Sam Benn in home garden with nephew Benn Dyer — circa 1910 — #6220_1
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Photograph Copyright Anderson & Middleton Company
United States — Washington (State)
Samuel Benn School is in the background.
Samuel Benn, Aberdeen's founder and sheriff, was born July 2, 1832 in Emo, Queens County, Ireland and emigrated to New York City with his family while still an infant. The fifteen year old Benn was apprenticed to a carpenter and became a US citizen in 1855. Benn originally went west with the aim of prospecting for gold in California. After a journey of several years that led through San Francisco, Tuolumne County, Victoria, and Olympia, he arrived in the Grays Harbor area, staking a claim on the present site of Melbourne. On January 12, 1862, he married Martha Redman, the daughter of fellow Grays Harbor pioneer Reuben Redman. Later he moved his family to a house on a site near the Wishkah between what are now F and Market Streets in Aberdeen. In addition to his position as sheriff, Benn was a carpenter, cannery operator, mail carrier and occasional cobbler, tanning hides to make shoes for his family as was a common practice among early settlers. In 1877, while fishing at the mouth of the Wishkah River, he remarked "I am going to have a city here some time." In 1894, he was instrumental in building a railroad line into Aberdeen, donating lots in the new town to laborers who worked on the line's construction. Benn is also acknowledged as the first settler to introduce the cultivation of cranberries to the area around Grayland.
