The PIATT FAMILY is of French origin and Huguenot blood.  Of course two centuries of births on this continent and a liberal admixture of Dutch and Irish blood have modified the original conditions that forced the French Puritans from their homes to a life in the wilderness.  It is a fact, however, that where any trace of the Huguenot is found, it is marked by the old quality that turned a class into a race of strong, solid, persistent men.  In the persecutions that followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the family fled from the Province of Dauphine to Holland, where JOHN PIATT married a Van Vliet, and from thence John and his wife emigrated to Cuba, and from there to New York, finding a home at last in New Jersey. 
 

     BENJAMIN M. PIATT, eldest son of Colonel Jacob Piatt, and long and lovingly known to the people of Logan county, was born in New Jersey, December 26, 1779; died at Mac-o-chee, April 28, 1863. 
     Judge Benjamin M. Piatt is well remembered by his surviving friends and neighbors of Logan county, as a man of marked attributes and of reticent but amiable temperament.  Something of a student he possessed a thoughtful turn of mind that made him more of  philosopher than a man of active life.  He had his share of adventure, however, as he began his business career boating produce from Kentucky to New Orleans before the day of steam-boating, when the flat boat and broad horn were floated down in continuous peril from floods and foes, to be broken-up and sold at New Orleans, when these primitive merchants returned on horseback with their compensation in gold about their persons.  In that unsettled condition of a sparsely settled country, one carried his coin and life in perpetual danger.  Many were the adventures of the two brothers, Benjamin M. and John H. Piatt, that chilled the blood of listeners in after life.  At the earnest solicitation of his wife, Benjamin M. Piatt abandoned this hazardous but lucrative life of river merchant, and, studying law, was admitted to the bar.  Not long after he was appointed district attorney for the southern district of Illinois.  This was an arduous position and as it required his continuous presence in that State he decided to move his family also.  He selected as a residence Kaskaskia, a settlement on the Mississippi, at the mouth of the Kaskaskia river. 
     While practicing his profession at Kaskaskia an event occurred strikingly illustrative of his character.  He was defending a man charged with manslaughter in the court at Kaskaskia, when his client in an unguarded moment seized the sheriff’s rifle and fled.  The sheriff made an appeal for a posse.  Mr. Piatt, indignant at his client, said he would bring the man back if authorized by the court.  This being given he hurried home, procured his rifle and horse, and went in pursuit.  He overtook the criminal at the Mississippi river.  The man had secured a boat and was some distance from shore.  Mr. Piatt dismounted and ordered the fugitive back.  He was only jeered at.  Mr. Piatt brought his rifle to bear at the instant the fugitive did his.  But it was well known throughout the country that Benjamin M. Piatt was a most remarkable shot with the rifle, as he continued, until his failing sight robbed him in his old age of this accomplishment.  The desperado knew this and looking along the deadly level of his lawyer’s rifle dropped his own and returned to shore. 
     At this moment the sheriff arrived and the lawyer delivered his prisoner to the officer.  To disarm and fasten the late fugitive to a horse was the work of a few moments.  The man’s legs were tied under the horse’s belly, his arms strapped to his sides and his hands left enough at liberty to handle the reins.  He was ordered to ride forward and sheriff and lawyer followed.  They had scarcely got under way when the sheriff motioned his companion to ride more slowly.  When far enough back not to be overheard the sheriff said in a low tone: “Now, Benny, let’s fix him for slow traveling, I’ll take aim at his right leg and you at his left, and when I count three we’ll fire a couple of bullets through his trotters.”  “You cowardly brute,” cried Piatt, his eyes blazing fire. “do you think I would consent to mutilate a helpless man?”  “I wont be answerable for his return then.”  “Nobody asks you.  I was authorized to arrest him.  You get away from here.  I will do it my own way.”  The indignant sheriff did ride away, and Mr. Piatt calling to the prisoner to halt, rode up and cutting his bonds said: “Now we’ll ride into town like gentlemen,” and they did. 
