Pictorial and Genealogical Record
of Greene County, Missouri • 1893

Together with Bibliographies of Prominent Men of Other Portions of the State, Both Living and Dead


BENJAMIN N. MASSEY. The learned professions have many disciples who aspire to honor and dignity in their chosen fields and all with greater or less reason to expect their efforts to be crowned with success. He of whom we have the pleasure of attempting a short biographical sketch is one of the many to woo the fickle goddess of fortune before the bench and bar. He was born in Jasper County, Mo., February 28, 1842, the second child and oldest son of Benjamin F. and Mariah (Withers) Massey, the former of whom was one of the early pioneers of the State, for as early as 1831 he took up his residence in St. Louis and embarked in business. From 1837 to 1839 he was a merchant in Fayette, Howard Co., Mo., but in the last mentioned year he moved to Sarcoxie, Jasper Co., Mo., where he remained until 1856, when he was elected secretary of the State of Missouri, which office he occupied until the breaking out of the late war, when he went south with the other officers of the StateGovernment. He was born in Chestertown, Kent Co., Md. In 1811, and is therefore well advanced in years. His father was Benjamin Massey. Benjamin N. Massey, the immediate subject of this sketch, received his early schooling between the years of 1856 and 1861 in a private school conducted by Prof. Berch and Prof. Shomaker, in Jefferson City, where he was preparing himself for entrance to the State University. This intention, however, was frustrated by the opening of the Civil War and he at once went South and continued a clerk in his father's office who was secretary of the State during 1861-62. -In the spring of 1863 he went to Howard County where he remained until the war closed, then began studying law in the office of Gen. E. L. Edwards, of Jefferson City. In the latter part of 1865 he came to Springfield and continued his legal researches in the office of McFee & Phelps, and after being admitted to the bar became a member of that firm which continued as Massey, McFee & Phelps from 1868 to 1876, at which time Mr. Phelps was elected Governor of the State. The firm remained Massey & McFee for about five years, and since that time Mr. Massey has practiced alone. He has always been an active member of the Democratic Party and is a man of great public spirit. During his law practice he has been prominently connected with different enterprises and is a director and stockholder and also attorney for the Metropolitan Street R. R. He is a director of the Bank of Springfield, is president of the Springfield Furniture Factory and is interested in lead mines in Arkansas, in which State he owns a large tract of unworked mineral land. Mr. Massey has lent valuable aid in building up and improving the city of Springfield and has been prominently connected with some of the most noted legal cases in which that city has been concerned. In 1862 he was united in marriage to Miss Mary S. Smith, of Jefferson City, who died in February, 1875, after having become the mother of one child: Benjamin Minor Massey, who is now taking a regular course in Washington-Lee University, Virginia. She was born in Cole County, Mo., in 1846. Her mother was a member of the well known Goode family. Mr. Massey's second marriage was to Miss Cirssie Boone, of Newton County, Mo., a daughter of E. B. and Mary V. (Crunwell) Boone, who came originally from Kentucky. To Mr. Massey's second union two children have been given: Robert and Alice. In July 1891 Mr. Massey was again left a widower.

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