Ben Cartwright (character)
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In the television show Bonanza, the character Ben Cartwright is a cattle rancher who owns a large 600,000 acre ranch, two hours ride out of Virginia City, Nevada. He was married three times and had three sons: Adam, Hoss and Little Joe. Ben was portrayed by Lorne Greene.
[edit] Mini Bio
- Benjamin Cartwright was born in 1809, in what is now referred to as upper Vermont, but at that time a province of Canada.
- He had three wives: Elizabeth, Inger and Marie. All three wives were not around long enough to see their children grow up: Elizabeth died in childbirth, Inger was shot by an Indian with an arrow when Hoss was only a few weeks old, and Marie fell off of a horse and was killed when Joe was only five. (This changed during the PaxTV broadcast of the Ponderosa, the prequel to Bonanza, when Marie died by a bandit's bullet when Joe was twelve.)
- In 1971, six years after Adam's departure, Ben adopts 14-year-old orphan Jamie Hunter, whom came to live with the Cartwrights one year earlier.
