Benjamin Carroll Henson
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Dr. Benjamin Carroll Henson, M.D. was a prominent Virginia physician who served for forty-six years as a general practitioner and surgeon in the coal-mining communities of Wise County, Virginia. He was a past president of the Wise County Medical Society and served for nearly four decades as the resident physician for the Stonega Coke and Coal Company in Stonega, Imboden, and Roda.
Medical Career & Virginia Geography
The map below traces Dr. Henson's life journey from the Central Virginia Piedmont through his medical training in Williamsburg and Richmond to the Cumberland coalfields of Southwest Virginia:
Henson Family Lineage
The diagram below illustrates Dr. Henson's descent from early Virginia colonist Samuel Henson and Civil War cavalryman Samuel Puryear Henson:
Henson Family Tree
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Henson was born in Louisa County, Virginia, on September 9, 1883, the son of Samuel Puryear Henson and Anna Mary (Carroll) Henson. His father, born December 26, 1844, was an extensive lumberman and planter who served during the Civil War with the 43rd/45th Battalion of Virginia Cavalry in Col. John S. Mosby's command (Mosby’s Rangers) from 1863 to 1865, and was later elected to the Virginia General Assembly in 1887.
Dr. Henson attended public schools in Louisa, graduated from Louisa High School, and completed coursework at the College of William and Mary. He earned his medical degree from the University College of Medicine in Richmond in 1913. In June 1914, he assumed leadership of the Mountain View Sanatorium in Catawba, Virginia, specializing in pulmonary medicine and the treatment of tuberculosis.
In August 1914, he relocated to the rugged coal country of Wise County, serving the mining settlements of Stonega, Imboden, and Roda until his retirement in December 1957. A dedicated horseman and practitioner who answered calls into isolated mountain hollows in all weather, he was also an active civic leader, serving as vestryman at Christ Episcopal Church in Big Stone Gap.
He married Nancy Leigh White on May 16, 1914, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Norfolk. Dr. Henson died in Louisa, Virginia, on March 23, 1960.