Jessie’s father, who had once been a newspaperman in St. Lewis, was a shrewd man with a fiery temper. He was filled with ambition, not only for himself, but also for his young country and its expansion westward. His ambition and straightforward traits had served him well and, sometimes to his dismay and often to his delight, he passed these traits on to his beloved daughter Jessie.
Jessie grew up loved and adored no matter in which of the family’s three homes they happened to be residing. On every even-numbered year the Bentons traveled over and beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains to Mrs. Benton’s girlhood home, the Cherry Grove Plantation. There, surrounded by fields of tobacco, tended by slaves, Jessie learned the elegant ways of the South. This confined life requiring young Jessie to mind her manners and conduct her self as a lady should.
But these learned social skills were advantages to her ever increasing popularity when the Benton family resided, during the odd-numbered years, in their home in St. Louis, Missouri. It was here that Jessie’s father oversaw his political affairs and continued his interest and talk of the frontier he wanted to see expanded westward. In St. Louis young Jessie received a completely different set of lessons from those learned in Virginia. St. Louis teemed with immigrants, buckskin clad fur traders, black-frocked missionaries, and the soulful melodies of traveling minstrels and Negro slaves who labored along the waterfront.
It was the Benton’s third home that Jessie loved best. During the winters the Bentons resided in Washington, D.C. In this raw capitol city the Bentons called a prestigious brick house their home. Here there were parties and afternoon teas to attend and women could even be seen in public without a male escort. In Washington, D.C., during Jessie’s childhood, it was not unusual to find the little tomboy perched beside Andrew Jackson as he ran his fingers through her curly hair.
When Jessie was 14 years old many of her childish adventures came to a halt when Senator Benton decided that she would attend Miss English’s Academy in Georgetown. For the first time father and daughter, who had always been extremely close, had a serious disagreement. Jessie did not want to go. But go Jessie did. One year later after it was clear that this high-spirited girl was not going to adjust, she was allowed to return home.
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