Spanish–American War Benjamin Franklin Daniels (November 4, 1852 – April 20, 1923) was an Arizona pioneer, best known for serving as a lawman in rough Western towns and the sheriff of Pima County shortly before his death in 1923.

He was born on November 4, 1852, to Aaron Daniels and Mariah Sanders, but lost his mother, two brothers, and four sisters to cholera when he was still very young.

By his late twenties, Daniel was at Camp Carlin, Wyoming, where he was convicted of stealing army mules and sentenced to three years and six months.

Ed Julian, the owner of a restaurant next door to the Green Front, began complaining about the noise and rowdy behavior emanating from Daniels' saloon.

Ben and a few of his partners shot their way out of town while the remaining four were besieged and eventually forced to surrender by the people of Cimarron, who had the lawmen surrounded in the Old Gray County Courthouse.

[6] During 1893 Ben Daniels and his wife moved to the new boomtown of Cripple Creek, Colorado where he pursued his gambling interests and performed occasional service as a lawman.

[8]Ben Daniels survived San Juan Hill, and the more-deadly malaria-carrying mosquitoes to return to the states as a hero of what had been termed a "Splendid Little War."

Ben was present at Camp Wikoff, Long Island, New York on September 15, 1898 when Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" were officially mustered out.

Somehow, one of the people who had been opposed to Daniels' appointment had found out about Ben's prison record in Wyoming, and contacted the Attorney General of the United States.

[9] Angered by the public outcry, President Roosevelt remained determined to do something for Ben Daniels – something that wouldn't require senate confirmation to get one of his favorite Rough Riders on the Federal payroll, Accordingly, the President had another former "Rough Rider," Governor Alexander Oswald Brodie of Arizona, appoint Daniels as Superintendent of the Territorial Penitentiary at Yuma on October 1, 1904.

In a note to his close friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, President Roosevelt bragged: "By the way, I think it will rejoice your heart to know that Governor Brodie of Arizona (late Lieutenant-Colonel of the Rough Riders) is going to appoint Ben Daniels (late one-eared hero of that organization) as warden of the Arizona Penitentiary.

When I told this to John Hay he remarked (with brutal absence of feeling) that he believed the proverb ran: 'Set a Rough Rider to catch a thief!

On July 1, 1905, Ben Daniels was finally appointed, with the advice and consent of the Senate, as the United States Marshal for the Territory of Arizona.

[13] After President Theodore Roosevelt left office in 1909, Ben Daniels was called to Washington and asked to resign his commission as U.S.

During 1914, at the age of sixty-two, Ben Daniels ran on Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party ticket for sheriff of Pima County, Arizona and finished a distant third.