Benjamin Franklin Tefft

Benjamin Franklin Tefft (1813–1885) was an American Methodist minister, author, newspaper editor, and diplomat. As the American Consul in Stockholm, Sweden during the US Civil War, he encouraged and facilitated Swedish emigration to the United States, particularly his native state of Maine. This eventually resulted, for example, in the founding of the northern Maine immigrant community of New Sweden and its satellite Stockholm, Maine.

Tefft was born in Floyd, New York and attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut, graduating in 1835. In 1839-41, and again in 1858-61, he served as a Methodist pastor in Bangor, Maine, and later briefly in Portland. In between Tefft became a professor of Greek and Latin at DePauw University in Indiana, and then president of Genesee College in New York, which later became Syracuse University. The town of Tefft, Indiana was named for him. Provided by Wikipedia