REV. BEN GREEN, a successful farmer, an old settler and a well-known preacher in his part of Navarro county, Texas, is the subject of this sketch. He first came to Texas in 1868, and located in Navarro county on July 17. He first rented land and raised a crop, but then moved to Hopkins county, and there bought the right of a homesteader. After making some improvements he sold the claim and again returned to Navarro county, and there bought a fifty-acre tract of land on payments, and in July of that same year he became involved in some difficulties which resulted in his leaving the neighborhood and going to Arkansas. After this trouble was settled he returned and went to work, paying for his  land, improving it and remaining there nine years. In October, 1872, Mr. Green became converted and put aside those ways which could cause him to offend others, and soon after traded his farm for another and larger one, where he li9ved two years, and then sold out and removed into north Arkansas.

In 1874 he obtained a license to exhort, and after locating in Arkansas he bought a farm and worked it awhile, and also preached as occasion seemed to demand. During the eighteen months of his residence there he lost his wife, and then he returned to the old neighborhood in Navarro county, married again, sold out in Arkansas, and settled down in the old county. At first he bought a small tract of raw land, improved it and then traded it for the farm on which he now lives. To this he has added until he now owns 400 acres will improved, and 250 in a good state of cultivation. He with his sons cultivates about 100 acres, but the rest he rents.

After becoming converted to the Methodist faith he preached and prayed for eight years, and was then expelled for preaching holiness, and for  four years he lived outside the church, but rejoined the old church and remained two years and then joined the Missionary Baptist, and in 1887 he was ordained a minister, and has preached for them ever since, although he does not take a charge, but goes where he can do the most good, and is what is known as an evangelist preacher, every Sunday going where the Spirit directs him, giving his services free, sometimes preaching to the Indians. He was reared without religious instruction, near a distillery, where he received no good examples, education or teaching in the direction in which he should go.

When our subject came to Texas he had a wife, a yoke of oxen, and $75 in money. He found here a wild country filled with wicked, unscrupulous people, and he confesses that he was equal to any of them until the time of his conversion, joining them in whisky-drinking, tobacco using, and could swear longer and louder than any of the others. When he was mercifully converted those habits left him, and have never been again taken up. He now lives at peace with God and mankind on his beautiful farm, where all of the home supplies are made in the greatest abundance.

Mr. Green was born in DeKalb county, Alabama, July 22, 1846, and in 1854 moved to Walker county, in the same State, and there grew to manhood. He remained with his father until 1862, when he entered the army, enlisting in Company F., First Alabama Cavalry, under Longstreet, and remained eighteen months; but at the battle of Kingston, where his company was whipped, he left his command and joined the Federals, and took the oath at Knoxville Tennessee, and was started north. At M. Vernon, Indiana, he engaged as a laborer, and his first employment was stacking wheat, and the next spring he was sent by his employer to Illinois and worked for him on a farm for two years, and then the war closed, when he returned to his father in Alabama. During his services in the army he was in seven hard-fought battles, but he was never wounded or hurt in any way. He remained with his parents until 1868, and then all came to Texas together; but before leaving Alabama he married.

Our subject is the son of Caleb and Nancy (Bryant) Green, of Georgia, the former a large and influential farmer and distiller, until the opening of the war. After coming to Texas he brought a 200 acre farm, and lived there the remainder of his life, dying in 1872. His wife yet survives him, and lives at the old home in Hempstead, now about seventy-two years of age. Ten children were born to the above, four sons served in the war, two were in the Federal army and two were in the Confederate, all of them returning home after the war and all coming to Texas except two, who died in Alabama before the family came away. Our subject was the second child; three are living in Navarro county, -- his brother, C. P., a farmer, and sister, Nancy, wife of Charles Wood, a farmer of this county.

The first marriage of  our subject was to Miss Amanda Sandlin, daughter of Daniel Sandlin, of Alabama, and by this marriage six children were reared Ida; Robert, a Navarro county farmer, Erastus, Daniel, Nancy and Nellie. In 1883 Mrs. Green died, and in November of this year our subject married Miss Nancy Reeves, a daughter of Noah Reeves, of South Carolina, who was a deacon n the Baptist Church, and by occupation a farmer. He died in Mississippi in 1868, and his widow and family moved to Texas in 1872, first locating on the Trinity river, but later moving to Navarro county, where Mrs. Reeves died, in 1882. Mr. and Mrs. Green have no children. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, but has never taken any interest in politics, having never cast a vote.

Notes:

• Memorial and Biographical History of Navarro, Henderson, Anderson, Limestone, Freestone and Leon Counties Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1893

• Nancy Reeves Green, daughter of Noah W. Reeves & Margaret Ann "Olive" Turner

• Margaret is buried at the Reeves/Green Private Cemetery

CENSUS
1880 Navarro Co., TX; Ed 125 pg 8, line 23, living next to his brother, C. P. Green, Jr., his mother Nancy in his household