from The History of Hendricks County (Indianapolis: B.F. Bowen & Co., 1914)----pages 806-808
Among the men of Hendricks County who have been potent factors for good, there is no one who occupies a more prominent position than Rev. W. M. Benson. For more than a score of years he was a public school teacher in various counties in the state and for the past thirty-five years has been in charge of the Baptist Church of North Salem and other Baptist churches in this section of the state. In addition to his teaching and ministerial work, he has also found time to engage in farming. It would be impossible to estimate the beneficent influence which has followed his work in all of these lines of activity. For more than forty years he has been a resident of this county and in all that time he has never neglected an opportunity to serve his fellow men.
Rev. Walter M. Benson, the son of John Harley and Mary Ellen (Minor) Benson, was born in 1833 in Pendleton County, Kentucky. He was two years of age when his parents moved to this state, where his father entered land in Rush County and lived there the remainder of his life. Walter Benson lived on the home farm until he was twenty years of age and then taught school in Rush County for three years. He secured his education in the subscription schools and then attended Fairview College, an institution of learning on the line of Rush and Fayette counties, which was presided over by A.R. Benton and Rev. Van Buskirk, the two famous educators of early Indiana. In 1856 Walter Benson moved to the southern part of Marion County, near the Johnson County line, and for the next twelve years taught in Marion County, and followed this with six years of teaching in Johnson County. Five years of the time he was teaching in Marion County he had to teach in a log school house and only recently Rev. Benson had the pleasure of giving a lecture in that locality and met a number of the old people of the neighborhood who were his pupils fifty years ago. While teaching in Marion County, he also served as county trustee for two terms, while at the same time he managed a farm of his own.
Rev. Benson came to Hendricks County in October, 1869, and bought a farm a short distance southeast of North Salem in Eel River Township. He finished clearing the land, ditched, fenced and otherwise improved it. Up to the time that Rev. Benson came to Hendricks County, he had been preaching and farming, although he had for years been taking an active interest in church work. A year after coming to this county, he definitely decided to enter the ministry and was ordained as a regular minister in the Baptist Church. For the next thirty-five years he was in charge of the Baptist Church at North Salem, and for twenty-five years he was in charge of three other churches at the same time. He has the gift of natural oratory and is a man of great fluency of speech. During the thirty-five years in which he was in the active ministry, he not only served his charges faithfully and well, but also found time to take part in public affairs, was twice elected trustee of Eel River Township and served both terms to the entire satisfaction of his constituents. He has also been able to keep his farm in operation and, due to the fact that he is a man of wonderful physique, he has never shirked manual labor, but has always been able to do his part in the field. He is proud of the fact that he is one of the best corn huskers in the county and from the age of sixteen has been able, until a few years ago, to husk three rows while the ordinary man was husking two.
In 1857 Rev. Benson was married to Mary Jane Vandever, who was born and reared in Marion County, the daughter of James and Sarah (Tucker) Vandever. She was one of his pupils when he taught in the old log school house in Marion County, and the romance which begun in that rude building continued through more than fifty years. She lived to celebrate her golden wedding anniversary in 1907 and did not pass away until three years later, dying March 16, 1910. She was a wonderful woman in many ways, well versed in the Scriptures, clear and keen of intellect and helpful to her husband in his understanding of the Bible. Four children were born to bless this union: Homer A., a life insurance man of Indianapolis, who married Jennie Miller, of Fayette County, and has one son, Neal; Mary E., the wife of J.S. Davis, of Gosport, has two children, Minor and Clarence; Hattie E., the wife of A.B. Davenport, a farmer of this county, has eight children, Herschel, Alberta, Edith, Maurice, Mary, Thelma, Frank and Beatrice; Eva Gertrude, the youngest child of Mr. and Mrs. Benson, is the wife of Everett Gregory, of Gosport, and has two children, Honor and Marion.
This biography is but a feeble tribute to the wonderful amount of good which has been accomplished by Rev. Benson. He is a typical man of wonderful strength and energy, who can do many things, and do them all well. As a teacher, as a minister of the gospel, as a public official and as a private citizen, he has taken his share of the burdens of the community. He is a man who has always been trying to serve his fellow men. As a student of the Bible, he has few equals, has a wonderful memory and knows a large part of the Bible by heart and can repeat chapter after chapter without the slightest hesitation. He is a man of imposing appearance, tall, well built and with a personality which endears him to all who come in touch with him.