Bennights Unite!

Descendants of William Bennight and Phoebe Jane Mulnix

2011-02-04T00:51:00.000-08:00

Source: http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.baird/102.472.545.743.772.2.1.1/mb.ashx

1 - William Bennight

+ Phoebe Jane Mulnix

   2 - Mary Ann Bennight b. 24 May 1871, Colusa, Colusa, California,
   d. 28 Dec 1928, Rohnerville, Humboldt, California

   + Elmer Jacob Baird b. 22 Dec 1863, Indiana, d. 17 Oct 1924, Scotia, Humboldt, California

   3 - Nellie Jane Baird b. 28 Jul 1890, Rohnerville, Humboldt, California

   3 - Rosella Baird b. 19 Dec 1897, Rohnerville, Humboldt, California,
   d. 19 Aug 1901, Rohnerville, Humboldt, California

   3 - Annie Baird

   3 - Harvey Baird b. 20 Jun 1900, Rohnerville, Humboldt, California, d. 9 Jun 1977

   3 - Elmer Sylas Baird b. 12 Aug 1903, Rohnerville, Humboldt, California

   3 - Roy Jake Baird b. 6 Aug 1906, Rohnerville, Humboldt, California

Descendants of Joseph E. Bennight UPDATED 01/13/2011

2011-01-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

The numbers represent generations. 1 - first generation, 2 - child of #1, 3 - grandchild of #1, 4 - great-grandchild of #1, 5 - great-great-grandchild of #1, 6 - great-great-great-grandchild of #1

1 Joseph E. Bennight b. 1839
    Wife: Susan Francis Williams, b. 1830
    2   Wesley Christopher Bennight b. 8 Nov 1860
         Wife: Tennie C. (Tennasee) Lovett, b. 1871
         3   Houston Wesley Bennight b. 1845
              Wife: Alberta Henrietta Peet
               4   Wesley Albert Bennight b. 1924
                     Wife: Emily Jean Martin b. 1928
                      5   John Wesley Bennight b. 1950
                      5   Brenda Kathleen Bennight b. 1954
               4   Ruby Iris Bennight b. 1922
                    Husband: Richard M. Henson
               4   Allie Mae Bennight b. 1920
          3   Joseph L. Bennight b. 1890
               Wife: Eula Myers
          3   William H. Bennight
               Wife: Lealer Padgett, d. 1968
          3   Mary Frances Bennight b. 1893
               Husband #1: James C. Wilhite

4 Ollie Tennesee Wilhite

Husband: Orval William Cassity

5 Virginia Cassity

5 Leatha Cassity

Husband: Leyerly

6 Cinnamon Nichole Leyerly

6 Beva H. Leyerly III

   6 Kristol Lynn Leyerly
               Husband #2: Clark
          3   Virgie Bennight b. 1898
               Husband: Claude P. Patterson
    2   Emmer G. Bennight, b. 1863
         Husband: Briscoe d. 1930s

Link to Jim Bennight's Website

2010-12-05T21:46:00.001-08:00

http://netjim.com/bennight/

William M. Bennight and Sarah McCubbin

2010-12-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

There are a few discrepancies between the three entries below, as they came from different sources and I put them up here exactly as I found them. I am personally still trying to determine if Sarah McCubbin married my great grandfather, William Bennight (see my family chart) or some other William Bennight. Perhaps someone reading this will have more information to offer.
- Loraine Bennight Nielsen

Miller County Museum & Historical Society

Progress Notes

Joe Pryor - News Tribune Article Monday, June 04, 2007

Sarah, born September 19, 1791, in North Carolina, married William Bennight.

Sarah McCubbin, who married William Bennight, came to Miller County in the middle 1830’s where her husband, a miller, practiced his trade at Sartar’s Mill near the Big Saline Creek, later becoming the sole proprietor of the enterprise. They left the area in the 1840’s moving into what is now Caldwell County, Missouri.

______________________________

JIM CAVE'S ANCESTORS

http://bellsouthpwp.net/c/a/cavej/ancestor.html

40 William M. Bennett: William was born in VA circa 1785. He married Sarah (Sallie) McCubbin in Hardin Co, KY, May 22, 1811. William died 1832 in Green or Hart KY.

41 Sarah (Sallie) McCubbin: Sarah was born in Rockingham Co, NC September 19, 1791. She married William M. Bennett in Hardin Co, KY, May 22, 1811. Sarah died November 30, 1885 in Daviess Co, MO, at 94 years of age.

______________________________

Ancestors of Luther Martin Crain

Generation No. 6

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/c/r/a/Tommy-Crain/GENE2-0006.html

iii.

Sarah Sally McCubbin, born September 19, 1791 in Rockingham County, North Carolina; died November 30, 1885 in Daviess County, Missouri; married William M Bennett May 22, 1811 in Hardin County, Kentucky; born Abt. 1787 in Wolf Island Creek, Rockingham, North Carolina; died Abt. 1832 in Green Co., Kentucky.

Bennight Family on Facebook

2010-11-13T13:43:00.001-08:00

Check out this group started by Cindy Bennight Smith:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bennight-Family/130924163601603

New information, courtesy of Cindy Bennight Smith

2010-11-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

Raymond E. Bennight History 1920-1929

2010-10-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

I don't remember just when we got into Washington, but my sister, Barbara, was born on January 31, 1920 in Mendota, near Yakima, Washington. We eventually settled in Morton, Washington with another coal mine. This was a big operation and was mined on the hillside rather than on flat ground as in Missouri. The coal layers in this area were on a 15-degree slant. Dad and crew built a narrow gauge railroad up to the mine to haul the coal down to the bunkers to load into the mainline cars. The first time they tried out the new train, it ran away (the brakes failed) and everyone jumped off and let it crash. Then it was a big job to get things straightened out again. We had a good time there that spring and summer, but when school time came, we, the family, moved into Tacoma to live and go to school. I still remember the house and its number (712 South J St., Tacoma). I started school again in the first grade after several starts and moves. I was nine (9) years old by now and still in the first grade, but before long I was promoted to the third grade and to a grade more in keeping with my age. In Tacoma I began to do things around stores. I used my wagon to deliver groceries at 10 cents a delivery. In those days people didn't go to the store much, but would phone their order to a trusted merchant and have it delivered to the house. In those days all businesses delivered. I delivered papers here, too, and didn't care much for it so didn't get started again in other areas, but stuck more to store deliveries when possible. A brother, Parker, was born in Tacoma in 1922.

By 1923 our mine was pretty well worked out so we headed south to California and gold mining. Dad did hydraulic mining in the San Gabriel Canyon near Azusa, California. We lived in town. My sister, Constance, was born here on June 10, 1924. We pumped the gravel from the bottom of the river and ___separated the gold from the gravel in sluice boxes. This wasn't our greatest mine so we moved down to Rialto and started a grocery store. It was fun being here and playing in the orange groves. Our house was too small so Ogden and I got to sleep in a tent behind the house. We didn't get much sleep, but had a lot of fun. They had a row of eucalyptus trees around the orange groves to serve as a windbreak. Us boys tied a cable up in the eucalyptus trees and tied it to a small tree near the ground, then we would climb the tree and ride down on a pulley – a fast ride and a crashing stop in the dirt near the end of the cable. We got in trouble here when we built a small cabin to play in. That was ok, but then we dug a cave under the cabin and made a hole up through the dirt for a smoke stack and built a fire. The owner of the place saw smoke coming out of the ground and wasn't too happy about the 'hole' thing. So we got the job of tearing down the shack and filling the hole. By this time I am about 13 and we moved back to Oregon and a quicksilver mine at Yoncalla, Oregon, in 1925 and 1926. I'll always remember the old grapevine road from Los Angeles to Bakersfield. It was named The Grapevine because it was as crooked as a grapevine. It was more than a one-day trip in those days. It was narrow and steep. With boiling radiators and flat tires, it was some trip.

