Donald Benson Alder & Elsie L. Alder, comp., The Benson Family: The Ancestory and Descendants of Ezra T. Benson (The Ezra T. Benson Genealogical Society, Inc., 1979), pp. 36-37.
[Transcribed by Ann Potter]
Charles Augustus Benson was the oldest son born to Ezra T. Benson who lived. He crossed the plains as a boy of 12 with his father and mother, Pamelia. He was endowed 11 April 1856 at the Endowment House when he was 19 years of age. This endowment took place before his father left for his European Mission.
In 1860 at the age of 22, he went to Logan, Utah, with his parents and became a trapper. He owned traps, knives and a gun which was the tools he needed for his occupation. After his father’s death in 1869, he lived in the vicinity of Logan until his death 18 Feb 1873.
Pamelia Emma Benson was the oldest daughter of Ezra T. Benson’s to survive. She was born in 1842 in Nauvoo, Illinois, and came across the plains with her father and mother, Pamelia, when she was 7 year old.
In the 1860 census of Salt Lake City she was living with her mother just prior to their leaving for Logan to join the rest of the family.
Pamelia Emma married Bolivar Roberts on 23 Mar 1867. Pamelia Emma Benson had also been taken to Endowment House for her endowment on 11 Apr 1856, the same day as her brother, Charles Augustus Benson, was endowed. She was 14 years old.
Pamelia had seven children, four dying in infancy and one son died unmarried. Two or her sons, Don Carlos Roberts and Frank Taft Roberts married and had families.
Pamelia Emma’s husband, Bolivar Roberts, was an early pioneer to Utah and a Pony Express Rider, also, superintendent of the Western divisions for the Pony Express. The men were hired at salaries from $40 to $100 a month. The riders had to build roads along the Carson river in Nevada, and many times the mosquitoes were extremely thick. They also had to build forts out of adobe where no rocks or timber was available. The men had to trample the mud with their bare feet until it was the right consistency to make the adobe bricks. This trampling had to be done for a week or more until the mud was mixed with alkali, which ate their feet.
On 24 Oct 1862, the Pony Express was needed no more as the telegraph was connected to Salt Lake City, Utah.
Bolivar Roberts was treasurer of Utah Territory. His interests included banking, being associated with three different banks in Utah. He died 10 Aug 1893 at his home on East first South street in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Isabella Benson, born 9 Mar 1846, just after the exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, also came across the plains when she was an infant. She moved to Logan, Utah, with her parents and grew up there. Here she met and married William Goodwin whose family had emigrated from England. Isabella Benson & William Goodwin were sealed 9 Oct 1866 and they lived in Logan for many years. The had eight children born there.
William Goodwin was a merchant in Logan and he died there 6 Nov 1894. After Williams’s death, sometime after 1900, Isabella’s daughter, Lottie Goodwin Kimball and family moved to Pocatello, Idaho, and Isabella went with them. Isabella Benson Goodwin died 10 Feb 1922 and is buried in Pocatello. Of Isabella’s children, only Lottie Goodwin Kimball had children.
Charlotte Taft (Lottie) Benson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and went to Logan to live with her parents, Ezra T. Benson and Pamelia Andrus Benson. She lived with her mother, Pamelia, in Logan until her mother died in 1877, then she came to Salt Lake City to live with her sister, Isabella Benson Roberts.
She met Winfield Scott Norcross and married him in 1879. Dr. Winfield Scott Norcross was a civil war veteran and was wounded three times at the battle of Savage Station in Virginia. He carried the bullets in his body until the day of his death. He continued active service in Illinois until the close of the Civil War, receiving an honorable discharge.
He took up the study of medicine and lived for a time in O’Fallon, Illinois, where he married Harriet Umbarger in 1865, divorced 1875.
Later he came to Utah and Married Miss Lottie Taft Benson. After living in Logan some years, Winfield, Lottie and family moved to Butte and Helena, Montana and from there went to Auburn, Maine, his old home. Two children were born to this second marriage. At Dr. Norcross’s death, Lottie and a son, Winfield Irvin Norcross survived him in Auburn, Maine.
After her husbands’ death, Lottie Benson Norcross came back to Salt Lake City and her residence was just west of the old car barn (now Trolley Square.) Some of her relatives remember taking food into her when she was living alone. Lottie died 30 Nov 1918 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was 67 years old, and she died at the home of her son Winfield Irvin Norcross, 820 So. West Temple.