Benjamin Helm Bristow

Birth Date

1832-06-20

Death Date

1896-06-22

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

Caldwell County, Kentucky, soldier and politician. Elkton, Kentucky, native. Son of Francis Marion Bristow and Emily Edwards Helm Bristow. Married to Abigail Slaughter Bristow on November 21, 1854. Attended Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Admitted to the bar in 1854. Major of unorganized recruits for the United States Army, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in August 1861. Served in the 25th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment (U.S.A.) as lieutenant from 1861 to April 15, 1862. Served in the 8th Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (U.S.A.) as lieutenant colonel and colonel from September 8, 1862, to September 23, 1863. Assisted in the capture of John Hunt Morgan in July 1863. Member of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1863. Helped form and led the Unconditional Union party. Assistant district attorney for Kentucky in 1865.

Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, vol. 1, 1861-1866 (Frankfort: Kentucky Yeoman Office, 1866), p. 209.
Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, vol. 2, 1861-1866 (Frankfort: Kentucky Yeoman Office, 1866), p. 910.

Ross A. Webb, "Benjamin Helm Bristow" in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, ed. John E. Kleber (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 123-24.
The Union Army: States and Regiments, vol. 4 (Madison, Wis.: Federal Publishing Company, 1908), 344.

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