     The life in Kaskaskia was one of trial and hardship.  Mr. and Mrs. Piatt found themselves among strangers, who spoke a different language, poor and struggling  for the necessaries of life.  There was little to encourage Mr. Piatt in the practice of his profession, yet he would willingly have persevered, had not his family been subjected to such great privations.  His wife’s devotion and untiring exertions overtaxed her strength, and she lost an infant soon after his birth.  Following immediately upon this Mr. Piatt was stricken with a serious illness brought on by exposure in the performance of his duties.  There was a constant dread of earthquakes, several convulsions having occurred.  The proximity of the Indians was also a source of great uneasiness to Mrs. Piatt. 
     After the war of 1812 the encroachments of the Indians became more alarming, and Mr. Piatt determined to return to Cincinnati.  At Cincinnati he formed a partnership with the celebrated Nicholas Longworth, and between the practice of law and judicious investments in real estate he accumulated quite a fortune for that day.  In course of time he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the common pleas bench.  After, in 1816; he was elected a member of the State legislature, and as the records show, was the first to introduce a bill establishing the common school system.  He proposed, however, that the State should meet half the cost of a pupil’s schooling, and this should not go beyond reading, writing and arithmetic.  The motion made subsequently to give every child a collegiate course he considered not only impossible but likely to break down the system.  “You make a system,” he said, “where one boy gets a full meal and fifty boys go hungry.” 
     In the prime of life and amid a most prosperous business career, Judge Piatt bought his farm of seventeen hundred acres, and building a double log-cabin for himself and family, devoted the rest of his life to agricultural pursuits, made pleasant by books and studies for which he had a mind and temperament to enjoy. 
     There is a singular strain of contradiction in the Piatt blood.  Their ancestors left France because they would not be Catholics, and yet, “left to” themselves, have nearly all returned to the Catholic faith.  While Colonel Jacob Piatt of the revolution and his son Benjamin M. were extreme Federalists, believing in Hamilton and a strong central government, their children to-day are ultra Democrats. 
     When the late civil war broke upon us Judge Piatt was aroused to great indignation at what he called the infamous crime of the Southern leaders, and engaged actively in sustaining the government.  He not only gave freely from his means to organize volunteers but sent his sons and grandsons to the field.  When in the midst of the war he was stricken down with a grave sickness, and the suggestion made that his children be sent for, he said: “No, they cannot prolong my life, but they can and are serving their country; let them alone.” 
     And so the grand old patriot passed to his final rest, when the war whose drum-beats his very heart echoed in its last throbs was drawing to a triumphant end.  “I do thank God,” he said, “that my dying eyes will not close on a dissevered Union.  So long as I have children to remember me, let them remember this, my last will and testament to them.” 
     Benjamin M. Piatt’s quiet, philosophical life was in striking contrast to that of his younger brother, John H., and recalls the lines of the German poet as translated by Longfellow: 
 

     GENERAL A. SANDERS PIATT’S stately home stands sentinel where the 
Mac-o-chee meets the Mad river valley, and the noisy little stream glides like an eel, through the narrow opening of the wooded hills.  General Piatt was a born soldier—tall, erect and well proportioned, and with great force of character.  His career in the army was brief but brilliant.  He was among the first to volunteer in response to President Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand men, and he left the field only after being disabled by an attack of typhoid fever, from which he has never entirely recovered.  For a brief mention of his services we quote from “Ohio in the War” and can but add that in his patriotic effort to raise a brigade at his own expense, he brought on financial embarrassments from which he yet suffers, so that both in body and fortune he carries scars that are decorations to one who is without fear and without reproach.  Whitelaw Reid says: 
     “He solicited and received authority from Mr. Lincoln to enlist a brigade for the war.  Relying upon his own means he selected a camp, and organized the first Zouave regiment (so called, though for no reason save that they wore a fancy reg-legged uniform which they were soon forced to discard) in Ohio. 
     “He subsisted his regiment for one month and six days, and was then commissioned as colonel and ordered to Camp Dennison.  The regiment was designated the 34th.  He continued recruiting, with permission from the State authorities, and a second regiment was subsequently organized and designated the 54th.  This second regiment was being rapidly filled up when Colonel Piatt was ordered to report with the 34th to General Rosecrans, then commanding in West Virginia. 
     “On his way to join Rosecrans he met an organized band of rebels in a strongly fortified position near Chapmansville, West Virginia. 
