Chapmanb

Transcribed from "History of North Washington, an illustrated history of Stevens, Ferry, Okanogan and Chelan counties", published by Western Historical Publishing Co., 1904.

     BENJAMIN M. CHAPMAN, one of the prosperous farmers of the Wenatchee valley, residing near Mission, Chelan county, is a native of the "Keystone State," born January 8, 1850. His father, Stedman Chapman, who died in 1880, was born in Connecticut, moved from there to New York and followed farming all his life in the "Empire State," and Pennsylvania. The mother, Jane (Manning) Chapman, was a native of New York, and died in Pennsylvania in 1892.
     From the age of five to twenty years our subject was reared in Iowa, alternately attending school and working on farms. He came to Washington in 1870, and for two and a half years lived in the vicinities of Walla Walla and Dayton, where he taught school and worked in a saw mill. In the fall of 1872 he returned to Iowa, remained five years, and in 1878 went to Portland, Oregon, thence to Marion county, same state, and in the spring of 1881 came to Ellensburg, purchased railroad land, seven miles from that place, and cultivated it. In 1888 he removed to Waterville, Douglas county, and engaged in farming until 1895. He came to Chelan county in that year, purchased land, disposed of it, and finally settled on forty acres on the "Brown's Flat" side of the river. He has ten acres in orchard, seven in alfalfa, watered by the Jones & Shotwell ditch, and resides in a substantial story and a half house, in the rear of which is a handsome, commodious, high gable barn.
     Our subject has one brother and nine sisters, Walter M., Mary Myers, Sarah Bissell, Hester Baird, Susan Loing, Catherine Puckett, Carrie Hunter, Elnora Edmunds, Wilthy King, and Anna Carber. At Kirksville, Iowa, September 26, 1872, Mr. Chapman was married to Olive McLain, born in Wapello county, Iowa. They have three children W. Guy, Frank R., and Walter B. The father of Mrs. Chapman, Jocob McLain, died in 1874, and her mother, Harriet (Davis) McLain, in 1893. Mrs. Chapman has two brothers, Daniel and Wilson S., and four sisters, Mary Jones, Ellen Randolph, Addie M. Brown and Ozora Morrow.
     Politically, Mr. Chapman is a pronounced Independent.