Appendix LXI
Benjamin Minor Massey after Yale
(compiled by George Langford, III, ed.)

209.Benjamin M. Massey (1) (M-44.Benjamin Ulpian, M-6.Benjamin Franklin, 5.Benjamin, 4.Elijah Eleazar, 3.Peter, 2.James, 1.Nicholas) Journalist.  Died at Springfield, Missouri, August 7th, 1903. Benjamin Minor Massey was born April 30th, 1873, at Springfield, Mo.  He was the only child of 44.Benjamin Ulpian Massey and Mary Sidney Smith, who were married April 20th, 1869, at Jefferson City, Mo. 44.Benjamin Ulpian Massey (b. Feb. 28th, 1842, at Sarcoxie, Mo.) is a lawyer of Springfield, Mo., at which city and at Jefferson City he has spent most of his life.  His parents were 6.Benjamin Franklin Massey of St. Louis, Mo.. and Maria Hawkins Withers of Fauquier County, Va. 6.Benjamin F. Massey was born at Massey's Cross Roads, Md., in 1811, leaving Maryland at the age of fifteen.  He went to St. Louis in 1829, and after working two years with the Santa Fe Overland Route Company, engaged in the dry goods business. In 1856 he was elected Secretary of State, but after being reelected in 1860 he lost his office (in 1861) owing to his absence in the Confederate Army. The family came from England in 1714, and settled near Chestertown, Md. Mary Sidney (Smith) Massey (b. in Cole County, Mo., in 1844; d. at Springfield, Mo., in Feb., 1875) spent her early life at Jefferson City, Mo. She was the daughter of William Smith, a tobacco and hemp grower on the Missouri River in Cole County, near Jefferson City; and Louisa Goode. whose parents were both of Nottoway, Va.

Massey entered our Class from '95 in the second term of Sophomore year, and remained with us until graduation.  He received a Second Colloquy at Commencement, and was eligible to have received his degree upon settlement of his account with the College Treasurer.  He was unmarried.

Massey was heard from in 1902, too late for the insertion of his reply in the Sexennial Record.  He studied law in New York City after graduation, but returned to Missouri when the war broke out, and enlisted in the 2d Missouri Volunteers.  "During the course of service," his letter said, "I was made first sergeant of Company M, and contracted the usual illness, brought on first by fever, and which in my case affected my lungs.  Since then I have been in the far West, ranching, mining, and (in 1901) engaged as city editor of the El Paso (Texas) Herald.  Latterly I have been here in Mexico City, as news editor of the Two Republics and as a publisher. I have had occasion to travel quite extensively, but Europe has not yet known me."

Massey's publishing business was conducted under the name of the Massey-Gilbert Company, publishers of the "Blue Book,"(2) in which were listed the American residents of the Mexican capital.  While in Texas he served as Secretary of the El Paso Carnival Association.  When the compiler of this volume visited El Paso he heard enough of Massey's ability and popularity from his old friends to make it evident that Massey had "made good."

His illness however, which had been a constant handicap all this time, finally necessitated his removal to the Fort Bayard Sanatorium. "They call it a hospital," he wrote, "but it is really a way station between life and death, and I am about ready to take the train." In the spring of 1903 he began to fail so rapidly that he went back to his old home in Missouri to wait the end. "Yes. I came home to die," he said to Wade, who was out there on a visit. "With one lung all gone and the other nearly done for, there wasn't any use in staying. Now my feet are swelling up, and that is one of the signs, you know, that the end is pretty close. . . . I tell you, sitting down face to face with death for nearly twelve months makes a man ponder things."

His death took place on the seventh day of August.

Sources		Page
1	Decennial record of the class of 1896, Yale College,  By Yale University, Class of 1896, by Clarence Day.
2	Massey-Gilbert Blue Book of Mexico 1903, Benj. M. Massey, President, Robert S. Barrett, Treasurer, 1908, 408pp.	p.0013