My Genealogy Hound

CAPT. JAMES P. BENNETT, a well-known citizen and prosperous farmer of the town of Westfield, is a son of James and Elizabeth (Ensign) Bennett, and was born in the town of Portland, Chautauqua county, New York, August 2, 1824. His paternal grandfather, Capt. Banks Bennett, was of French descent, and served in the Revolutionary war, and the maternal grandfather, Otis Ensign, also served in the Revolutionary war and afterwards left his native State of Massachusetts to become one of the early settlers of the town of Pomfret, where he died at the advanced age of ninety-six years. James Bennett, the father of Capt. James P. Bennett, was born in the town of Pawlet, Rutland county, Vermont, June 6, 1785, and came to the town of Sheridan in 1816; two years later he removed to the town of Portland, where he followed farming until his death January 29, 1858. He was a whig and a republican and a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, in which he was an active worker; while his word was as good as his bond. He married Elizabeth Ensign, a consistent member of his own church, who was born in Susquehanna county, Penna., and died June 10, 1850, when in the sixty-third year of her age.

James P. Bennett was reared on the farm in the town of Portland until he was fourteen years of age and received his education in the common schools. He then went on board a lake vessel and worked his way up until he became a captain and commanded several vessels that plied on the lakes between Buffalo and Chicago. At twenty-eight years of age he left the lakes and spent three years as a grain weigher in an elevator at Buffalo. He then conducted a grocery and meat market for five years and at the end of that time embarked in the butchering business, which he continued successively in the Elk street market for twenty-two years. When he quit butchering (1882) he returned to this county, where he purchased a farm in the town of Westfield and has been engaged ever since in farming and grape culture.

In 1850, he married Sarah A. Drury, daughter of John Drury of Detroit, Michigan. They have two adopted children: Lottie and Susie.

Captain James P. Bennett is a democrat in politics, was elected supervisor in 1862 of the third ward of Buffalo and served for three years as captain of the police in the third precinct of that city. When he quit butchering in Buffalo, the butchers of the Elk street market presented him a gold-headed ebony cane as a slight token of their esteem and respect. He is a member of Erie Lodge No. 161, Buffalo Chapter No. 71, and Buffalo Council No. 17 of the Masonic Fraternity of Buffalo.