     “After making a reconnaissance he attacked and drove the enemy in utter rout from his position, and wounded and captured the commander of the force, Colonel J. W. Davis. 
     “Colonel Piatt next attacked and defeated a rebel force at Hurricane, which was co-operating with General Floyd, then at Cotton Hill.” 
     In March, 1862, he was obliged to return to Ohio on account of a serious attack of typhoid fever.  Before his recovery he was commissioned brigadier-general. 
     In July he was assigned from General Sigel’s command to a brigade in General McClellan’s army, and a month later took a very gallant part in the battle of Manassas Junction.  Reid says: 
     “Here he halted his brigade while the one in front marched on toward Washington.  General Piatt remarked to General Sturgis that he had gone far enough in that direction in search of General Porter, and that with his permission he would march to the battle-field.  He then ordered his men into the road and guided by the sound of artillery he arrived at the battle-ground of Bull Run at 2 o’clock P. M.  The brigade went into action on the left, and acquitted itself with great courage.  General Pope, in his official report complimented General Piatt very highly for the soldierly feeling which prompted him, after being misled and with bad example of the other brigade before his eyes, to push forward with such zeal and alacrity to the field of battle. 
     “In the battle of Fredericksburg General Piatt occupied the right, and had the satisfaction of  being assured by his superior officer that his brigade performed well the duty assigned to it.” 
     Since his return from the army General Piatt has lived the retired life of a farmer, enlivened by books and literary pursuits.  He is a clever wielder of the pen, and not only an essayist but a poet.  His contributions to the magazines, notably the North American Review, mark him as a clear thinker, of a vigorous, incisive style.  He has taken part in politics always as a Democrat when not a Greenbacker; as of the last he was once nominated by that party as their candidate for Governor, and would have received a heavy vote but for the fact that the two candidates in the field at the time, being Hon. Chas. Foster and Hon. Thomas Ewing, were something of Greenbackers themselves. 
     General Piatt has the temperament and all the qualities that go to make a successful leader of men.  In illustration of this we have an event told by a correspondent of the New York World. 
     It was after the gathering upon the fields of Chickamauga of Union and Confederate officers to designate the lines of battle and prepare the ground for a great National Park.  General Piatt made one of the number on a belated train of the Queen and Crescent when a frightful collision occurred.  The correspondent says: 
     “We were thrown out of our seats by the concussion that had a deafening crash and then a no less deafening escape of steam.  Although much shaken up the passengers were unhurt, and we hastily tumbled out.  The scene that met our eyes was terrible.  The two huge locomotives were jammed into each other, a great mass of wrenched and broken iron.  The freight train loaded with ties scattered in piles each side of the track.  The baggage car was telescoped in the postal car, and the two made a stack of broken boards and timber piled on each other.  As we swarmed about the ruins I saw the tall, soldierly form of General Sanders Piatt climbing upon the wreck.  He suddenly began gesticulating, but what he said we could not hear.  Suddenly the escaping steam ceased, and then the startling cry came to us from General Piatt: ‘There are live men under this wreck; come on!’  Sure enough, we could hear the feeble moans of one and the agonizing screams of another. 
     “It was singular to see how one man could take control in the emergency as General Piatt.  He not only worked himself, but directed the others, officers of the railroad, veterans of the army and passengers.  It was not only a heroic effort of a strong man, but an intelligent one.  I noticed two men armed with axes cutting at a part of the under car that remained intact.  General Piatt saw them.  ‘For God’s sake don’t do that,’ he cried, ‘you will bring down tons on us.’  In an hour, that seemed like five to us, the hurt men were got at.  It was pitiful to see their mangled forms lifted tenderly out by the laborers, then as black as negroes from the soot that had settled on everything.  The gallant old veteran who directed the work was so exhausted when the work was done that we had to carry him back to the passenger car that yet remained upon the track.  General Piatt had won his laurels on hard-fought battles of the war, but no brighter crown could be awarded him than his labors on this occasion.” 
     A. Sanders Piatt was born in Cincinnati, May 2, 1821.  But for a brief period of his life in Boone county, Ky., he has been a resident of Logan, where he yet will have, we trust, many years of happy life.