Parents
Benjamin J Sanford | farmer and citizen of District 13, of Tipton County, is a son of George and Caroline E. (Jefferson) Sanford, and was born in Kentucky in 1825, being the only child living of three sons and three daughters. The grandfather, Richard Sanford, was a native of Virginia and served as a soldier in the war of independence, and settled at an early day in Sumner County, Tenn., where he died.
The father was of Irish ancestry, born in 1793. He received a good common-school and business education and spent a large portion of his time teaching. In 1820 he was married, and soon after moved to Cumberland County, Ky., and then to Mercer County, continuing his farming and teaching, and died in 1832. The mother was born in Maryland, in 1803, and was living in Cumberland County, Ky., when she married. She died in Tipton County, in 1882, having moved to the county in 1838.
Life
Our subject was raised and educated at home. He commenced as an employee on a farm, and in 1849 went to Mississippi as an overseer, which he continued until 1865, having at one over 600 slaves under him. In 1865 he went West, but not being pleased returned to Tipton County, and in 1866 purchased his present farm of 275 acres of rich and well improved land six miles southeast of Covington.
October 30, 1873, he married Susan M., daughter of Thomas and Smitha Jane Taylor. They had seven children, five living: Benjamin J., Jane Elizabeth, Ann Maria, Susan T. and an infant unnamed. Mrs. Sanford was born in Haywood County, in 1845, and is the sister of Hon. Zack Taylor, member of Congress from this district. The parents were natives of North Carolina.
Overview
Mr. Sanford is a self-made man. Before the war he was a Whig, but is now a Democrat, and is an active Mason and an Old School Presbyterian.
[ Benjamin J Sanford | Goodspeed’s History of Tennessee (1887)]
