Benjamin Franklin Graves

Benjamin Franklin Graves (1771–1813) was a politician and military leader in early 19th-century Kentucky. During the War of 1812, Graves served as a Major in the 2nd Battalion, 5th Kentucky Volunteer regiment. Together with other officers, he commanded relatively inexperienced Kentucky troops in the Battle of Frenchtown (also known as the Battle of the River Raisin) on January 22, 1813 in Michigan Territory. This was part of an effort by Americans to take the British-controlled fort at Detroit. This battle had the highest number of American fatalities in the war: of 1000 American troops, nearly 400 were killed in the conflict, and 547 were taken prisoner. The next day an estimated 30-100 Americans were killed by Native Americans after having surrendered.

Graves was among Americans known to be taken by the Potawatomi on a forced march to the British fort at Detroit, Michigan. He is believed to have died on the way, as he disappeared from the historic record. Because so many men of the Kentucky elite were lost in this battle, it has been commemorated in the state. Graves is included among the officers memorialized on Kentucky's Military Monument to All Wars in the state capital of Frankfort. In 2009, the Michigan area was commemorated as the River Raisin National Battlefield Park, the only such park to mark a War of 1812 site, although others are noted as national or state historic sites.

Graves was born in Virginia's Spotsylvania County in 1771. After the American Revolutionary War, he moved in 1791 to frontier Kentucky with his siblings and widowed mother. Among them was his brother Thomas Coleman Graves.

They settled in Fayette County, where Graves was elected to two terms (1801 and again in 1804) as state representative. This was in the central Bluegrass region, one of the first areas of the state to be settled by European Americans.

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