Benjamin F. SHULTZ, merchant and druggist, was born on Sycamore Creek in Claiborne County, five miles southeast of Tazewell, February 12, 1842, the son of Jacob and Louisiana (Cloud) SHULTZ; of German and Scotch-Irish origin, the former born in this county in 1799, and deceased in Greene, County, Mo., in 1865, and the latter in Lee County, Va., about 1810, and deceased in Greene County, Mo., in 1884. They lived in Claiborne County until 1858, when they removed to near Springfield, Mo., and engaged in agricultural pursuits with success until the breaking out of hostilities between the sections, when they retired South with their family. Jacob SHULTZ, Sr., the grandfather, came from Germany before the Revolution with his parents, settled in Virginia, and then was among the first settlers of Claiborne County, whilst the red man still occupied the country.
Our subject, the third of seven children, grew up in this county, assisting in his father’s store and on the farm until their removal to Missouri, where he attended school and labored on the farm till the first call to arms, when at the age of nineteen he entered Capt. Campbell’s company of Missouri State Guards, commanded by Gen. Sterling Price, on June 1, 1861, taking part in the battle of Oak Hills and many other engagements in the State service until the army fell back from its position behind the Osage to Neosho, where the Legislature assembled, and on the 28th of October, 1861, the State severed its connection with the Federal Union. After this the Missouri troops were mustered into the regular Confederate service, and he became a member of Company A, Third Missouri Cavalry, commanded by Col. Culton Green, of Marmaduke’s division, operating in the States of Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana and the Indian Territory, and taking part in the battles of Pea Ridge, Helena, Little Rock. Jenkin’s Ferry, and accompanying Gen. Price on his great raid through Missouri and Kansas in the fall of 1864, and then returned with the army through the Indian Territory and Arkansas to Louisiana, where he remained until the last organization of the Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department had surrendered, when he went to Navarro County, Texas, and engaged in the carrying trade between Millican and Dallas for about two years, when he returned to his former home in Missouri, and devoted two years to its repair, having been ruined by the lawless Kansas robbers under Jim Lane.
In 1868 he returned to Tazewell, and for about four years sold goods for S.C. and J. M. Brown, and then for thirteen years following he was a partner with J.W. Divine in the mercantile business, where in 1885 J.W. Divine withdrew from the firm.
On April 30, 1872, he was married to Eliza J. JOHNSON, daughter of Col. Thomas J. JOHNSON and Eliza J. John (nee Graham), the latter born in County Tyrone, Ireland, whither her ancestors fled from Scotland on account of their complicity in some of the rebellions in which their property was taken by the Crown. Of three sons and two daughters one, the eldest daughter, is deceased. Our subject is a Democrat, and he and his wife are Presbyterians.
Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of from Twenty-Five to Thirty Counties of East Tennessee. Chicago: Goodspeed, 1887.