My Genealogy Hound

BENJAMIN F. McCLUNEY, Public Administrator for Johnson County, is now serving his third term in this important office, and was first elected in 1884 by the Democratic party. For twelve years he was Justice of the Peace, and during that time he was fortunate in never having any cases appealed or decisions reversed. His first Presidential ballot was cast in 1844, for James K. Polk, and never since that day has his allegiance to the Democracy wavered. For the past sixteen years he has been a resident of Warrensburg, and esteemed among her best citizens.

A native of Washington County, Pa., born November 7, 1820, our subject is a son of John and Elizabeth (Purviance) McCluney. The father was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1776, and the mother, though a native of Pennsylvania, was of French extraction. In the War of 1812 John McCluney was commissioned Major by President Madison, and the precious document is now in the possession of our subject. Major McCluney was in command of the forces at Pittsburg for a long time and was a brave and capable officer. Afterwards he held the office of County Sheriff in Pennsylvania for several years, but about 1826 moved to Brooke County, Va., where he held the position of bookkeeper in a manufacturing establishment.

B. F. McCluney is the youngest in a family of seven children, and passed the first few years of his life at his birthplace. Then until he was twenty-three years of age his home was in Virginia, where he managed to pick up a fair education in the subscription schools, which he attended only a few months each year. Learning the cabinet-maker’s trade, he followed that calling for two or three years, but in 1840 started for the West by the water route. As far as Lexington, Mo., he proceeded by the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and from there went to what is now known as Hazle Hill Township, in this county. There, in company with his father, he bought four hundred and forty acres of land, his first experiment in farming. After a few years he sold the place, buying a larger one in the same township, but this, too, he eventually disposed of, taking up his residence in Warrensburg, where he has since lived.

November 24, 1846, the marriage of B. F. McCluney and Elizabeth Roberts, a native of Lafayette County, Mo., was celebrated. To them have been born seven children. Laura, who is the wife of John Blake and the mother of four children, lives near Carthage, Mo.; William is unmarried, and engaged in gold mining in Colorado; Anna is still at home; Lizzie, widow of S. W. Sweringen, is a teacher in the public schools; Robert, who is unmarried, is now in California, where he is interested in mining operations; Purviance, a minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, is married and has three children; and George, the youngest, formerly a school teacher, is now a business man of Arkansas City, Kan., and is married and has one child. Our subject is a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, with which denomination he has been identified since 1862. Before that he was for twenty-two years a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but, his views changing, he espoused the creed which came the nearest to his belief.