George Bennett was born in Livingston county, New York, December 11, 1830, and died at North Johnstown, Wis., July 4, 1913, aged 82 years.
When he was five years old his father died and he was reared in the home of his grandfather in Saratoga county, New York. By teaching school and working out he acquired a small capital and followed the well beaten path of emigration to the new state of Wisconsin, where he arrived in 1855. Rock county seemed an attractive location and he bought the farm in the Town of Lima which he owned at the time of his death and occupied as a home for many years. To this place he brought his young wife fifty-five years ago, Miss Susan F. Osmond, also reared in the Empire state.
This Rock county community has been their home through all these years. The old pioneers, his neighbors, have one by one passed on and are sleeping on the hillsides and in the valleys once dear to them as the promise land of their youthful hopes, and few are left of the strong men and women who built their lives into this western commonwealth. Of this class was George Bennett, toiling to acquire a competence, to educate his family and give them an honored place in society. He lived to a ripe old age respected by his townsmen and loved and honored in his own family circle. Mr. Bennett became a member of the Free Baptist church at North Johnstown more than forty years ago.
He leaves a wife and three sons, Dr. Lewis F. Bennett, for several years a physician in Beloit, Wis., and now of Spokane, Wash., Chester C. Bennett of Denver, Colo., and James Bennett of Lima, Wis. There are sixteen grandchildren. Two sons are dead, Dr. O. G. Bennett dying in Janesville in 1899, and Thomas Bennett when a child.
The funeral services were held at the Free Baptist church in North Johnstown on Sunday, July 6, Rev. J. B. Gidney officiating, assisted by Pastor Sweet.
The large congregation present evidenced the esteem in which the deceased was held and the sympathy extended by the friends to the bereaved family.
