Harrison, Benjamin Early (Dr.)

Passed: 1942-06-26

Age: 87

Source: Jackson County Newspapers

Death Notice: 1942-06-30

Obituary Date:

Information: ILLNESS FATAL TO DR. B. E. HARRISON FRIDAY AFTERNOON/DEAN OF JACKSON COUNTY PHYSICIANS - Funeral services for Dr. Benjamin Early Harrison, 87 year old Cottageville physician, were held Sunday afternoon with a large crowd present and burial followed in the Cottageville cemetery.  Dr. Harrison died late Friday evening and death had been expected for several days.  He had been in very poor health for some time and early last week his condition became critical and he lapsed into a coma from which he never rallied.  At the time of his death he was the oldest graduate of Ohio State University and was the dean of Jackson county physicians.  Dr. Harrison was bone on Grasslick creek of Jackson county, West Virginia, near Ripley.  He was bron on November 24, 1855, in the home which was later, November 3, 1897, to be the scene of the murders of the Pfost-Greene people by John Morgan, and strange to say it was Dr. Harrison who was called upon on the day that John Morgan was hanged, to pronounce the hanged man ""dead"", after the drop through the gallows trap.  This veteran physician was the only issue of the marriage of the Reverend William H. Harrison and Elizabeth Rader.  Dr. Harrison's father was a pioneer minister in the Mason-Jackson section of the Parkersburg conference of the United Brethren church.  The physician's mother was the daughter of Michael Rader, one of the first justices of Mason county and himself a minister of the Methodist church.      The boyhood of this physician was spent in Jackson and Mason counties. In Jackson county as a small boy he stood by the roadside on September 13, 1862, and witnessed the historical Civil War retreat of General Lightburn.  He was living in Jackson county when West Virginia became a state.  Young Benjamin's father was a firm believer in education and the old minister influenced his son and made it possible for him to attend school.  Among the schools he attended was a subscription school at West Columbia, a free school at the Joseph McCoy farm,northeast of Ripley, Mt. Olive, Mt. Moriah, Salt Hill and Ripley.  During the war, in 1865, Benjamin's mother died and was buried on the point of a hill overlooking Benjamin's birthplace.  In 1871 and 1872, Benjamin Harrison studied at the old Point Pleasant Academy, walking in to school on the old Jericho road and carrying his books and tin dinner pail.