Beman Gates Dawes, Member of U.S. Congress and Founder of the Dawes Arboretum
Beman Gates Dawes, son of Civil War hero Rufus Dawes and brother of Vice President Charles Gates Dawes, was a Representative to Congress from Ohio He was born in Marietta, Washington County, Ohio, January 14, 1870 and attended Marietta Academy and College, Marietta, Ohio. He engaged in agricultural pursuits and engineering and became interested in public utilities. He was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth Congresses (March 4, 1905-March 3, 1909) and after his retirement from Congress became interested in the production of oil and the building of electric railways.
Beman had worked in the family lumber industry as a young man, and as his passion for and knowledge of trees grew, so did his desire to share what he had learned with the public. As a self-taught naturalist and gardener, his wife Bertie also was eager to educate others about the natural world. Their collaborative efforts inspired the creation of The Dawes Arboretum in 1929, an endowed institution dedicated to the education of youth.
The Arboretum now covers nearly 1,800 acres and includes eight miles of hiking trails and a four-mile Auto Tour, more than15,000 living plants, a Japanese Garden and the Dutch Fork Wetlands. The Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio is a private, non-profit organization. The grounds are open 7am until dusk year-round, closed only on New Year's, Thanksgiving and Christmas days. Admission is free.
The Daweswood House Museum was originally the home of John Brumback, a farmer and blacksmith, and his family. John designed the brick farmhouse in 1866-1867, relying heavily on elements of the then-popular Italianate style of architecture. During 1917-1918, the Dawes Family purchased 140 acres of the Brumback Family property, including the 50-year-old brick farmhouse as their country home. In the late 1920s, they modernized the house and made structural changes to better suit their needs.
In addition to his famous brothers Charles and Rufus and his father Rufus Dawes, Beman Dawes was the great-great grandson of William Dawes, Jr., who rode with Paul Revere the night of April 18, 1775 to warn the Massachusetts minute men that the British were marching on Lexington and Concord. Beman’s other great-great grandfather, Rev. Dr. Manasseh Cutler, helped draft the Ordinance of 1787, the “Northwest Ordinance” that was one of the single most important pieces of legislation passed by members of the Continental Congress. It established the precedent by which the United States would expand westward across North America by the admission of new states, rather than by the expansion of existing states.