Cauthorn

Searching for information on Lt. Benjamin Franklin Cauthorn, born about 1827 in Virginia. He was apparently a lawyer, and at a very young age was elected as the Clerk of the District Court of Ouachita Parish Louisiana, a position he held in 1850. In September of that year, he married Emily Bry, daughter of a very influential man in that region, Michael Henry Bry. Cauthorn lived in Monroe in the 1850s and 1860s.

Perhaps due to his official position, he did not join the Confederate Army in the early years of the war. Probably to escape the Yankee incursions into Monroe, he apparently went north to Union Parish. There at Farmerville, on 7 May 1864 he enlisted in Company F, 2nd Battalion Louisiana Heavy Artillery. He was elected as the 2nd lieutenant of that unit on 30 August 1864. He was stationed at Pineville and Natchitoches for the remainder of the war, but throughout this period he was detailed as the Acting Assistant Quartermaster of the Battalion.

Cauthorn was alive on 30 April 1865, but he apparently died soon afterwards.

Does anyone know his parents or anything else about him? His children all lived with their grandfather Michael Henry Bry in 1870, so Cauthorn's widow had also died by that time.

Tim Hudson