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BENJAMIN O. FOSTER, farmer and stock raiser, post office Auburn, section 27; was born in Kennebec, Maine, on the nineteenth day of October, 1833, son of Otis and Phoebe (Goodwin) Foster. In 1843, his parents emigrated to Sangamon county, Illinois, where they rented a farm in Auburn township, for three years, when they bought a farm one and a half miles northwest of where Auburn now stands, there being no Auburn at that time, and made a farm out of the wild prairie. Mr. Foster left his old home in Maine in limited circumstances, went by water to New Orleans in a sailing vessel, and thence by steamer up the river. Arriving in Auburn, his means were nearly exhausted, the first few years they lived in a log cabin, sixteen by twenty, with split clapboards for a roof, through which the snow would sift and cover their beds in winter.
The subject of this sketch was a boy when he came to the county, received what schooling the county afforded at the time. In 1864, he married Miss Caroline Poley, daughter of Joseph and Francis Poley. She was born in Auburn township, December 16, 1839.
There are three children, Florence P., born October 7, 1865; Amina C., born February 28, 1870; Frank L., born October 28, 1872. They commenced their married life on a farm near Brush Creek, where they remained four years. Mrs. Foster's health failing, in the fall of 1868, they went to California, where he bought a farm, where he remained until the Spring of 1874, returned to Illinois, with the intention of selling out his interest here and returning. Being unable to sell here at anything near a reasonable figure, he returned to California, where he had left his home just as they had been keeping house, sold out, and returned to Auburn, where he bought a home for the better chance of educating his children, and embarked in the milling business, in company with the Poley family. Not liking it, he sold his interest and bought the land where he now resides. Mr. Foster is a large and wealthy farmer of the township, owning six hundred acres of land under good cultivation, valued
at $70 per acre; raises two hundred acres of corn; one hundred and fifty acres of wheat; forty acres of oats; turns out fifty head of hogs; fifty head of cattle; fifteen head of horses, and five hundred sheep.