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FROM THE BIOGRAPHCAL HISTORY OF PRIMITIVE OR OLD SCHOOL BAPTIST MINISTERS BY DAVID MONTGOMERY AND MARK GREEN:
ELDER CYRUS E. BENSON
CONDENSED FROM “A TRIBUTE TO CYRUS BENSON” WRITTEN IN 1957 BY HIS DAUGHTER, MARY RUTH BENSON BLEST:
Father is of English settler parentage, who came and homesteaded on the southeastern part of Delaware. He was reared a Southern Baptist and a Democrat.
For many long years (perhaps his entire lifetime) Dad was being spiritually exercised, but it was not until the summer of 1919 that he requested baptism and was baptized in White Clay Creek, Welsh Tract Church, near Newark,Delaware, by Elder J. B. Eubanks, August 10, 1919. He united with the Wilmington Church, where he was made Deacon, and where he has always maintained his membership.
In 1923, Dad again felt the need of a quieter life, so they sold the house in town and bought a farm near Elam, Pennsylvania. It was here that Mother suddenly left us, January 20, 1925. She contracted diphtheria and died after a three-day illness.
In the early winter, November 14, 1926, that he married a widowed member of the Church, Mrs. Sarah Cubbage, who is his faithful companion yet.
His life since then has been one of dedication to the Church, for he was given the call to preach. He served a long probationary term, and then was given a license to preach. He was ordained "Minister of the Gospel" in the solemn and impressive ceremony of the "laying on of hands" with all the simplicity and beauty of meaning in the Primitive Baptist faith, and given the title of "Elder."
Almost immediately he was issued, and accepted, an invitation of the Justus Primitive Baptist Church to be their pastor.
In 1950, upon the death of our Pastor, he accepted the call of the Wilmington Church and again moved. Through the goodness of divine providence, he is retired from the necessity of earning his daily bread, and enabled to devote hisfull time and energy to his ministry. The fifth of June, 1957, he was 80 years old, yet he is actively engaged in going his appointed rounds, filling his regular, as well as many extra appointments, still preaching the Word and "feeding hisflock" to the best of his physical strength and mental ability. |
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