author
B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Craig
1814–1889
A Kentucky-born writer who later made Missouri his home, he turned frontier memories and Civil War bitterness into vivid, personal storytelling. His surviving books mix local history, reform-minded commentary, and the rough drama of life along the border states.
1 Audiobook
Pen Pictures, of Eventful Scenes and Struggles of Life
by B. F. (Benjamin Franklin) Craig
About the author
Born in 1814, Benjamin Franklin Craig was an American author whose work grew out of life on the early Kentucky and Missouri frontier. Genealogical records identify him as the son of Benjamin Craig Jr. and Elizabeth Walton Morris Craig; he married Caroline D. Gex in 1837 and moved from Kentucky to Clinton County, Missouri, in 1855.
Craig is best known for books including The Border Ruffian (1863), The Rough Diamond (1880), and Pen Pictures, of Eventful Scenes and Struggles of Life (1880). These works draw on border-state conflict, everyday hardship, and strong moral feeling, giving modern readers a direct sense of how one nineteenth-century writer understood violence, politics, and community.
He died in 1889. Although he is not widely known today, Craig's books remain interesting for readers who enjoy firsthand-flavored accounts of American frontier life and the tensions that surrounded the Civil War era.