Harriet Amelia Warfield
Harriet Amelia Warfield was born in 1783 in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Her memorial names her Harriet Amelia Warfield Benepe and gives her parents as Seth Warfield (1752-1812) and Ruth Hammond Welsh Warfield (1754-1820).
She married Dr. Jacob Benepe in Baltimore County at the end of 1801. Her licence is in the county's marriage register, dated 26 November 1801, and the clerk wrote the couple as "Jacob Bonnepa" and "Harriot Warfield." A licence was the county's permission to marry, usually taken out a few days before the wedding. One account gives the wedding itself as 30 November 1801. Her memorial gives the year as 1802.
The Warfields were an old Anne Arundel family of tobacco planters. J. D. Warfield's history of the county, published in 1905, places her father's generation on the land west of Baltimore. "Five brothers, Seth, Beni, Bela, Elie and Azel Warfield, born on 'Warfield's Range,' came up the Old Frederick Road and seated themselves here to grow tobacco," he wrote. "They took for their wives a Welsh, three Dorseys and a Welling." Seth's five sons later surveyed a tract called Warfield Forest, near Lisbon in what is now Howard County. Her grandfather, the elder Seth Warfield, made his will on 2 August 1798 and left the residue of his estate to "my five sons Namely Seth Warfield, Bani Warfield Eli Warfield & Azel Warfield Beal Warfield."
Her husband was a doctor who had come from Switzerland. In February 1807 a Jacob Benepe witnessed the will of Ignatius Harding in Baltimore County. Her daughter Caroline was born in Baltimore in July 1805, by the memorial of that daughter, and an Ohio death record of 1910 confirms that Caroline was born in Maryland. By 1814 the doctor was in Coshocton County, Ohio. Between 1816 and 1822 he appears in an estate account in Jefferson County, Ohio. He ended at New Philadelphia, the seat of Tuscarawas County, and died there, by his own memorial, on 6 February 1826.
Eight children are listed on the memorials of the family. Ruthenett was born in 1803. Caroline Hammond followed in 1805, Harriet Warfield in 1808, and Eliza Ann in 1809, who died as an infant. Then came Amelia Elizabeth in 1811, John Jacob on 13 April 1813, Louisa in 1815 and Seth in 1816.
The children's names point to her as their mother. Ruthenett carries the name of her own mother, Ruth. Caroline's middle name, Hammond, is the family of that grandmother, the Hammonds of Anne Arundel, through whom the Warfields and Welshes had intermarried. Harriet Warfield Benepe carries her mother's whole maiden name. The youngest son was Seth, her father's name. A grandson recalled in 1918 that the doctor's "wife was of Welsh descent," which is probably a memory of a surname, Welsh, rather than of a country.
The doctor died with debts larger than his goods. In July 1828 his administrator went to the Court of Common Pleas for leave to sell his land, and the petition lists his widow, Harriet. She had married again in September 1827, in Tuscarawas County, to Samuel Thomas. The county's marriage returns for that month carry the entry "No. 974, In the Matter of Samuel Thomas and Mrs. Harriet Benepe." As a widow she was entitled to dower, the right of a widow to a life interest in a third of her husband's land. Samuel Thomas became guardian of three of her younger children, Amelia, Louisa and Seth. A different man, John Coventry, was made guardian of John Jacob. The town lots could not be sold for half their appraised value, and in March 1829 the court ordered them sold for the best price that could be had. The estate was still open in March 1832.
Her death is not settled. The memorial gives 1884, "aged 100-101," with a burial in the Fair Street Cemetery at New Philadelphia under the name Benepe. No stone survives there and the cemetery's own records do not list her. Another account gives her death as 1844 at New Philadelphia instead. A woman who had remarried as Mrs. Thomas would not usually be buried as a Benepe, so the date is left open.
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Cite: Heirology, "Harriet Amelia Warfield (b. 1783)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/harriet-amelia-warfield-1783-cc75f1.