Benjamin
Franklin Pearrygin stands in front of his cabin near the lake that
still bears his name.
Karen West (https://methownet.com/grist/features/namingpearrygin.html) wrote this biography of Ben and his life as an outcast, mostly likely by his choice:
B.F. "Ben" Pearrygin scouted the
Methow Valley in 1887, one year after it opened to white settlement. He
claimed land on the lake that bears his name and would have taken up
squatters rights until the land was surveyed and he could file for a
homestead.
In 1888 he showed brothers Emil and Albert Ventzke
around and advised them where to take up squatters rights. The Ventzkes
were Prussian/German immigrants whose parents settled in Wisconsin.
Emil, who was about 21 years old, settled near Cub Creek, and Albert,
who was a few years older, near Rock View on the north fork of the
Methow River, now more commonly known as the Chewuch River. (Their
brother Fred Ventzke, a surveyor, took up a homestead near Winthrop in
1898.)
Little is known about Ben Pearrygin. The most
complete, and unflattering, description of him is in an excerpt from a
letter dated Jan. 21, 1916. It was written by Guy Waring, who founded
Winthrop, to Professor Meany at the University of Washington. Meany had
inquired about the origin of local place names. Waring said,
"Pearrygin Lake ... was named after Benjamin Franklin Pearrygin; who
was the third squatter in the valley and who located on this lake's
shore. He was from Southern Illinois and had the appearance of one's
ideal Portugese Pirate. I have little doubt that he was of Southern
European descent and originally a "Perugino." He was undoubtedly an
evil man and, I suspected, had sold his soul to the devil but had not
collected the pay! He met his death by falling out of a barn loft while
drunk and died after five days of agony that more than expiated all
his sins. He was a merry soul, withal."
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