Stringfellow, Benjamin F.

Born: 1816-09-03 Virginia

Died: 1891-04-26 Chicago, Illinois

Flourished: Missouri

Benjamin F. Stringfellow, attorney, public official, and proponent of slavery, was born in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and received his early education locally before attending the University of Virginia in 1834. He received admission to the Virginia bar about 1837, then relocated to Missouri in 1838 and settled in Keytesville where he practiced law and was appointed circuit attorney. Stringfellow represented Chariton County in the Missouri legislature as a Democrat from 1844 to 1845, then served as Missouri attorney general from 1845 to 1849. In 1850, he was practicing law in Brunswick and owned $1,500 in real estate and one enslaved person. In 1853, Stringfellow moved to Weston, Missouri, where the following year he was a founder and secretary of the Platte County Self-Defense Association, which sought to protect the institution of slavery and extend it into Kansas Territory. Stringfellow’s extreme radicalism soon caused dissension in the organization and the vigilantism of the group alienated locals. Although the Platte County Self-Defense Association faded from prominence, Stringfellow continued pro-slavery agitation along the border between Missouri and Kansas, encouraged the settlement of enslavers and the enslaved people they owned in Kansas, and may have belonged to a group that physically removed potential free-soil settlers from boats transporting them to Kansas. Late in 1854, he traveled to Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland to recruit pro-slavery aid for Kansas, and issued calls on southerners to support the expansion of slavery into the territory. After an anti-slavery constitution was adopted for Kansas in 1859, Stringfellow relocated to Atchison in the territory and shifted his focus from pro-slavery activities to promoting railroads. By 1860, he had amassed $50,000 in real estate, with a personal estate valued at $7,000. In 1844, he married Catharine Ann Adams and he was survived by three children at his death.

Lester B. Baltimore, “Benjamin F. Stringfellow: The Fight for Slavery on the Missouri Border,” Missouri Historical Review 62 (October 1967), 14-29; Students of the University of Virginia (Baltimore, Charles Harvey, 1878), n.p.; Missouri, U.S., Marriage Records, 1805-2002, 6 August 1844, Chariton County (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2007); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Chariton County, MO, 228; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedule, Chariton County, MO, 379; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 2, Atchison, Atchiston County, KS Terr., 39; The St. Joseph Herald (MO), 27 April 1891, 3:3; The Atchison Daily Globe (KS), 27 April 1891, 1:4; Illinois Statewide Death Index, Pre 1916, Cook County, 26 April 1891, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL.