I’m still at Omaha’s Prospect Hill Cemetery. This week, the folks I’m writing about are not necessarily prominent pioneers like the people in Part 1. But their stories are still worth telling, and I think you’ll agree after you’ve read them.
From time to time, I feature photos of children’s graves on my Facebook page. It is not uncommon for them to be buried without with one or both of their parents. Inevitably, I will get someone who comments, “I could NEVER be buried away from my babies!” or something similar.
I understand where this sentiment comes from. However, sometimes life presents us with circumstances we cannot control or did not plan for. Such is the case with the Benson family, as I discovered when I started researching a single small monument I photographed.
The Benson Family
A small white bronze (zinc) monument represents the lives of four children that died in the 1880s. But they were all cousins, the children of two brothers who were born in states that were not Nebraska.
Born of British parents who emigrated to America, William V. Benson (born in Illinois) and Edwin Benson (born in Minnesota) were from a rather nomadic family who lived in a number of states. The brothers were five years apart in age. The Benson family moved to Omaha at some point in the 1870s.
William married Mary Abold, working as a carpenter. Their daughter, Ella, was born in June 1877 and William followed in March 1880. Sadly, William died on Dec. 17, 1880 and Ella died on Nov. 3, 1881. I do not know their causes of death. Mary gave birth to three more daughters in the following years, who all lived to adulthood.
Edwin married Emma Louise Schmick in 1882, employed as a painter/paper hanger. Son Edwin was born 10 months later. Lulu Ellen followed in September 1884 and Mabel in May 1886. On Nov. 7, 1887, Lulu died and only three days later, Mabel died. I do not know their causes of death. The couple would have four more children who all lived to adulthood.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when the Bensons decided to pull up stakes and move to the Portland, Oreg. area. But by that time, William and Edwin’s youngest sister Effie had been living there since 1892 when she wed Edward Laughlin. By 1900, most of the Bensons (including their parents) had moved to Oregon to start new lives there.
William Benson died tragically on Nov. 7, 1910 at age 56. After attending a union meeting that ended late, he tried to catch a ride on the streetcar but fell. At first, foul play was suspected because his brother (likely Edwin) believed he was robbed of $60 and a pocketwatch. A subsequent article solved that mystery when William’s wife Mary reported that the hospital where William was taken had given the money and watch to her. William is buried with Mary at Portland’s Riverview Cemetery.
Edwin died on Oct. 28, 1925 at age 67 of heart disease. He is also buried at Riverview Cemetery with his wife, Emma Louise (who died in 1940).
I have little doubt that none of the Bensons ever forgot the four little ones buried back in Omaha. Had they been able to be buried with them, I’m sure they would have done so.
The Gambler and The Madam
This next story is one of the more unique I’ve run across. I would start it with “Once upon a time” but this tale is real.
In 1867, a young woman named Anna Wilson came to Omaha and nobody knew where she was came. Rumor had it she was from the South but it was never confirmed. She established a brothel, and became the city’s most noted madam. Some called her the “Queen of the Underground”.
Anna met riverboat gambler Daniel “Dan” Allen and became his common law wife. They became a sort of Omaha “power couple”. Anna continued to operate her business and reportedly assumed the role of a parent if one of the prostitutes that worked for her got married, including paying the wedding expenses. Dan operated a gambling house in Omaha for 13 years. Together, Anna and Dan’s fortunes grew, and the couple was devoted to each other.
Dan died of pneumonia at age 54 in 1884 and according to his funeral notice, his burial was very well attended. Even his expensive casket was described in detail. Anna reportedly supplied his monument. Dan left his entire estate to Anna, which was considerable.
After Dan died, Anna began investing in real estate. She amassed a large amount of money, and according to one account, half of her fortune was made in the last ten years of her life from the purchase and sale of real estate.
By 1886, she had enough money to build a 25-room mansion at 912 Douglas Street. It was a three-story, 25-room building with reportedly racy artwork. In 1906, she closed the brothel and moved to Wirt Street where she lived out the rest of her life.
Anna proposed that her mansion be used as a hospital and tried to give it to the city of Omaha. Despite hesitation on the city’s part due to the building’s prior purpose, they agreed to rent it from her for $125 a month beginning in about 1910. The hospital finally became a reality in 1911, used as an emergency hospital for contagious diseases. Having suffered from poor health in her last years, Wilson died six months later of a stroke on October 27, 1911. She was 76. The building was razed in the 1940s.
Anna’s philanthropy before her death had been notable, but it took on jaw dropping proportions after she passed. The equivalent of her estate would be worth about a million dollars today. She left almost all of it to Omaha institutions, much of it being to the Creche Home for Children, the Old People’s Home, and the City Mission. She even left $10,000 to Prospect Hill Cemetery.
I read that in Anna’s will, she instructed that she should be buried under nine feet of concrete so that the “respectable” society women of the town didn’t disinter her body from her resting place by Allen and move it out of Prospect Hill. Did her donation to Prospect Hill ease the way for her wishes to be carried out?
Following Anna’s death, on each Memorial Day, a wreath was laid on Wilson’s grave by Mrs. Thomas L. Kimball because of Anna’s generosity over the years toward the Creche Home for Children. Mrs. Kimball’s son, Thomas Rogers Kimball, continued the tradition after her death. He was the architect who designed the Megeath mausoleum at Propsect Hill that I told you about in Part I. You can see it in the above photo next to Sen. Paulsen’s monument.
I found a sad little footnote in this newspaper article. In Anna’s last lonely years, she was comforted by the presence of her pets. She had a dog and a bird to keep her company, whom she taught tricks. Her dog is reported to have died the day after she did.
“At Rest With Her Soldier Boy”
Finally, I want to end with a monument whose epitaph was what drew me to it first. I wanted to know the story behind this mother and son.
Born in Indiana in 1871, Lee Forby came to Omaha in 1885 with his parents, trunk maker Charles and Sarah Forby. He was among the first to join the Thurston Flambeau Club. It later merged with the Thurston Rifles, a volunteer militia organization named after senator John Thurston.
After the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Lee was mustered in as adjutant of the First Regiment, Nebraska Volunteers. When called to active duty, the former Company L was redesignated as Company G of the First Regiment, Nebraska Volunteers. That December, at age 27, Lee was
promoted to captain, commanding Company G.
Sent into combat in the Philippines, Lee earned a reputation as a fearless fighter and popular officer, a man of high character and ability. His parents missed him and worried about his fate.
Leading Company G in the battle of San Francisco del Monte against the Moros outside of Manila, Lee was wounded in hand-to-hand combat on March 25, 1899. He died the following day, and his body was
returned to Omaha for burial in the family plot at Prospect Hill Cemetery.
In 1900, veterans of the Thurston Rifles arranged with the cemetery to provide a special section for members of Company G, pledging to erect a granite monument costing not less than $600 by May 1 of that year. While the Lee Forby Encampment #1 of the Spanish-American War Veterans officially presented the statue on the west side of the circle, Nebraska senator John T. Paulsen (also buried at Prospect Hill) is said to have actually paid for it.
Several of Lee Forby’s comrades are buried at the base of this monument. Unfortunately, the statue of a soldier that once topped it was stolen in 2005 and never recovered.
Lee’s parents took the news of his death hard. Sarah died on Oct. 9, 1902. His father, Charles, died three months later from typhoid pneumonia. They were indeed reunited with their “soldier boy”.
Next time, I’ll be writing about Calvary Cemetery in Van Horne, Iowa.