Obadiah Benton McFadden is Born

Today in Masonic History Obadiah Benton McFadden is born in 1815.

Obadiah Benton McFadden was an American politician.

McFadden was born in West Middletown, Pennsylvania on November 18, 1815. He was educated in the public schools, then attended McKeever Academy in the same town. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1843.

He served as a member of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1843 and later was elected prothonotary or principal clerk of Washington County Pennsylvania. McFadden arrived in the Oregon Territory in 1853 with a commission from President Franklin Piece to make Matthew P. Deadly a justice on the Territorial Supreme Court. However the commission named Mordecai P. Deadly, there was no such person. It was decided the commission was invalid, McFadden filled the office. The term ended a year later in 1854.

The same year he was named to a similar position in the new Washington Territory Supreme Court which was created March 2, 1853. From 1858 to 1861 he was chief justice. He wrote the final opinion denying the appeal of murder against Chief Leschi of the Nisqually Tribe. The Chief was subsequently hanged. An action, to the present day remains, a much controversial and disputed issue.

He fought in the 1855-1858 Yakima Indian Wars, sometimes called the Plateau Wars in Eastern Washington. After the war end, he return to the Olympia area where he became a member of the Territorial legislative council which chose him as its president in 1861. He resumed his law practice in Olympia, and at the same time he engaged in agricultural pursuits in various areas of the Puget Sound region. As a Democrat, he was elected by the legislative council to represent Washington as delegate to the Forty-Third Congress [March 4, 1873-March 3, 1875]. He did not stand for re-nomination in the fall of 1874.

He and his wife Margaret settled in Chehalis in 1859 purchasing 320-acres from the Saunders family. At the time the town was known as Saundersville. Both he and his wife served as the local postmaster in the 1860s and 1870s using their home as the post office. He was a leader in the move to change the town’s name to Chehalis. He also championed and guided the effort to build a plank road from Chehalis to Olympia, a distance of nearly thirty miles.

He practiced law in Olympia until the time of his death on June 25, 1875. His funeral was attended by a crowd of around 1200 people including a band and numerous carriages accompanying his body to the Olympia Masonic Cemetery.

Shown as a Mason on some lists, McFadden is not found in the Grand Lodge of Washington or Pennsylvania records. His activities in Washington State appear to involve Masonry in Olympia.

This article provided by Brother Coe Tug Morgan – Honorary Grand Secretary, Past Grand Historian Grand Lodge F. & A. M. of Washington.