In Yoncalla I had a good time in the summer swimming in the old swimming hole near town. Seems like everyone went and had a swim and a picnic. I joined the Boy Scouts here for a while, the only chance I had in my boyhood. We soon moved out to the mine site and set up a furnace to ___roast the rock. Mercury in the rock was in the form of mercuric oxide or cinnabar and to get it out of the rock and in the form of quicksilver takes 8 or 9 hundred degrees of heat. So we built a big furnaceo this job and then, of course, the vapor had to be cooled quickly to condense it back to a liquid. Many problems with this operation and dangerous, too. Very, very poisonous.

My little brother, Parker, got diphtheria at the mine and died at only four years old.

From this mine we moved to Roseburg, Oregon and dad opened the Chrysler-Plymouth auto agency there when Plymouth first came out. The mining bug soon struck again, though, and we moved on to a platinum mine on “Jump off Joe” Creek near Grants Pass, Oregon. When it was time for school to start again, we moved into Grants Pass and I was a freshman in high school by now and 15 years old. When I was acquainted some I got a job downtown in a really large fountain, candy & sandwich shop. It was known as “Horning's Shack” and was far from being a “shack,” but was very nice and modern for its time (1928). I was bothering my dad to let me drive the car by now, but dad always said when you are old enough to drive, get a drivers license; that is, and have money to buy a car, then you can drive your own. When I was 16 I had saved up $165 and went to town and bought a 1923 Ford Coupe for $50, being too scotch to spend $90 for a really nice 1924 Dodge Roadster. But I had soon spent the $90.00 anyway, as the Ford developed a $40 ailment in the differential and I still had a Ford. I still to this day (1976) have the problem of buying someone else's troubles at a low price and fixing them up instead of getting the nice car and paying the price. But of course as the years passed I developed skills and know how in buying and repairing cars so I didn't get the worst of deals now.

January 9, 1929 my youngest brother was born, named James Donald Bennight. I am now 16 and the next youngest to Don was Connie, born in 1924. I worked for a couple of years at the fountain, where I was taught to make ice cream and candy and ____ mixed all the syrups for use in the fountain. Also I scrubbed the floors, washed the windows and changed window displays and waited on the customers. I used to take pride in taking as many as 8 orders in my head and get them all to the right person. When I first used ice cream we used a big wooden barrel looking freezer which would make five gallons at a time. It was powered by a water wheel, the water coming from the town water system and on into the drain. It did a good job, but the belts needed lots of repairing and someone always had to ____ram ice through the crusher and ice and salt the machine then take the finished ice creams out and put in another container and “set” on froze and a new batch started. In those days we used fresh fruit flavors and real 20 test cream. Really fattening. I also made the candy – peanut brittle, fudges, and all sorts of chocolate dips. In these days people ordered all kinds of strange names of drinks like a “___Green River” or a “Van Dyke,” so all kinds of cokes, cherry coke was very popular and milk chocolate, too. Of course, milkshakes, but sodas also, strawberry ice cream, soda extra good!

Cemetery Information Uncle Ogden & Aunt Laverne

2010-10-10T20:36:00.001-07:00

Bennight, Howard Ogden, b. 12/17/1910, d. 12/19/1992, US Navy, CHIEFMOTOR MACH MATE, Res: Westwood, CA, Plot: 1A 0 577, bur. 06/28/1995, [VA]Bennight, Laverne J, b. 06/04/1919, d. 04/06/1999, US Navy, CHIEFMOTOR MACH MATE, Res: Susanville, CA, Plot: 1A 0 577, bur. 08/27/1999, [VA]

Zina Loraine Bennight Pedigree Chart

2010-09-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

Descendants of George Bennight & Martha Frances

2010-09-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

Descendants of Tandy Kidd Cox

2010-09-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

Descendants of George Wesley Bennight

2010-09-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

Chehalis, Washington Flood 2007

2010-09-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog readers: Jeff Bennight is my brother. I decided to put his flood story up on my blog because it's a rather inspiring story of how to deal with adversity.

Why did you move here?

My story Chehalis River Flood of 2007

Written by: Jeff Bennight

During March of 2006 my wife Shereen and I found the home that we are currently living in while doing a search on the Internet.

Prior to that, since about July of 2003, Shereen and I had become more and more restless with where we lived and couldn’t shake the feeling that we needed to make a move. This was difficult for us because we had built our home in Orting on 3 raw acres and had put the finishing touches on it little by little to make it work for our family.

Off and on for 3 years we searched the Internet for a new place to live. When we saw this home we loved a lot of things about it. Just after seeing it on the Internet I remember saying to my wife, “I would move for a place like that!!”

So a couple of weeks later in March of 2006, we scheduled an appointment with the realtor to show us this home. We saw this home and several others that day. We liked this home, we thought it was a great house, but we were also concerned that it was too close to the Chehalis River and that it could potentially flood. I had lived in this area 14 years earlier and was very aware of the potential flood danger in the Chehalis valley. So we cooled off on it for several weeks; however, something kept drawing us back to look again at this place.

We set up another appointment with the realtor to come and see the place. We talked with the homeowner, Mary, about the flood danger. According her story, which we have no evidence to disbelieve, this home had never flooded in the 107 years of its existence. In the worst of floods the waters came around the home but never into the home.

We found another home up on Cousins road that we loved, but it was one bedroom too small for our family.

So Shereen and I prayed about it more, and we set up a third time to come and look at the two homes. After we thought about it more, we concluded that the Adna house would be the best fit for our family and us and we decided that regardless of our concerns this was the right place for us to move our family to.

So we made an offer on the home, and put our Orting house on the market. While waiting for a buyer for our home Shereen and I talked about how we intended to open our Adna home to the ward and community for any events that they wanted to hold there. Youth Firesides, choir practices and so forth. The Adna home is known my many in the community as the old Blakemore farmhouse. There is a huge plaque on a BIG maple tree in front of the house that has Jim Blakemore’s name on it for having saved the tree from being cut down back in 1964.

Well our home in Orting didn’t sell, and we were anxious to get moved to Adna before the school year began, so we decided to work out a different plan and rent our home in Orting and go ahead and close on this house in Adna.

Since living here we have fallen in love with the communities of Adna and Chehalis, as well as the quietness of our surroundings and the good people of our home ward and Stake. This past summer we had a huge family reunion here for Shereen’s side of the family.

We discovered a swimming hole where we cooled off during the hot days many times this past summer. We only had to walk about 200 feet over to the edge of the river, across the train trestle, down the rock pile and descend down a dirt trail about 30 feet in elevation to the river.

