John 'Old Trader' Benge

John Benge, who spent much of his life as a trader in the Cherokee Nation, [1] was a white man from Virginia.

• Husband of Elizabeth Fielder. Her sister, Susanna Lewis, married John Benge's brother Thomas Benge
• Husband of a Cherokee woman of the Watts family.
• Evidence needed to support as son of Thomas Cotton Benge, I & Martha Benge.

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Biography

Updated 9 September 2024

BENGE, John Born: about 1735 in Virginia. Other records suggest he may have been born as early as 1726. Known as “Old Trader," and operated a trading post on the Cumberland. He was of Scottish descent. His date of death is unknown, but he was still alive in 1793 when he warned Indian Agent John McKee that his life was in danger from John Watts. [3] [4]

John Benge's documented children with Elizabeth Lewis are:

1. an unnamed son who died in the Revolutionary War (later mentioned by Obediah)
2. Obediah Benge (two of Obediah's sons married Cherokee women)
3. Sally Benge

John abandoned Elizabeth when their children were small and went to the Cherokee Nation where he remained for the rest of his life. Elizabeth remarried to a man named Fielder.

The Virginia husband of Elizabeth and the man in the Cherokee Nation were the same person.

His children with his Cherokee wife or wives, seen as the sister of Old Tassel. Probably born in Toqua, in the Cherokee Overhills Probably met John Benge before 1761.

1. Bob (the Bench) Benge
2. Martin (the Tail)
3. Lucy Benge

John Strange claims that he also fathered Edmond Benge (son of Dorcas Duncan) and someone named "Tashliske" who only seems to exist in Strange's chapter on Bob Benge in "Upon Our Ruins.

Enrollee #41 on Old Settler's Roll of 1817 for Cherokee Nations East (Qualla Boundary). Source of Roll is at https://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/1817-cherokee-reservation-ro...

Notes

John Benge married to Elizabeth Lewis, daughter of William Terrell Lewis and Sarah Martin, a prominent family originally from Virginia. Elizabeth's sister, Susannah Lewis married John's brother, Thomas Benge. John and Elizabeth had several children at their home in western North Carolina. These were William Lewis, Sarah, and Obadiah Martin.

Robert 'Bob' Benge was born circa 1760 probably in the Cherokee village Toquo to John Benge and Wurteh, a Cherokee. Robert grew up to be the most notorious Cherokee in history. He was so feared in the central Appalachian areas of present-day Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, that the settlers admonished their children by saying, "if you don't watch out, Captain Benge will get you.". He was known as The Bench ...

Robert [Benge's] father was John 'Old Trader' Benge, an Indian trader who lived among the Cherokee, and his mother was Wurteh who was part of an influential Cherokee family.

Apparently, John was also living with Wurteh at his home with the Cherokee (probably Toquo) and had several children born there. These were Robert, Utana "the Tail," Lucy, and Tashliske.

John was previously married to Elizabeth Lewis, daughter of William Terrell Lewis and Sarah Martin, a prominent family originally from Virginia. Elizabeth's sister, Susannah Lewis married John's brother, Thomas Benge. John and Elizabeth had several children at their home in western North Carolina. These were William Lewis, Sarah, and Obadiah Martin.

After Elizabeth and the Lewis family found out about John's Cherokee family, their marriage was dissolved and Elizabeth latter remarried John Fielder and had other children.

This is a different Wur-teh

Wurteh also had a child from a man whose last name was Gist or Guess and their child became known to history as Sequoyah. Robert and Sequoyah were half brothers...

References

1. The Two Families of John “Old Trader” Benge
2. "If you don't watch out, Captain Benge will get you"  Copyrighted by Don Chesnut, 1997
3. Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: May 11 2016, 21:22:03 UTC
4. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Benge-104 cites
   1. Receipt from State of Georgia, image at receipt
   2. Brown, John. P. “Old Frontiers.” Southern Publishers, Kingsport, TN. 1938. p. 170
   3. American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. 1, p.444 McKee
   4. Hoig, Stanley W. The Cherokees and Their Chiefs. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville. 1998. p. 84.
   5. http://shaybo-therisingtide.blogspot.com/2011/09/descendants-of-ama... (dead link)
   6. Logan Banner 's 'Chief Benge the red headed Cherokee' https://memories-matter.blog/2022/11/06/the-red-headed-warrior/comm...
   7. "Family Tree," database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 10 September 2017, 12:57), entry for John Benge(PID https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:LTRY-FTZ); contributed by various users.
5. “The Tail” is described as a brother of Bob Benge but whose father is uncertain.[4]
6. Goodpasture, Albert V. “INDIAN WARS AND WARRIORS OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST, 1730-1807.” Tennessee Historical Magazine 4, no. 4 (1918): 252–89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43999637. Page 256. "The most daring and crafty of these Chickamauga bushwackers was Bob Benge, the son of an Indian trader named John Benge, who married a niece of the old Tassel, and spent his life in the nation. The Tassel complained to the commissioners at the treaty of Hopewell, in 1785, that, in passing through Georgia, Benge had been robbed of leather to the value of £150 sterling. John McKee saw him, and was be friended by him, near Chattanooga, as late as 1793.329 His Indian wife had two sons, Bob Benge and the Tail. Only the former of these bore his name; and, through the inaccuracy of the pioneer ear, that has been almost lost, as he appears generally in our Tennessee histories and public documents under the more dignified name of the Bench, by which I shall still call him, though he is celebrated in Virginia tradition as Captain Benge. ... "
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Benge Robert "Bob" Benge (c. 1762–1794), also known as Captain Benge (or "The Bench" to frontiersmen), was a Cherokee leader in the Upper Towns, in present-day far Southwest Virginia during the Cherokee–American wars (1783–1794). He was born as Bob Benge about 1762 in the Overhill Cherokee town of Toqua, to a Cherokee woman and a Scots-Irish trader named John Benge, who lived full-time among the Cherokee and had taken a "country wife." They also had a daughter Lucy. Benge stood out physically because of the red hair he inherited from his father. Under the Cherokee matrilineal kinship and clan system, children were considered born into their mother's family and clan. Their mother's eldest brother was considered the most important male figure in their growing up, especially for boys. The children were reared largely in Cherokee culture and identified as Cherokee.
8. "Bob Benge, red headed 1/2 Cherokee" Newspapers.com, Daily Press, July 15, 1999, https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-press-bob-benge-red-headed...

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