Soul Portrait ID: 92
Benjamin Ratcliff
BIRTH - October 21, 1841
DEATH - February 7, 1896 - BURIAL - Unknown location in Park County, Colorado
MEMORIAL ID - 33725073 (Olney A. Borden) Bordenville Cemetery, Jefferson, Park County, Colorado, USA
Meet Mr. Benjamin Ratcliff 🙏🏼 I was led to Mr. Ratcliff from a photo I was given of a little cemetery in Bordenville, Colorado, because there seemed to be a face present in the clouds the day the photo was taken. Indeed, there is definitely a soul in this portrait, but who it is in the portrait came with a pretty good backstory that I'll share with you here.
Benjamin Ratcliff (October 21, 1841 – February 7, 1896) was a homesteader near Jefferson in Park County in central Colorado, who was hanged for the murders of three local school board members with whom he had quarreled regarding the education of his children and allegations implying he impregnated his own handicapped teenaged daughter. Behind the quiet hills of the cemetery pictured here, his body was returned and buried in an unknown location in the hills near Bordenville, in the background here, as the town did not want Mr. Ratcliff in the consecrated ground of the Bordenville cemetery.
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Backstory: In October 1882, Elizabeth Ratcliff and her fourth child died in childbirth. At forty-one, Ratcliff was left a widower to rear his son, Howell, and two daughters, Lizzie and Lavina. In 1884, he sent the daughters back to Missouri to live with relatives. Ratcliff and his son Howell, still a boy of ten, ran the ranch together. By 1892 or 1894, the girls returned to Colorado. Lizzie had a severe limp that had become permanent because of the lack of medical attention following a fall. One of her legs was 6 inches (150 mm) shorter than the other.
Ratcliff wrote George Miller, the superintendent of the Michigan Creek School Board, to request one of the following: (1) that the school be moved closer to the Ratcliff homestead, (2) that a special homebound teacher be assigned to assist him in the education of his children, or (3) that he be allowed to use the school textbooks and materials for home schooling. At the time, public school was held in Park County only in the winter, as children were needed for farm and ranch chores during the remainder of the year. Ratcliff asked for the assistance to accommodate Lizzie's handicap because the school was 7 miles (11 km) away; when the school board would not meet any of his requests, Ratcliff became frustrated, and events soon turned to disaster.
Ratcliff received a letter on August 22, 1894, from his neighbor Susan M. Crockett, which claimed that the 32-year-old school board president, Lincoln Fremont McCurdy, was spreading false stories that one of the Ratcliff daughters was pregnant and that Ratcliff was himself the father of the unborn child. Neither daughter was in fact pregnant. Beset by outrage, Ratcliff came to a school board meeting demanding a retraction of the rumor, he was armed with an 1873 Winchester rifle and two Colt 1851 Navy Revolvers, .36-caliber, which he had purchased in 1881.
Ratcliff claimed in his trial testimony that he fired the first shot as a warning, he shot George Douglas Wyatt, the 35-year-old board treasurer, in the back. Wyatt died four hours later, he shot Samuel F. Taylor, the 56-year-old board secretary, in the face, and Lincoln McCurdy, twice in the chest. Taylor and McCurdy were killed instantly. Ratcliff and Taylor had served together on the county Republican caucus committee; Ratcliff had once nominated Taylor as the committee chairman.
Ratcliff rode his horse into Fairplay and turned himself into the custody of Deputy Sheriff James A. Link; because of tensions stemming from the case in Fairplay, Ratcliff was tried in Buena Vista in Chaffee County. He was found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to death by hanging; the original execution date was August 1895.
After his arrest and conviction, Ratcliff claimed that he had given up part of his life wounded in Civil War service and would surrender the remainder of it in the good name of his family. After his execution, his children inherited nothing under the Homestead Act of 1862 because all were still under the age of twenty-one; the Ratcliff children soon left Park County in April 1896.
There is no public record regarding Ratcliff's burial, his body lay in the prison coffin for two snowy days in Buena Vista before it was claimed and presumably buried in frozen ground, possibly on his homestead about a mile from the actual domicile. Somewhere in the quiet hills behind the cemetery are the remains of Benjamin Ratcliff. His body was returned and buried somewhere in the hills near Bordenville. The town did not want him in the consecrated ground of the Bordenville cemetery.
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