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BEN E. FLYNN
Vol. 3, p. 1158-1159
Book has photo

A resident of his present property, which is located 31/2 miles
north of Dewey, since 1900, Ben E. Flynn has seen the arrival of the
railroad in this part of Washington County, as well as the other
developments which have marked the settlement and progress of this
fertile and productive part of Oklahoma. His entire career has been
devoted to agriculture, in which he has achieved a satisfying success
as a father and stockraiser, and at the present time he is accounted
one of the substantial men of his community.

Ben E. Flynn was born March 16, 1858, in Warren County, Tennessee,
and is a son of Ben and Sally (MONAGHAN) Flynn, natives of that state
and both of Irish parentage. The father, who was a farmer throughout
his career, died about the close of the Civil war, but his widow
survived him for many years, passing away in 1908, when she had
reached the remarkable age of ninety-four years. She reared nine
children to manhood and womanhood and all were married and had
families: Gilbert; Mrs. Elizabeth KNIGHT; Mrs. Lucy HILL; Mrs.
Caroline MCWILLIAMS; Mrs. Minerva MURPHY; James; John, a resident of
Paris, Texas; Ben E.; and Charles a resident of Paris, Texas: Ben E.;
and Charles, a resident of Houston, Texas, all being deceased with
the exception of the last three.

Ben E. Flynn was given a public school education in the country
districts of Warren County, Tennessee, and as a young man engaged in
driving a stage and carried on an average of 1,000 people annually
over the mountains from his home locality to Beersheba Springs,
Tennessee. He remained in Tennessee until the year 1886, at which
time he came to the Cherokee Nation, where he has since resided. Four
years after his arrival he came to the farm he now occupies, a tract
of eighty acres of land, where he has numerous improvements, this
property being 31/2 miles north of Dewey. At that time the railroad
had not penetrated to this locality and few improvements were to be
seen in the way of churches, schools or even substantial buildings,
butt in the quarter of a century that has followed all these and many
other innovations have been made, and this part of Washington County
is now one of the most advanced in the northern part of the state.

In his native state Mr. Flynn was married to Miss Mattie TATE, a
Cherokee, who died at Fort Smith in 1886, leaving three children:
Benjamin, who met an accidental death in Arkansas, in 1911; Jennie,
who is the wife of Albert ECHOLS, of Braggs, Oklahoma; and William,
who is engaged in farming in the same neighborhood as his father. Mr.
Flynn's first wife's parents were wealthy farming people in Tennessee
and were not compelled to come to the West. His children were left
out of their allotments because their papers were not made out
properly. In 1900 Mr. Flynn was again married when he was united with
Mrs. Martha E. (Manning) NEEDHAM, the widow of Jesse Needham. She was
born in the Cherokee Nation, about the year 1861, a daughter of Wosta
and Susan MANNING, the former a full-blooded Cherokee and the latter
a white woman. During the Civil war, Mr. Manning enlisted in the
Confederate army, and the Tennessee home was broken up by war's
insatiable demands. Both parents are now deceased, and so is Mrs.
Flynn's only brother, Napoleon. By her first marriage, Mrs. Flynn was
the mother of six children: Valentine W. Needham, a resident of
Washington County; Susie J., who is the wife of Owen GREENWOOD, of
this county; John D., engaged in the mail order business at Yale,
Oklahoma; Sally M., who is the wife of Frank REYNOLDS, of Washington
County; Fannie P., the wife of Thomas KITTERMAN, of Washington
County; and Jesse G., also of this county. All of these children
received their allotments, and all have oil wells on their
properties. While Mr. Flynn has a number of oil wells on his land, he
does not need to worry about the price of oil, for his gold mine in
Dallas, in Paulding County, Georgia, is doing very well in specimens
of pure gold and ore which he has at his home may be take as any
indication. He is accounted one of his community's substantial men,
willing to lend his aid to the support of beneficial movements, and a
friend of education and good citizenship.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Lois L. Coffelt, November 6, 1998.