Martha and Benjamin Franklin Henley
When Martha Delilah "Manda" McNair was born on July 21, 1849, in Knoxville, Tennessee, her father, James Claiborne McNair, was 26, and her mother, Harriett Manes McNair, was 16. She married Benjamin Franklin Henley on June 19, 1864. They had 11 children in 22 years. She died on August 6, 1927, in St Joe, Arkansas, at the age of 78, and was buried in Searcy, Arkansas.
Jean
Henley Southworth copied the foregoing from Godspeed’s Ozark Reminiscences,
from a volume at that time (1921) in possession of Dr. James A Henley, B.F.
Henley’s son.
“At
Springfield, Martha Delilah, daughter of James Claiborne and Harriet McNair,
met Captain Benjamin Franklin Henley, stationed there with his regiment the 2nd
Arkansas Cavalry, and after a whirlwind courtship, married him on July 19,
1864, two days after she was fifteen. (Story goes that Martha Delilah had a
small business was washing clothes for the public. Grandpa B.F. brought his clothes to her to
wash. He picked them up later in the
day. The next day he brought them back
to her to wash. She looked at him and
said, “Didn’t I just wash these yesterday, and you haven’t even worn them?” He was caught red-handed!) They
ordered his regiment away the next day, and she did not see him again until the
end of the war. They returned to Searcy
County Arkansas with Grandfather McNair and homesteaded land adjoining his
where they raised a family of twelve.
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