Harrison Genealogy Repository

Notes

Nov. 22, 1940: AGED PHYSICIAN WILL BE HONORED - DR. HARRISON WILL BE HONORED BY FRIENDS NEXT SUNDAY

Dr. Benjamin Early Harrison, dean of Jackson County physicians and one of the most revered citizens of this section, will be honored Sunday when many of his friends and relatives will call at his Cottageville home to pay their respect and assist in the celebration of his eighty-fifth birthday anniversary. Friends have arranged for the celebration Sunday and all of the old physician's acquaintances are invited and urged to call on him and Mrs. Harrison at this time. Open house will be held from 1 to 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon, refreshments will be served and plans are underway for a program in keeping with the occasion. As he approaches his eighty-fifth birthday, Dr. Harrison enjoys remarkable health for his age, walks almost every day to the post office for his mail, and while he can no longer take in the many activities of his community that for so many years claimed the greater part of his time, he is still alertly interested in his neighborhood as well as to the events of the world and the folk everywhere who inhabit it. Dr. Harrison was born on Grass Lick, Jackson County, on November 24, 1855, the son of Rev. William Henry Harrison, a Minister of the United Brethren Church, and Mrs. Elizabeth Rader PFOST Harrison, whose father held the first Court, as a Justice of the Peace, in Mason county in 1804. After securing a good education in his youth, in spite of the obstacles of the times, Dr. Harrison practiced medicine for 62 years, and the great respect and reverence for the aged man is understandable in contemplating the innumerable services he during that long period performed to the people about him from that early day down through the years, easing the pains of the aged, healing the sick, marrying the young folk, delivering their babies, and counseling the youngsters and the succeeding generation as to the better things to be chosen and enjoyed from life. Superintendent of the Cottageville Methodist Sunday School for half a century, he assisted many in the investing of their savings as secretary of the Cottageville Building and Loan Association for 30 years, and when that Organization ceased to function, saw to it that they lost none of their investments. He brought them into the world and read their obituaries. He was secretary of the Union District Board of Education for 12 years beginning in 1878, and president of the board for the following eight years. During the World War he was active in Red Cross and Liberty Loan work, was one of the leaders of the Republican party with which he had been affiliated all his life.

Notes

The tombstone, if looking towards Willingham Drive, standing in front of the inscriptions,: Ben is on the left and for Mattie on the right, and the foot stones for each are at the left and right corners. They are buried on a 45 degree angle to the head stone. Inscription:

In Memory of Our

Mother

Mattie J.

Wife of

Ben J. Harrison.

Born

June 23, 1849

Died Feb 15, 1902

"Poor tired hands that

toiled so hard for us.

At rest before us now we

see them lying

They toiled so hard and

get we could not see

that she was dying "

Note 7/10/96 - The correct birth date of 23 JUN 1849 for Mattie Jane Muse as shown on the tombstone not the church record date.

7/9/96 - Bethel Methodist Church Cemetery, Forest Acres, Columbia, SC. Talked with Gwen Barnes at the church (803-787-3058), from the church records they are buried there and have a large marker (tall). Correct dates are as follows - Benjamin Thomas Harrison (Uncle Ben's father) b. 21 JAN 1842, d. 2 SEP 1881, buried in Lot 11A; Martha (Mattie) Jane Muse, his wife, b. 23 JUN 1848, d. 15 FEB 1902, buried in Lot 11B.