We also took our extended family boating at Mayfield Lake, and horseback riding in our back pasture.

We have enjoyed entertaining many people since moving here in August of 2006. While entertaining people and making new friends, I have been asked on a number of occasions what brought us to Adna, how did we find this place? Of course, we found it on the Internet, but as to why we moved here, I don’t know. But we sure have enjoyed the experience of living here. We feel at home here and we feel loved here.

On December 1^st 2007 our family went out in the cold wet snowy weather to pick out and cut down our Christmas tree at the Sandrini Christmas tree farm. My two littlest boys, Spencer and Joseph, and me drove the old blue pickup so we could carry the tree home in it, while the rest of the family followed us in the Suburban.

Once we picked out what was to be our Christmas tree of 2007, I cut it down with the chain saw and dragged it tree out to the road while the family went back to the suburban to warm up.

Once I got to the road, I walked back and got into the old blue truck and drove it down to where the tree laid on the side of the road. Shereen followed me down there in the Suburban, and she and I got out of our vehicles at the same time and ran over to where the tree lay. We picked it up and threw it into the back of our old blue pickup truck. We all got back in our vehicles, cranked up the heat and drove home.

Once we got home, I hopped out of the truck, grabbed the tree and put it on our front porch. I let it lay there for a while to dry off and then came back outside and measured the length to make sure I cut it right so it would fit in our house. I fired up the chain saw on the front porch and cut the end of the tree off.

We brought the tree into our house and set it up on the tree stand in the corner of the living room. Our son, Chris, who had just returned from his mission, was at work and wanted us to wait until he got home before we began to decorate the tree. So we went about our business the rest of the day waiting for his return.

I was interested in what the weather was going to be doing this weekend so around 5 that evening I turned on the news. The forecast was for more heavy snow above 1000 feet during the night, but then 2 subsequent weather systems were coming in off of the Pacific Ocean that were much warmer and much more powerful. The first of the two storms was to arrive early Sunday morning and the 2^nd was to arrive about 24 hours later, on Monday. They were forecasting several inches of rain from each of these two storms.

I have lived in Washington for over 30 years now, and I know that in our climate area cold snowy weather systems followed by warm, wet weather systems have in past winters equaled flooding. Where it would flood and to what degree it would flood, who could know? Even the weather forecasters don’t get it right a lot of the time, but when I see this combination in a weather forecast it always gives me a heads up.

As we got up Sunday morning and got ready for church, I looked outside and it was pouring rain - a very hard, incessant rainfall, and it didn’t let up throughout the day. We all got soaked going from the car into church, and then it was a mad dash back out to the car after church to try and avoid getting completely soaked again.

We stayed at home that evening and watched the Christmas Broadcast on the BYU channel at home. After the broadcast was over, we had our family home evening and reviewed our schedule for the week. After that we said our prayers and put the little ones to bed.

I remember that I picked up our church magazine, The Ensign, and read an article in the December issue written by Merrill J. Bateman called A Season for Angels. I remember being struck by this article. It made the point that during the beginning of each dispensation of time angelic ministers came from the other side of the veil to assist the Lord in his work, but as time elapses and the number of faithful members increase, more is expected of those in mortality. “May we rise to the occasion and minister to those in need in our day. May we be reminded of our promises to bear one another’s burdens, …to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places…and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that (we) may have eternal life.” He went on to write, “May we, as angels of mercy, minister to other families and to those in need in the ‘fullness of times’ so that the Lord’s work may move forward.” I remember pondering this point of Elder Bateman’s article for awhile, thinking about how we can actually become ministering angels to each other in times of need.

Later that evening I went out to the barn to feed to horses. They were all in their stalls trying to avoid the wet weather. The wind was blowing the rain sideways into the stalls, and they quickly became a muddy mess.

We went to bed at the normal time, but I remember throughout the night being woken by the noise of the water rushing through the gutter downspouts on the side of our house. It was apparent that during the night the rain was not letting up.

When I got up in the morning, the level of the river had risen 15-20 feet overnight and was now backing up under the rail trestle and filling up the field across the street from our home. We saw this happen last winter, and although it was concerning, the water never came across the road.

I decided that morning, due to the weather conditions and concerns about potential flooding, that I should stay at home and work instead of making my usual Monday morning trip to the office in Auburn. So over the phone I had my normal conference with the owners of the company. At about 10 am while I was speaking with the owners of the company, I looked out the window and saw that the floodwaters were now spilling across Bunker Creek Road (the road we live on). The water was filling up the drainage ditch and about to spill over our driveway. I told the owners I needed to cut it short because the flood conditions were getting worse and I had to go dig a ditch. Then I went outside to assess what was going on.

The approach to our driveway was under water, and the back pasture was filling up with water enough now that the horses’ stalls were flooding out as well. I quickly realized how pointless it would be to dig a drainage ditch with the water rising so fast.

I decided I needed to get our horses out of the barn and up to higher ground. I went over to the neighbors to ask Pat if he would mind if I let the horses out on to his hillside to get them to higher ground. He had no problem with it. He said in jest, “welcome to Adna, this is going to be a bad one.”

I rushed back to the barn and let the horses out the backside of our property. The muddy, ice-cold water was up to my knees back there at that time. The horses were very cooperative in following my lead up onto the hillside and they stayed up there for the duration of this flooding event.

About an hour after that I got a phone call from Vicki Guenther; who is Joanne Lasley’s visiting teacher. Sister Lasley is an elderly woman in our ward who lives about 3 miles up the road from us. Vicki said Joanne was stranded in her home and the waters were rising around her home. I told her I had no way of getting to Joanne because the waters were completely over the road now. I was saddened to get this call. Had I known of her situation, I could have gone a couple of hours ago and picked her up, but now it was too late. I worried about Joanne for the rest of the day and throughout the night, hoping someone was able to go and get her out of her home.

Around noon it was apparent that our vehicles were also in danger of being flooded. Shereen had the idea of trying to put the vehicles that sit lower up on blocks, but in my gut I knew that would not be the best idea. Even though it was risky, I told her to drive the suburban ahead of me through the flooded approach to our driveway and I would follow her in the Mustang. She hesitated at the thought a little, being a bit afraid of the Mustang not making it, and I again said: I have to do this now, or we will not get it out of here at all. I have a small chance now; if I wait any longer I will have no chance, so let’s go…

She relented and agreed to do as I asked. As we were walking out to the vehicles, I noticed that there was a crack developing in the road in front our house. The water pressure from under the road was causing a big bulge in the road and water was actually flowing out of the crack in the road. Shereen got into the suburban and as we agreed, she drove out first. I put a chain in the Suburban just in case we stalled trying to cross, so we could pull it out the rest of the way. I then followed her and approached the flooded entry in the Mustang and accelerated. The water splashed up and over the top of the Mustang, but I kept it going and made it across the flooded entry. I was so relieved… We took the car to the Adna school bus parking area up on a hill. We then went back and got the company vehicle and did the same thing, barely making it across the approach to our driveway.

