 1850 and Christina at Chester in 1857. Franklin, born in 1854, died at two and a half in March 1857. Benjamin was born at Alton in 1860, and Lucie, the youngest, in 1864.

From 1856 to 1861 he edited the Alton Courier, at Alton on the Mississippi. In the words of the 1883 sketch: "In November, 1862, he was appointed Quartermaster of United States Volunteers, with rank of Captain, by President Lincoln." A quartermaster was the officer who handled an army's supplies, stores and transport. He served in Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Alabama until January 1866.

While he was in the army, his wife took their children to Salina, Kansas, a frontier town. Her brother, William Addison Phillips, had founded it in 1858, and her widowed mother lived there. After the war Hanna joined them. He founded the Salina Herald, whose first issue came out on 16 February 1867. It was Salina's first newspaper. A Salina cemetery walk booklet remembers him as "an outspoken newspaperman with strong abolitionist views."

On 10 November 1877 he became Register of the U.S. Land Office at Hays City. The federal land offices handled the sale and homestead entry of public land, and the Register kept the official record of every claim. The office moved west to WaKeeney on 20 October 1879, and he was reappointed in 1882. The 1880 census lists him at WaKeeney as "Register of US Land Office," with his wife "Margret," born in Scotland. His son-in-law William Henry Dann worked in the office as a clerk. His daughter Lucie married B. F. Morgan at WaKeeney on 22 May 1882.

He rose high in the fraternal orders. He was Grand Master and Grand Patriarch of the Odd Fellows of Kansas. In 1878-79 he was Grand Commander of the Knights Templar of Kansas, the Masonic order of knighthood.

His two sons made their careers in Washington. Edwin was private secretary to three Secretaries of the Interior, and Benjamin was private secretary to the Secretary of the Navy. Hanna died in Washington at midnight on 6-7 December 1891, of diabetes, in his sixty-seventh year. The District of Columbia death index gives his occupation as lawyer. His body was taken back to Salina and buried at Gypsum Hill Cemetery on 16 December 1891 with a Knights Templar funeral. A tall obelisk marks the grave.

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Cite: Heirology, "Capt. Benjamin John Franklin Hanna (1825-1891)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/capt-benjamin-john-franklin-hanna-1825-1891-08940d.