BENSON, Martin Van Buren, real estate and insurance, was born Oct. 2, 1840, in the town of Washington. Dutchess county, N. Y. At the age of fourteen he moved west to Wisconsin, and there worked on a farm until he had saved money enough to educate himself, having toad few advantages in earlier life. At the age of nineteen he was graduated at the Walmont county Institute, and at once engaged in mercantile business in the southern part of the state. In 1804 he settled in Green Bay, Wis., where he remained until 1881. Here he took an earnest interest in the politics of that period, but declined all offers of preferment in that line. In May. 1881, he moved to Colorado, located in Pueblo, and soon afterward assumed the management of a republican newspaper there, continuing one year, during which, by the influence of this Journal, the city of South Pueblo was released from the control which had long been exercised by the somewhat famous P. J. Desmond. After severing his connection with the paper, Mr. Benson embarked in the real estate and insurance business In Pueblo. For several years he has had charge of two of the oldest fire insurance companies now doing business in Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, with headquarters in Denver, to which place he removed In 1891.

Source: Hall, Frank, History of the State of Colorado, v. 4.  Chicago: The Blakely Printing Company, 1895, p. 381-382.