Durham, N. N.  "Spokane and the Inland Empire; History of the City of Spokane
and Spokane County Washington."  Vol. 3.  S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1912.  
p. 333.
 
LUCIUS T. BENHAM

     Lucius T. Benham is numbered among the influential residents of Spokane,
where for some years he has been engaged in the wholesale grocery business,
active in control of what was the first wholesale house in the Inland Empire. He
was born October 29, 1847, in Ridgeville, Lorain county, Ohio, the son of Lewis
and Elizabeth (Means) Benham, natives of Ohio and of Indiana respectively. The
ancestral line is traced back to Thomas Benham, a soldier of the Revolutionary
war, who was born in Connecticut in 1759 and died in Ohio in 1830. In 1811 he
removed to that state making his way by ox team and encountering all the
hardships, privations and innumerable dangers, with which at that time such
trips through sparsely settled, practically roadless country were fraught—a
country still infested with the hostile bands of the original inhabitants who
looked toward the oncoming of the white brothers none too friendly. Back of him
the line goes to John Benham, who with his two sons came from England to America
on the 30th of May, 1630, as a passenger on the ship Mary and John. Lewis Benham
was born August 5, 1818, and his life record covered the intervening years to
1888. His wife still survives and is now living in Cascade, Iowa, in her
eighty-second year. She is a representative of an old American family of English
lineage and her parents removed from Virginia to Indiana. In the family of Lewis
and Elizabeth Benham were seven children, of whom one died in childhood, while
Alice, Isabel and William H. are also deceased. The brothers of our subject
still living are: Albert, who is treasurer of Benham & Griffith Co., and Raymond
S., who is engaged in business in Chicago.
     The removal of the family to Cascade, Iowa, was followed by Lucius T.
Benham's attendance in the public schools of that place and by a further course
of study in Cornell College at Mount Vernon, Iowa. He started out in the
business world in the fall of 1861, when a youth of fourteen years, securing a
clerkship in the postoffice and in a general store at Cascade. For three years
he devoted his time to that work, after which he went to Chicago and entered the
employ of Lemuel Barber & Son, the partners of whom were his uncle and cousin.
They were in the wholesale grocery and liquor business and with that house Mr.
Benham remained until 1868, when he returned to Iowa, settling at Canton, where
he established a general mercantile store.
     It was during the period of his residence there that Mr. Benham was married
in June, 1868, to Miss Mary G. Trumbull, a daughter of G. W. Trumbull, of
Canton, and a member of an old American family. She died in Spokane in 1889,
leaving a daughter, Katherine I., now the wife of Austin Corbin II, of this
city.
     Mr. Benham continued a resident of Canton, Iowa, until 1870, when he
removed to Kansas City, Missouri, where he was engaged in the wholesale liquor
business for two years. Following the Chicago fire he went to that city in the
fall of 1871 and there continued in the wholesale business until January, 1889,
when he came to Spokane and joined forces with T. S. Griffith in organizing the
firm of Benham & Griffith, proprietors of the first wholesale house in the
Inland Empire. In this business he has since continued and his progressive and
enterprising methods and straightforward dealing have constituted the basis of a
success which places him with the wealthy residents of the city. He was also for
several years a director and stockholder in the Exchange National Bank, of
Spokane.
     He is a man of considerable local influence, well fitted by nature for
leadership. His opinions, carry weight because his sagacity is keen arid his
judgment is sound, and men have learned to know that what Lucius T. Benham says
he will do. He gives his political allegiance to the democratic party but is not
an active worker in its ranks. He belongs, however, to the Chamber of Commerce
and is much interested in all that pertains to the development of the city,
cooperating with the Chamber in all of its various projects to promote the
upbuilding of Spokane and give publicity to its resources and its opportunities.

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Submitted to the Washington Biographies Project in February 2011 by Diana Smith.
Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned
above.