Bond, Benjamin

Born: 1807-XX-XX Indiana

Died: 1866-XX-XX O’Fallon, Illinois

Flourished: Carlyle, Illinois

Benjamin Bond was an prominent attorney and politician in Carlyle, Illinois. In 1834, he won election to the Illinois Senate representing Monroe and Clinton counties. He remained in the Senate until 1838, when he lost his bid for re-election. From 1838 to 1840, Bond served as secretary of the Senate. From 1844 to 1846, he was the editor of the Carlyle Truth Teller. In April 1847, Clinton County voters elected Bond to represent the county in the Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1847. In 1847, Bond opened a law office with Daniel White, a partnership that continued until 1848. In 1849, President Zachary Taylor appointed him as U.S. Marshal for the state of Illinois. In 1850, he was an attorney in Clinton County, Illinois, with $4,000 in real property. From 1857 to 1859, he again served as secretary of the Senate. In 1860, he was practicing law and living in Carlyle with his wife Mary and four children and had amassed $2,000 in real estate and $3,000 in personal property. In 1862, Bond opened a law firm with Joseph W. Maddux, a partnership that would continue to 1865. Originally a Whig, Bond later changed his allegiance to the Democrats. In 1862, Bond ran afoul of the Clinton County Court for opposing the Union war effort, and would have been arrested had not bad health intervened. Instead, he received parole.

Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 265, 308, 441; Illinois Senate Journal. 1835. 9th G. A., 1st sess., 4; Illinois Senate Journal. 1835. 9th G. A., 2nd sess., 3; Illinois Senate Journal. 1836. 10th G. A., 1st sess., 3; Illinois Senate Journal. 1837. 10th G. A., special sess., 3; Illinois Senate Journal. 1838. 11th G. A., 1st sess., 4; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 203, 205, 206; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Clinton County, IL, 380; U. S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Clinton County, IL, 166; Orville H. Browning, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, edited by Theodore C. Pease and James G. Randall (Springfield, IL: Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library, 1925), 1:31; Kinnie A. Ostewig, "Life of Shadrach Bond, the First Governor of Illinois under Statehood," Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society36 (1929) 228-29; History of Marion and Clinton Counties, Illinois (Philadelphia: Brink, McDonough, 1881), 85, 103-104, 110, 180.