Benjamin F. Prince

As printed in 1902

BENJAMIN F. PRINCE, A. M Px.-D.

Professor Benjamin Franklin Prince has been a resident of Springfield for more than a third of a century and has been so closely and prominently connected with the educational and moral interests of the town during that time that no history of the community would be complete without the record of his career. It is a widely acknowledged fact that the most important work to which a man can direct his energies is that of teaching, whether it be from the pulpit, from the lecture platform, or from the schoolroom. Its primary object is ever the same, —the development of one's latent powers that the duties of life may be bravely met The intellectual and moral nature are so closely allied that it is difficult to instruct one without in a measure influencing the other, and certainly the best results are accomplished when the work goes hand in hand. In this work of moral and - intellectual training Professor Prince is taking an important part, being at the present time professor of history and political science in Wittenberg College.

Professor Prince is a native of Champaign county, his birth having occurred on the 12th of December, 1840, in that portion of Ohio. He, however, comes from an old Virginian family. The paternal grandfather, Adam Prince, was a native of the Old Dominion, having removed from the Shenand well performed.

x de andoah valley in Virginia to the state of Kentucky in 1805. There he resided! until 1809, when he became a resident of Champaign county, Ohio, casting in his lot among its first settlers. With the work of pioneer development and improvement he was closely associated, for many years bearing his part in the general progress. He married Eva Buroker, also a native of Virginia, and among their children was William Prince, the father of our subject. His birth occurred in Kentucky in 1807 and he was therefore ‘only about two years old when brought by his parents to Ohio. In Champaign county he was reared to manhood and there wedded Sarah Norman, a native of that county and a daughter of John and Mary Magdalena Norman, who removed from the Shenandoah valley to Ohio in 1805.

A great majority of the men.of the country now prominent in business or professional life, have been farmer boys in youth. Such was Professor Prince, and in field and meadow he worked in his boyhood days when not attending the district schools. After he had acquired his early education he engaged in farming in connection with his brother, Peter W. Prince, but believing that he would find other occupations more congenial, he left the farm. He desired further educational training and entered Wittenberg College of Springfield, where he was graduated on completion of-the literary course in 1865. He then took up the study of theology in the same institution and was graduated in that department in 1866. His scholarship, ability and excellent department commended him to the faculty who then offered him the position of a teacher in the preparatory department. Subsequently he became professor of natural history in the college and still later was made professor of Greek and history and afterward of history and political science, new occupying the chair which has charge of these branches of advanced learning.; In 1869 Professor Prince was united in marriage to Miss Ellen Sanderson, of

Springfield, who was born in Lebanon,

Pennsylvania, and in her early girlhood went with her parents to Philadelphia, where she was reared. Her father, John P.

Sanderson, was at one time the editor of the

Philadelphia News and was a,warm personal friend of Abraham ‘Lincoln and of Simon

Cameron, then secretary of war. In the fall of 1861 he was appointed lieutenant colonel in the regular army, was afterward advanced to the position of colonel, and then removed to St. Louis, Missouri, where he died in 1864, while serving his country with the rank designated. The home of Professor and Mrs. Prince has been blessed with four children: Gracella, who is assistant librarian in the Wittenberg College; Flora; Walter, who is a graduate of Wittenberg College, read medicine and was graduated in the Ohio Medical College of Cincinnati, and is now engaged in the practice of medicine in Springfield; and Mabel.

Professor Prince is a member of Clark Lodge, No. 101, F. £ A. M., and has been a pronunent factor in the intellectual and social circles of the city and in church work. He is to-day the president of the Clark County Historical Society and is a life member of the State Archeological and Historical Society, being also one of the trustees and a member of the executive committee of the latter body. He holds membership in the American Historical Association and in the American Philological Association. For five years he was the president of the Clark

County Sunday-sçhool Association was for ‚seven years a member of the State Sun-- day-school Association, of Ohie and a member of the lócal= board of ‘the Young Men's Christian Association. It would be almost tautological in this connection to enter into any series of statements as showing our subject to be a man of broad general information or of humanitarian principles, for these have been shadowed forth between the lines of this review. He is a gentleman of strong and forceful individuality, of pronounced views, and yet there is in him an abiding sympathy, a ready charity that never fails, and has won for him ‘the warm regard as well as the friendship and respect cf those with whom he has been associated. í as ob

As printed in A Biographical Record of Clark County Ohio (1902). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.