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Ancestor of William Henry Harrison 9th US President
Burial: Date: 14 Apr 1710--Place: Westover, Charles City Co, Va. [1][2]
Benjamin Harrison III
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"Benjamin Harrison III Speaker of the House of Burgesses for the Colony of Virginia In office 1705–1705; Attorney General of the Colony of Virginia In office 1697–1702; Treasurer of the Colony of Virginia In office 1706 – April 10, 1710.
Benjamin Harrison III (1673-April 10, 1710)[3] was an early member of the Harrison Family of Virginia, serving as the colony's Attorney General, Treasurer, and Speaker of the House of Burgesses.
Harrison was born in 1673, the son of Benjamin Harrison and Hannah Churchill. He purchased a portion from the land patent of Berkeley Hundred from Giles Bland, where he would raise his family after marrying Elizabeth, daughter of Lewis Burwell and Abigail Smith. This location was home to the first Thanksgiving in the Virginia Colony, and where his son, Benjamin Harrison IV, began to construct the family's Berkeley Plantation in 1726.
In 1697, at just 24, he became the Attorney General of the Virginia Colony, serving until 1702,[4] before moving onto the House of Burgesses between 1703–1706, where he was the Speaker in 1705. He became Treasurer of the colony in 1705, serving until his death in 1710. Harrison began to compile the history of the colony shortly before he died, leaving it unfinished.
His children included:
Eminent lawyer and assisted in the revision of the laws of the Colony, 1700; served as Treasurer, Attorney General and Speaker of the House of Burgesses. He was a local supporter of the Established Church. The public erected a monument to his memory in the Old Westover Churchyard.
He became the owner of Berkeley, following the death of Giles Bland, son of John Bland, the previous owner, when he was hanged by Governor Sir William Berkeley in 1676, after participating in the Rebellion under Bacon. Although he was only three years old at the time, it is probable that his father purchased it for him while he was still young.
Berkeley Hundred was comprised of about eight thousand acres on the James River in Virginia <http://go-all.com/?go=virginia>, and was a land grant of the London Company, in 1618, to Sir William Throckmorton, Sir George Yeardley and Richard Berkeley and John Smith of Nibley. It was named for Richard Berkeley. In 1619, the "good ship Margaret" of Bristol sailed for Virginia <http://go-all.com/?go=virginia> and brought thirty-five settlers to the new Town and Hundred of Berkeley. [The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1619 on the Berkeley Hundred, a year before the Pilgrims arrived in the Americas.] In 1622, a terrible massacre took place and nine people were brutally slain at Berkeley. For several years, thereafter, the plantation lay abandoned, until William Tucker and others got possession of it in 1636, and it became the property of John Bland, a merchant of London. [See further notes on Berkeley Plantation at end of this paper]
Benjamin died at age thirty-seven in 1710, and his tomb may be seen today at the site of Old Westover Church, on the river near Westover. The inscription on the tomb is in Latin and Greek. His wife, Elizabeth Burwell, is buried beside him and her tomb bears the Family Coat of Arms.
He apparently suffered from gout, and may have had a heart attack following a game of cricket he played in March from which he never fully recovered.
Benjamin III left only one male heir - Benjamin IV.
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