When we got back home, maybe 20 minutes later, there were people lined up on Bunker Creek Road in big 4-wheel drive trucks, taking their turns driving through the flooded waters to pick up people further down the road who were stranded in their homes. We finally got through the backup and drove our Suburban for the last time back into our driveway and parked it beside our house, thinking it would probably be fine since it sits up a lot higher than the rest of our vehicles.

At about 1 pm I looked back towards the barn and noticed that our old blue pickup parked in its stall in the barn was now flooded up to the doors. I ran up stairs and got the keys to the truck. Put on my waders and went out to the truck. I climbed through the back sliding window and the water was up to the gas and brake pedals of the truck. The truck started right up, and I drove it out of the stall and parked it next to the suburban, thinking that it should be safer up there on higher ground.

The waters continued to rise by the hour. It was getting close to the top step of the carriage house behind us, which we rent out to a single lady, Janine Walker, and her 3 girls. Shereen decided we needed to help Janine by moving her stuff up the stairs to try and keep things out of harm’s way in her apartment.

Shereen went in and then quickly came back out and called for my help because there was so much stuff to move. I went in to help her and the two of us were grabbing whatever we could to get up off the floor and up the stairs as fast as we could. We got a lot of her stuff put into bags, but within 20 minutes the water was right at the door. Shereen didn’t have any boots on so I carried her on my back over to the back steps of our house.

As she went inside our house I saw that the water was now pouring over the outdoor entry to our basement. It was rushing in so fast we had little time to spare anything in the basement. Chris and I went down into the basement waters and moved boxes of books to the stairs that lead into the house while Shereen moved them the rest of the way into the house. We then took the frozen food out of the freezer and moved it all upstairs.

Chris and I decided to try and save the ping-pong table. We pushed it on its roller wheels over to the entry of the basement and with cold water spilling over our backs into the outside entry of the basement, tried to pull it out of the basement. It was useless; we could not move it against the power of the water pushing against us. The water was now waist deep in the basement and I told Chris to let the table go because I needed to go turn off the power to the house. He let go, and as I walked and pushed my way through the freezing water, I noticed that the hot water heater was floating and dangling by its pipes. For a moment, I considered trying to deal with it, but quickly regained my focus to turn off the power to the house. I went over to the breaker boxes, very aware of the electrical danger. The water was right up to the bottom of them as I carefully reached for the breaker switches and shut everything off.

I walked back over to the inside entrance of the basement and up the stairs, where I paused to catch my breath. Chris and I noticed that the water level was now high enough in the basement that it was no longer spilling over the entrance. So we went back into to the freezing water, now chest high, and grabbed the ping-pong table, which was floating around. We brought it over to the entrance of the basement, pulled it out of the water and carried it up to rest on the back steps of our home

I don’t know what it was about the stupid ping-pong table that made it worth all of that; I guess we were just determined not to be beat in some small way.

At this point the water was completely around our home. I went inside got dried off and took a hot bath. When I came downstairs at about 2 pm, I looked out the windows of our home and went over to the inside entry to the basement which sits about 3 feet lower than the main floor and saw that water was coming into the house in that lower area.

I told everyone that we needed to move our belongings upstairs. So immediately we were scurrying around the house moving the tables, chairs, bookshelves, cabinets, books, rugs, lamps, etc. We put the leather sofas on the their backs on top of the dining table, and stacked the chairs on top of the sofas.

While we were involved in moving everything upstairs we all kept glancing outside to see how high the water was getting. It continued to rise, and as it was up to the top steps of both the back porch and the front porch, we just finished moving the last few things upstairs. It took us about 90 minutes to get everything up except for one last thing, the big screen HDTV. I paused for a moment and took a mental note. I wondered why the last thing left to move upstairs was the TV. The TV… why was the TV the last priority?

As we finished moving the TV upstairs the water began seeping in through the floors of the home and under the doors. We had a fire going in our fireplace, so we decided to put it out before the waters came into the fireplace. We opened up the side window next to the fireplace and scooped out the burning embers and ashes and dumped them out of our side window into the water surrounding the house.

We then got our 72-hour packs out of the pantry, along with extra food, water, and our emergency wind up radio, and headed upstairs. A few minutes later I could hear the remaining hot ashes in the fireplace simmering as the waters flowed into the fireplace, sounding like it does when you dump water onto a campfire.

Looking out the upstairs windows of our home we could see that the water was halfway up the carriage house sliding glass doors, and three-quarters of the way up the side of the blue truck and the suburban. It was apparent that the vehicles were going to be damaged and probably totaled. Strangely enough, the brake lights came on in the suburban and the back wipers were going.

A few minutes later Shereen called me over to the back window in our bathroom to point something out to me. It was then that I realized that while we had made a valiant effort to salvage what we could in the house, everything we owned in the garage and barn was being destroyed by the floodwaters. She pointed outside towards the apple orchard and asked, “What is that in the water?” Caught up on the fence that surrounds the orchard I could see the tongue of my boat trailer bobbing up and down in the current. I told her it was our boat, and that it appeared to have sunk and turned over on its top.

It was then that I started kicking myself for not remembering that the plug was not in the boat because the last time we used it at the lake, as anyone normally does, I pulled it out to drain the lake water. So the boat sank in the floodwaters and was washed out the back of the barn. This was tough for me because I kept saying to myself had I only known that it was going to be this bad I could have moved the boat and the horse trailer. I kept going over this whole day time and again thinking of all the things I would have done differently if I had known had bad it was going to be.

I went up to the third floor to look out the window and further survey the situation and noticed a sheriff’s boat driving by our home on the waters over Bunker Creek Road with as many as 20 people in it that they had rescued. I caught the eye of an unknown woman in the boat and I waved at her to sort of offer my gratitude that she and the others had been rescued and she waved back at me.

For some reason while being caught up in this disastrous event it wasn’t until seeing this boat go by that it hit me what an epic level flooding disaster this had become. I had seen this sort of thing on TV in other parts of the world many times. However, I had never been in the middle of such a disaster in my entire life.

Now, right outside of my front window, there was a boatload of rescued people going down the street, which was now beneath 4-5 feet of water. We now had no way of leaving. Both of our vehicles sat there underwater and obviously inoperable, and my own boat sunk. I kept anguishing over why I didn’t think about putting the plug in the boat. Our family has had a lot of fun memories out on the lake in that boat.

We set up a kitchen area in our bathroom, lit up the oil lamps, cranked up the windup flashlights and hung out together on our bed for a while. Helicopters were flying over our home very 30-45 minutes with their spotlights. This did not cease throughout the entire night.

At about 6 pm we turned on the windup radio and tuned it in to the local AM station for a report on the conditions. They were calling for voluntary evacuations and warning that the floodwaters would not crest until 10 am the next morning. This caused me even more alarm and worry. The water was already on the first floor, and with what we had already seen so far throughout the day, how high would it get by 10 am the next morning?

I told Shereen I didn’t think we would be able to stay here, and that we may, too, have to evacuate. But she helped me calm down and reasoned with me that we would be better off here than being rescued by a boat or helicopter and having to stay in a shelter somewhere. So we gathered our children together, turned off the radio, and oddly enough my cell phone rang; it never works out at our house. It was Janine Walker wanting to know what the situation was at our place. It was hard for me to tell her that although we tried to save her belongings, the water was much higher than we ever expected and that most of her things on the first floor were now under water. She struggles to get by in life as it is, and it saddened me to have to be the bearer of bad news.

