This is a series I am calling the Founding Fathers Series. Today many have no idea who our founding fathers or what they did for our freedoms we enjoy today.
Benjamin Harrison V is a little known Founding Father. However he was the father of the 9th US President, William Henry Harrison, and the great-grandfather of the 23rd US President, Benjamin Harrison.
It is my hope as you seek these caches you will take the time to read these short biographies.
It will be best to go from West to East on 14 to nab these caches.
Benjamin Harrison V
Signer of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia. He was the father of 9th US President William Henry Harrison (1773 – 1841) and the Great-Grandfather of 23rd US President Benjamin Harrison (1833 – 1901). Born in Charles City County, Virginia, he attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, but left the college before graduating, returning home to manage his family estate after his father was killed by lightning. Soon after his return home, he married Elizabeth Bassett, with whom he would have seven children. At age 23, he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he served for the next twenty-five years. Elected to the First Continental Congress in 1774, he shared a house in Philadelphia with fellow Virginian George Washington. Harrison would serve in the First and Second Continental Congresses, from 1774 to 1777. A large man at 6 feet 4 inches and 240 pounds, Harrison once picked up the much smaller John Hancock and set him on the President’s chair, quipping “We will show Mother Britain how little we care for her by making a Massachusetts man our president.” As Chairman of the Committee for the Whole, he presided over the debates that resulted in the Declaration of Independence. Harrison was 50 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence. While in Congress, he helped establish the three major governmental departments of War, the Navy, and the State Department. Leaving Congress in the fall of 1777, he returned to Virginia, where he served as Governor from 1781 to 1784. Near the end of the war, he had to flee to the interior of Virginia to avoid being captured by the British Army. Leaving behind politics, he returned to his family’s estate and died there in 1791 at the age of 64.