Representative Benjamin Greene View All Years
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Benjamin Greene
Dallas County
Born in Richfield, Otsego county. New York, on the 4th of March, 1819. His mother was Deborah Brown, who sprung from a very early Massachusetts family. Silas Greene moved to the vicinity of Oswego, on Lake Ontario, when Benjamin was four years old. There the son was reared on his father's farm, picking up a fair education in the common schools, and beginning to teach during the winters when only sixteen years of age. In 1838, anxious to see the west, he came out as far as Belvidere, Illinois, farming four seasons and teaching two winters; returned to Oswego in 1842, and read law and taught school until the spring of 1846, when he came to Iowa, taught a few months at Utica, Van Buren county, and then two years at Keokuk. Mr. Greene first saw Adel in April, 1849, when the village consisted of perhaps half-a-dozen log cabins. He had a little over two hundred acres of land devoted to agriculture and horticulture. For the last sixteen or seventeen years Mr. Greene has given his attention mainly to nursery and fruit growing, and has done a great deal to encourage fruit-raising in the county. Mr. Greene was elected school-fund commissioner about 1850; served one term, and during that time disposed of a large quantity of the lands in Dallas county selected for that purpose. In 1852, and again in 1856, he was elected a member of the legislature, attending in his second term the last session ever held in Iowa City. He has served several times in the board of supervisors and on the school board, and is an eminently practical and efficient business man. Mr. Greene is of federal stock in politics, voted the Whig ticket in his early manhood, was a republican from 1856 to 1872, and has since been ranked among the independents. In religion he is equally independent. He is a great reader of scientific works, and forms his opinions therefrom. Mr. Greene was joined in wedlock with Miss Permelia C. Sturges, of Van Buren county, Iowa, on the 11th of October, 1848.
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