Since I had a little bit of a signal on my cell phone, I was able to call Jerry Guenther, the High Priests group leader in our ward and let him know our situation. I spoke with him briefly, only to lose my signal and drop the call. At least he knew where we were and that we were OK.

At about 7 pm Chris and our daughter, Marcia, went to their rooms for the night to go to bed. Andrew, our 16-year-old with Down syndrome, and our 2 youngest, Spencer and Joe, slept on the floor in our bedroom for the night.

Our daughter, Rachel who lives in Tacoma, was frantically trying to get a hold of us. I noticed that she left us a message on my cell phone. I tried to call her but the cell signal was not strong enough to talk. However, I did have enough of a signal that I could send and receive text messages. So I sent a text message to Rachel letting her know that we were at home and that we were safe. I also sent a text message to the owners of our company to let them know what our situation was, and they, too, were relieved to hear from me, but also had great concern for our situation.

I stayed awake the whole night. Whenever a helicopter flew over I would get up and go over to the stairs and check the water level in the house. At about 7 pm the water in the house was about 6 inches deep.

Shereen and I prayed with the boys in our room. While I was praying I became emotional as I prayed that Rachel and Shereen’s mom would be at peace knowing that we were OK.

Apparently that prayer didn’t work too well because the both of them were up all night calling each other and wondering what they could do to help us. No one but God could help us that night - the roads were covered in water and access to the area by car was impossible.

I remember saying to my wife as we lay there in our bed in the darkness, “What are we going to do honey? Are we going to have to move back to our home in Orting?” She comforted me, and replied, “Let’s not worry about it right now; let’s see what our situation is in the morning; we’ll take it a day at a time. If it turns out that we don’t have the money or the will to recover from this, then we can feel fortunate that we even have that as an option. Whatever it is that we end up doing, it will be OK.”

I went down to the stairwell with the flashlight and looked at the water level in the house again at about 8 pm. I noticed something that surprised me. The water had not risen since about 7 pm. I wondered how that could be. The forecast on the radio had said that the floodwaters would not crest until 10 am the next morning… The helicopters flew over again at about 9 pm., and I went back to look at the stairwell - the waters had not moved. I repeated this every time the helicopters flew over throughout the night and at about 1 am the water level in the house had actually gone down about 2 inches.

I began to pray to thank the Lord for sparing us any further damage and for sustaining us through this night of disaster.

I didn’t get up and look again until about 4 am. This time all of the water was gone from our first floor, but there was a layer of brown mud that smelled like the river. I was relieved but at the same time a bit puzzled at the differentiation between the forecasted timeframe of the floodwaters cresting and what actually transpired that night. I consider this to be a miracle because it appeared to me that the waters had actually crested 14 hours before their forecasted time, and that we were spared from any more damage than what had already taken place.

At 6 am Tuesday morning I remember shining the flashlight out of our bedroom window down to the parking area where the suburban and truck were parked. The floodwaters had actually receded back down to half way up the doors of the two vehicles, but I also noticed that the floodwaters had moved the suburban about 20 feet from where I had parked it the day before.

At about 8:00 am we gathered the small ones around (Chris and Marcia were still asleep in their rooms), said our prayers and ate breakfast. I noticed that the waters had receded enough that I could walk out to the front yard of our home, so I hunted around for my work boots, put them on and went downstairs, taking great care not to slip and fall on the slippery mud covering our first floor.

As I walked to the front door, I noticed that our Christmas tree had tipped over and was lying in the muddy, wet carpet. It must have floated at the base and tipped over.

I went outside onto the front porch - it had a layer of mud all over it. I walked down the front porch steps out onto the sidewalk and onto the grass, covered in mud. I looked around for a few minutes. I noticed that the entire backside of our barn/shed was blown out. There was nothing left of it. I then stopped and stood there looking at the destruction around our home and our neighbor’s home, and cried…After a few minutes I walked back into the house and back upstairs to the family and talked to Shereen about what I had just seen out there on our property. We were simply stunned by it all.

I sent a few more text messages to Rachel and to the owners of our company to let them know that we were OK, and that this would be the only way of communicating with us for a few more hours.

At about 10 am the waters had completely receded from around our vehicles and we could now walk down our street, Bunker Creek Road, towards town. Marcia and I took a walk to town to see what we could see.

We were amazed at the logs lying across the road, the washed out train trestle bridge we used to walk over to go down to our favorite swimming hole, the fences that were bent over, the houses that were pushed completely off of their foundations and smashed like toothpicks. There were cars parked and abandoned, and gravel from driveways swept up by the current of the floodwaters into a piles. Plastic outdoor toys were found all over town. Garbage cans, picnic tables and lawn furniture were strewn everywhere.

We ran into our neighbor, Mr. Duncan, who lives towards town from us. He said that the whole town evacuated last night and that his and ours were the only two families in town that stayed. Everyone else left yesterday.

I was just numb at the destruction that I had witnessed in our little community of Adna.

Marcia and I walked back to the house and went inside. The waters continued to recede. At about noon we had lunch in our bedroom. The boys were getting restless so I suggested to Shereen that she and I take the boys for a walk through town and maybe make a few calls, since our cell phones typically work down the street from our house.

We took a walk and I pointed out things to her along the way that I saw and she pointed things out to me that I hadn’t seen the first time. We found our boat and our horse trailer, both of which were overturned and sitting in deep water about 200 feet from where they were parked the day before.

I saw a few people starting to clean up, but I was too numb to even think about it that day.

Later that afternoon our friends from Church, Dan and Laurissa Maughn, stopped by to see how we were doing. The Stahl’s happened to pull in behind them to check on us as well. The flood had damaged all three of our homes and we consoled each other. I asked if they had heard about Sister Lasley, and if anyone was able to rescue her from her home. Dan let me know that she had been rescued from her home by helicopter and aside from being a bit bruised up from the evacuation she was fine.

A little while after that Bishop Henricksen showed up to check on us. He asked what provisions we might need at this point. We let him know that we had the food we needed, but that I had turned off our power because the breaker boxes were in the basement and I didn’t want them on while submerged in the floodwater; and that it appeared that all of my tools were gone and I would need some help the next day with cleanup. A little while later the Jacksons came by with a generator and some food for us. I put the generator to use to get the TV on so we could get some news, and charge our cell phones back up.

Watching TV just brought even more heaviness to my heart about the gravity of the situation in our community. I had no idea how big a story this was to the rest of our neighboring cities and even the nation.

Off and on throughout the day the scripture found in Luke chapter 21, verses 25-26 kept going through my mind. “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” The line in these verses, “Men’s hearts failing them for fear” was going through my mind over and over again, as I was certainly overwhelmed with the gravity of what had happened to the point that I felt I did not have the heart to face the consequences of this destruction.

At about 8 pm that evening the Bishop came back a second time to drop off a sump for our basement. I was much appreciative of his bringing this to us, and it was at this time I began to be encouraged that we would not be alone in trying to recover from this tragedy.

