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biography
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Bennett, Captain William, is a man of fine personal appearance, of genial
disposition, of engaging manners and sterling integrity. Descended from an old
and worthy English family whose honorable reputation he has well supported.
Capt. Bennett has been prominently identified with the agricultural and
commercial interests of Pennsylvania for over half a century and now at the
advanced age of seventy-seven is in active management of his large Virginia
plantation. He was born in Parish of Westry-Black Anton, Devonshire, England,
August 30, 1813, and is a son of Capt. John and Jane (Coade) Bennett, both
natives and residents of the Mother Country. In 1828 Capt. John Bennett with
his family came to Westmoreland county, where he located in Derry township and
remained there until 1868, when at the age of eighty-four he retired and went to
live with his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Stephen Young, at Parnassus, where he
remained until his death, July 25, 1871. He was born September 10, 1788,
received a good education and entered the regular army of England in which he
served for several years as a captain and then resigned. His wife, Jane (Coade)
Bennett, was born September 1, 1792, and passed away exactly sixty-nine years
later, on the first day of September, 1861.
Capt. William Bennett was reared on a farm in a rural district of the county
of Devonshire and attended some of the best private schools of England then in
existence. At fifteen years of age be came with his parents to Westmoreland
county where he was successfully engaged in farming for several years. When the
Pennsylvania canal was opened in 1835 he rented his farm and purchased several
canal boats, which he ran and commanded until the canal was abandoned. In 1853,
when the railroad was finished as far as Johnstown he carried the Adams express
from there to Pittsburg by boat until the road was finished and the canal
abandoned. Having become well acquainted with Thomas A. Scott when a boy in the
collector's office at Hollidaysburg, was appointed by him as first train
dispatcher in Pittsburg in 1853; while there he became acquainted with Andrew
Carnegie, who was then a boy in Scott's office. After some time he purchased a
boat and left Pittsburg for Wabash, Indiana, where he lost his boat and several
horses and contracted fever and ague. He then returned to this county and was
engaged in farming near Blairsville until 1865, when he bought his present farm
near Hillside. This farm contains two hundred and eighty-five acres of good
farming land, which is well improved and underlaid with coal. In 1876 he
purchased a beautiful as well as valuable plantation within nine miles of the
city of Richmond, Virginia. He has spent the most of his time for the last
fourteen years on this Virginia plantation, which contains one thousand one
hundred and forty acres and on which he has harvested as high as five thousand
bushels of wheat per year.
On June 28th, 1818, Capt. Bennett was married to Mary Ann Turner, a daughter
of Georgo and Lucy (Wilkinson) Turner, of Blairsville, where the former died in
November, 1886, at the ripe old age of ninety-five years. To Captain and Mrs.
Bennett have been born nine children: Lucy J., born March 29, 1850, and wife of
John Johnson, of Hillside; William E., born May 19, 1852; Thomas, born February
22, 1854, and resides in Virginia; Harry, born March 15, 1855, and was struck
and killed by the Altoona Accommodation train September 9, 1884; Priscilla P.,
who was born November 15, 1856, and died February 4, 1857; James Edwin, born
December 13, 1857, and resident of Derry station; George W., born June 13, 1859,
and lives at New Derry; Robert Anderson, born December 2, 1861, unmarried and at
Johnstown, Pa.; and Lincoln, born March 17, l866, and lives in Pittsburg.
William E. Bennett, the eldest son, is unmarried and is manager of the home
farm. He is an intelligent, enterprising and progressive young man who has had
considerable business experience in this county and in the valley of Virginia.
Capt. William Bennett in the course of his life has had some broken bones and
several narrow escapes. His life has been one of constant activity and usefulness.
Extracted from
Biographical and Historical Cyclopedia of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania,
Compiled and Published by John M. Gresham & Co.&
Samuel T. Wiley, Chief Assistant
1890
Contributed by Joy Fisher
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