Since the waters had receded from our home, the outdoor phone box terminal was now out of the water, so I decided to try and plug our non-cordless phone into the phone jack to see if it would work. To our dismay, we got a dial tone. We checked our messages and there were over 20 that first day. Family members and friends had called to try and reach us to find out if we were OK.

We checked on these messages and called many of them back. We then found ourselves trying to comfort many of them, letting them know that we were OK and that we would start cleaning up tomorrow.

Many of them were not from this area and were hindered from coming to help us until the Interstate was reopened. At this point the authorities were saying it would reopen on Thursday night at the very soonest.

The Jacksons came over and offered to have Andrew, our son with Down syndrome, and our two youngest boys over to stay at their place for the night. The kids were very excited about it so we got everyone ready to go and sent the boys up to their place for the night. We then got settled in ourselves. I went outside and turned off the generator and went to sleep. I slept like a rock that night. I was comforted to know that so many people were already getting geared up to come and help us recover from this disaster.

Feelings of helplessness, vulnerability, failing to protect my family from danger were creeping into my thoughts. I felt that I had put my family into this position by buying a home so close to the river. I knew better than this from having lived in this area before.

At the same time, though, I was reminded of the feelings of assurance we had when we decided to move forward with purchasing this home. We had felt that this was the right home for us and had felt that assurance many times since moving here. So I began to return my trust in God that he would help us get through this day by day, and that somehow we would overcome the daunting task of cleanup.

The next morning I got up before the rest of the family and went outside. I looked around at our property - the boat upside down in the back pasture, the horse trailer out there, too, on its side. I also spotted the riding lawn mower’s wheels, as it was upside down in the back pasture. I saw my sons’ toy 4-wheeler stuck in the top of the pear tree, and as I stood there I cried again in disbelief at what had happened. I still felt shell-shocked by all the destruction and the danger we had been in the night of the flood. I just didn’t know how we could ever recover from this, and worried that if we ever did recover and put it all back together, it might just happen all over again. I was feeling frustrated and a bit foolish for buying a home so close to the river.

Once again, I somehow got over my self-pity quickly, as I felt assurance in my soul that moving here was the right thing to do.

I went back inside. We decided to call the garbage company to order a big dumpster so we would have a place for all the debris we were about to accumulate. I started up the generator, plugged in the sump pump to pump out the basement water and got that going. Mariah Shupe, Jon Jakoubek, Richard Larsen and one of their friends came with brooms in hand ready to get to work. Shereen and I had talked the night before about how we were going to tackle this cleanup effort, where we would begin and how we would make it work.

We started by cleaning out the family room first, but pushing mud with brooms was not working very well. I just happened to still have a squeegee in the basement and although it was full of water, one of the boys put on my waders and went down into the cold muddy water and found the squeegee that I had left down there the day before.

Once he got this out, the work went a lot faster. We pushed the mud out the front door of the house and out of the hallway on the main floor right out the front door. Once we got the mud out of that area of the home we moved the piano, which we had wrapped in blankets the day before, into the family room.

We then pulled up the carpet out of the living room. I had to cut it into small sections so we could lift it. It was very heavy even at that. Once we got all the carpet pulled up we moved all of the furniture that we had stacked on the dining room table, and once we got that room cleared out we started pushing the mud out of the dining room.

We pushed this mud out of the back door of the house onto the back porch steps. Then we pushed the mud out of the kitchen out the back door as well. We moved the ping-pong table that Chris and I had rescued off of the back porch and sat it on the sidewalk.

Once we had moved most of the mud out of the house, I got the idea that since we had no water for the pressure washer, I could use the water that was being generated from the sump pump pumping out the basement to wash the mud off of the front porch, the back porch, as well as the sidewalks. We repositioned the pump so that we could reach the front porch, turned it on and it worked beautifully. We had the mud off the porches and sidewalks within an hour.

Sister Jakoubek came and brought us all soup for lunch. That hit the spot. Brother Jackson brought over some plumbing supplies. I have a wellhead that we had just drilled a couple of months before the flood. It had the pump in it, but we needed to hook it up to a power source and then plumb it so a garden hose could be hooked to it. If we could accomplish this, we could use our pressure washer to clean up. Brother Jackson brought me some fittings for this project, but we were in need of plumbing glue. As Brother Jackson left to get some glue, he noticed a plumber working across the street from our house, and asked him if he wouldn’t mind coming over to our place to hook up the hose. He agreed to do that for us and within minutes we had the hose hooked up. I then wired the pump into the generator and started it up and we had water coming out of the wellhead.

I let it run for about an hour to let it clear up. Once it was cleared up, we ran a garden hose to the pressure washer and began washing the mud off of our stuff outside.

The youth that were there went into the carriage house, our small rental behind us, and began pulling out all of the clothes, furniture, appliances, carpeting and kitchen cabinets that were full of mud. Two days before when Shereen and I had tried to rescue our tenant’s belongings, we hoped that we had done some good, but we found that our efforts didn’t do much good at all, as everything was destroyed. The youth pressure washed the mud out of the carriage house as best they could, and that was about the end of the first day of cleanup.

The Jacksons invited us up to their home to shower and have a nice hot meal. We accepted their invitation. They fed us well and we were able to be with our boys for a while. They were doing just fine. We decided to let them stay one more night since we had no power or water at the house just yet.

Shereen and I and Marcia spent that night alone in our house. It was cold and dark because there was no power. The house smelled like river mud even though we had gotten most of it off of the floors.

We checked our messages again. There were another 20 messages on our voice mail, many of our friends and family calling concerned about our situation and wanting to know what they could do to help.

The next morning Shereen and I got up and had our breakfast. It was very odd for me that morning. I am usually a person that wakes up and is ready to get going and get started. I found that I was still overwhelmed with the mess and the destruction of our property and the work ahead of us. I went outside looked around. I looked up at our horses on the hillside behind us. Two of them were limping around with sore hooves. There was still too much water around our place to bring them down to our property. The fences around the pasture were full of debris and pushed over on their sides. We had no choice but to keep them up there on the hillside.

We had no hay for them because the hay that was in our barn had floated away. Not a single bale was left. We called our neighbor, Margaret, and she happily agreed to feed them hay out of their barn until we could get more hay for them.

I went outside again and looked around and I cried again over the gravity of our situation. I found that I had no heart for this; I had no will to do anything. I was emotionally stuck in the mud, and couldn’t think of where to start and what to do next.

A few minutes later a vehicle pulled into our driveway, and then another pulled in and then another. People were stopping in to find out what they could do to help.

I pulled myself together and started naming off all the things that needed to happen. They all got busy and started working while I walked around in amazement at their initiative and willingness to just jump in and get to work on this mess. I found myself being more of the project manager than a worker. They wouldn’t let me lift a finger - they just wanted to know what to do next, and next and next. My spirits were lifted and I was encouraged by their willingness to help us.

From this point forward I can’t remember very clearly what happened day by day. However, I will try by best to recount what happened and the many people who came to help.

Before I recount the people that came, I must say that every day for the next two weeks my day started off the same - very overwhelmed, no heart to do anything - and then people came and went to work and got me going on getting cleaned up. I was truly experiencing the sign of the times in my own heart that is described in the scriptures when men’s hearts will fail them for fear.

3,000 volunteers from around the area, including full-time missionaries, were sent to our area on Friday and Saturday to help with the cleanup. The Church set up our stake center as a command center and then sent people out from there to go and find people to help.

I remember our son, Dustin, called and was concerned so he took a flight on an Air Force plane to Spokane, and then got a ride from his cousin Melissa over to our area to come and help us. A few days later he finally made it down here with another one of his cousins.

I remember our daughter, Rachel, and my mother-in-law, Vivian, feeling frustrated that they couldn’t get here right away because the freeways were closed for four days following the flood. Once the freeways were opened they were finally able to get here and began helping with the cleanup.

My brother, Mike, and his wife, Cindy, as well as their son, Zachary, all came on the Saturday following the flood to help. They all jumped right in to do whatever they could.

I also remember that first weekend 3 different parties bringing us a load of wood. We were so appreciative of their generosity to us. Many of them traveled from several miles away because they heard through the grapevine that we had lost our firewood.

I remember the owners and people I work with at IBS, Inc putting together a work party for Sunday and Monday and their coming down here to help us clean up. We got a lot of work done while they were here. We got the fences around the pasture upright and stood up again. We brought the horses down to our property. We took the siding off of the carriage house about 6 feet up. There was a lot of mud under the siding. Also this was the first time we attempted to go out to my boat, which was still submerged in the floodwaters, and try to flip it over. My idea was to try and get it flipped over while it was in the water so that I could then float it back onto the trailer. It was pointless. The water was bone-aching cold and the boat was too heavy for us to budge it. I decided that I would need a tow truck to come and take care of this issue.

Ken Smith (bishop) and his son of the Winlock Ward showed up one day. After he arrived he told me he had been at the stake center waiting for an assignment when the Bennight’s name came up as needing help. He said, “I heard your name and raised my hand to go there because your Dad was my wife, Julie’s, bishop when she was a teenager in the Atwater California Ward. She always had fond memories of your dad and your family, so I felt that I needed to come and help you today.” His wife’s maiden name is Garvin. The Garvins were good friends of our family for many years when we lived in California. I was amazed, and grateful that he came to our house to help. Ken also happens to be the mayor of Vader, WA.

I remember the founder of IBS, Inc., Jack Butcher, coming to help. He had no hesitation to get right into the thick of it. We had all of these people working like honeybees in yellow shirts. The yellow tee shirts said “Mormon helping hands.” I observed that the people in the yellow shirts were often speaking to Jack as if he was a member of the Mormon Church. I just wondered how long it would be before he let them know that he was not Mormon. Jack, being an Episcopalian, came out of the basement covered in mud and said, “Hey Jeff, I feel like I need to go get my own tee shirt and put on it ‘Have you hugged an Episcopalian today?’” We laughed while the others overheard and I think it finally connected with them that he was not a member of our Church. Before Jack left for the day he came into the kitchen and said he was going to write me a check. He stated an amount he was about to write it for and I was speechless by his generosity. He told me that I could pay him back whenever I was able, not to worry about it, that he just wanted to help us out. I took his check and put it in my drawer; I have it there just in case we needed it. So far, due to the immense generosity and help from FEMA, we have not needed it enough to cash the check.

I remember a group of women from Duvall, one of them a daughter of our Bishop. Her name was Andrea, and she and her friends all came down to help. When they arrived I hadn’t ever met them before, but they walked right up to me and said, “We are all a bunch of farm girls. We are not afraid of getting dirty. Just tell us what you need done and we will do it.” I thought to myself OK girls, let’s see how willing you are, so I pointed them to the carriage house and asked them to go in there with hammers and start ripping out the sheetrock and the insulation out of the walls. To my amazement they did it for several hours. No hesitation and they got it all out. I was very impressed and grateful for their help.

Angela Barrus of North Bend Washington has been Shereen’s friend for years. They grew up together in Kelowna, BC. She came with her family and friends to help and was so affected by what she saw, she organized a work party to come again two more times, not only to help us, but also to help many others in the community.

Everything we owned in the barn was underwater or had floated away - all of my tools in the garage, hand tools, riding mower, generator, pressure washer, weed eaters, cabinets, everything. The 3 cords of wood that we had cut from a pine tree that fell last winter had floated away, not a stick of it left. The hay we had put up for the horses for the winter, gone. The stalls that I had built in the barn for the horses, wiped out. All of the metal siding around the barn had been ripped off by the waters.

In our basement the insulation had to be removed and carried out. The breaker boxes were completely submerged, but with the help of Tom Lund we got them up and running again 3 days later. The furnace had been completely submerged in water and it was not likely we would be able to get it running again.

Once we got power going again, we were able to fire up the upstairs furnace and heat the 2^nd and 3^rd floors of our home.

My sister, Connie, and her husband, Tolly, from Woodville, Texas called and were very concerned about our welfare. Connie called back the next day and told me that they had sent us money to help us with cleanup. I was so overcome with gratitude that I was not able to speak much when she told me this. Shereen and I were humbled by their generosity to us.

I remember Tuesday the 11^th of December well. Nobody came. I was depressed, discouraged, frustrated over the mess and still didn’t have the heart to work without having someone there to stand by my side and help me. This day made me keenly aware that I needed helping hands to get me going.

However, that was the only day during the 2½ weeks of cleanup that nobody came to help us. My nephew, Kevin, and his friend, Rick, came the next day.

Kevin House, my nephew, called about a week after the flood. He had just returned from a vacation to Hawaii. He had heard about the flood and was concerned about our situation. He and a friend of his by the name of Rick, and my son Dustin, came down a couple of days later and began to help us in the carriage house. We found a lot of dry rot in the carriage house. It seemed that whatever we touched created more work. However, we did get a lot done that day.

Also that day, we had a surprise visit from 2 men from Gig Harbor that we had never met before. I can’t remember their names, but one of the men said that he was a woodworker and that several years ago when a branch of our huge maple tree out front broke off, he was able to get some of that wood and use it. He always remembered the place and the tree, and when he heard that Adna was hit so hard by the flood, he felt they should come and help.

So we obliged them to help and they jumped in and went to work that day, too. When he was about to leave, he said, “If you ever want to get rid of that tree, make sure you call me first.” I have since wondered whether their motive to come and help us was purely based on wanting to help or if they had other agendas as well. Whichever it is, I do appreciate them coming by.

The outpouring of helping hands and generosity was overwhelming. Every day for the following 3 weeks people stopped by with either food, gift cards, money, or their time to help us deal with this tragic disaster.

For two weeks following the flood we were not able to completely pump out all of the water. The groundwater was so high that it continued to flow in through cracks in the concrete on the basement floor. After a couple weeks I went outside and looked into the basement and saw that the water was now gone, leaving about 3-5 inches of sloppy brown mud. I had an idea to call a septic company and ask them if they would be willing to pump out the mud from our basement. One company did not want to do it, but another called me back and said they would be there the next day to take care of it. This turned out to be a great idea. It took a couple of hours of our pushing the mud with brooms and squeegees toward the opening of the basement while the pump truck sucked out the mud. When we were done he said that he had pumped out 400 gallons. This saved us from hours of heavy labor.

Later that day a tow truck finally came to assist me in retrieving our boat and horse trailer from the pasture. The boat and horse trailer were still surrounded by water, and because there was not good access to that spot, it was questionable if they could be reached with the cables.

The tow truck parked in the neighbor’s driveway, as I had previously arranged, and we barely pieced enough cable and chain to reach the boat. It took several hours of maneuvering and pulling the boat before we were able to get the right hold on it and flip it over. It was a complete mess. It was obvious to me that it would be a total loss. We got it pulled out of the water and over to the driveway where I hooked it up to the trailer and towed it back to our house. We then did the same thing with our horse trailer. It was on its side and had a few dents in it, but was still usable.

After they left, the tow company came from COPART to haul off our suburban. It was a complete loss. It was completely full of mud, no way of ever repairing it. This was a pretty heavy day for me to see, again, all of the personal property that was lost.

I called Eric Knight that evening. He works in the heating and air conditioning business and I wanted to have his assessment of our basement furnace. He came over within the hour and looked it over. He was not very optimistic, but he cleaned it out and we gave it a try. To our dismay, the blower fan started right up. He shut it off and instructed me on what to do to clean it out more. Then he came back a few days later and we fire up the blower fan and it ran perfectly. It took a few more trips and I needed to get the heating ducts replaced, but to our surprise, the furnace was working. I believe that if I had not turned off the power when the water was rising in the basement, both our water heater and furnace would have been total losses.

After a couple of weeks of being entrenched in this mess, I finally got enough of my will back to go back to work at IBS, Inc for a couple of days. It was a much needed break, and good to see everyone at the office again. While I was still a bit overwhelmed with it all, I was glad to get away from the mess and think about something else.

On the fourth week following the flood I ordered gravel to be brought in to cover our driveway again and cut down on tracking all the mud into our house. The truck came and dropped off the gravel the very next day. I asked my friend, Dan Maughn, if I could use his bobcat to spread the gravel. He has very happy to lend it to me. He even drove it over from his place to mine at a top speed of 5 mph. While I was in the pasture tending to my horse’s sore hoof, Dan pulled into our driveway in his bobcat. Also right behind him was a small pickup truck with two men it. One of the men got out of the truck and I recognized him immediately. He was a bit puzzled when he saw me, thinking that I must be there helping clean up too. His name is Chuck Hansen. Chuck and I have known each other for about 20 years. He served in the stake presidency of the stake that we use to live in before we moved to Adna. However, we were never in the same ward and he had no idea that we had moved from our previous stake.

When we greeted each other he was dismayed to learn that I was not a volunteer helping, but that I and my family lived here. We were both puzzled about how it was that he happened to show up here at my house.

Chuck shared with me that during their Sunday meetings previous to this day they had been told that there was now a need for skilled labor and that volunteers were needed. So Chuck and Mike, being skilled carpenters, volunteered to come down to our area to help. They were actually called the day before they were to come down and told not to come, I believe because many of us were still trying to dry out our flooded buildings and it was not quite time yet to begin reconstructing. Chuck and Mike felt that they should come down to our area anyway, so on their own volition they drove down to this area. While driving around the area looking for a place where they might be able to help, they saw a man driving a bobcat down Bunker Creek Road. They decided to follow him and see where he was going and maybe there would be someone there that could use their help. So they followed him into our driveway.

This was no accident, this was no coincidence; God had inspired Chuck and Mike to come to our home at the right time to offer their assistance in rebuilding. Chuck and Mike have been back several times, and due to the circumstances of finding us, Chuck Hansen has taken it on as his duty to help us finish reconstruction of the carriage house.

The article that I had read about angels only the day before the flood was starting to come back to me.

I wanted to read the article again. I was preoccupied with the message of the article, because I felt that Shereen and I and our family had been blessed so much by all of the helping hands of our friends, community and ward members. I started to think of them as ministering angels that came to stand by our sides to help us rise above this disaster. I couldn’t find the Ensign for several days, until I did finally find it in my church briefcase. I forgot I had used it to teach a lesson the Sunday before the flood. I read the article, and when I got to the end of it tears welled up in my eyes.

I knew that the Lord had heard our prayers in our time of need, and while I don’t believe that God necessarily caused this flood to happen, I do believe that he was there to support me in my time of need. As it has been said before, I have truly come to know God better through all of the adversities of my life.

In Malachi there is a verse of scripture that speaks of paying tithes and offerings. In this verse the Lord challenges us to have faith in him by saying, “prove me now herewith sayeth the Lord of hosts if I will not pour out a blessing upon you that you will not have room enough to receive it.”

The Lord was truly pouring out blessings upon our family during this period of time. The generosity of his people who came was overwhelming and overflowing. We literally did not have room for all of the food, Christmas presents, tools and gifts that these angels of mercy brought to us during this time. We turned many of the givers away to go and find some other family in need that may have been overlooked.

I have never seen angels from the other side or had any miraculous visions; but I truly believe to the very depths of my soul that I have been ministered to by the angels who walk on this earth, men and women of all walks of life that I have spoken to, hugged and shook hands with, in deep gratitude for their help. I will forever be grateful for all of these ministering angels that my family and I have been surrounded by during our time of need.

It was due to the charity of these angels that I began to get my heart back; my will to keep going. It was about this time that I stopped being a flood victim and started gaining back my initiative to overcome this disaster. Yes it is true that we were affected by the flood, but we are no longer “flood victims” thanks to the ministering angels that God sent to help us. We are engaged in the recovery work on our own now. It is very humbling to know that I could not have overcome this on my own. I needed the helping hands of these ministering angels to carry me through this disaster.

If the answer to the question, “Why did you move here?” is provided now by this event and the things we have experienced since it happened, it has been worth every minute of it. My heart and my life have been forever impacted by its memory.

Popular Bennight First Names

2010-08-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

So far in my software program, Legacy, I have:

Five George Bennights
George Bennight, b. Abt 1838
George William Bennight, b. Abt 1865
George Bennight, b. Abt 1870
George Bennight, b. Abt 1875
George Bennight Jr., b. Abt. 1918

Three James Bennights
James I. Bennight, b. 1830
James J. Bennight, b. 1861
James Donald Bennight, b. 1929

Two Jerome Bennights
Jerome Bennight, b. Abt 1830
Jerome Bennight, b. 1900

Three John Bennights
John W. Bennight, b. 1826
John A. Bennight, b. 1858
John Wesley Bennight, b. 1950

Two Joe's and Seven Joseph Bennights
Joe B. Bennight, b. Abt 1833
Joe Bennight, b. Abt 1874
Joseph Bennight, b. Abt 1831
Joseph Bennight, b. 1833
Joseph Bennight, b. 1839
Joseph Everette Bennight, b. 1879
Joseph L. Bennight, b. 1890
Joseph Bennight, b. Abt 1900
Joseph Bennight, b. Abt 2003

Four Mary Bennights
Mary A. Bennight, b. Abt 1835
Mary Bennight, b. Abt 1854
Mary Bennight, b. 1893
MaryDean Ivy Bennight, b. 1927

Two Robert Bennights
Two Samuel Bennights
Two Sarah Bennights
Two Wesley Bennights
(I'm getting tired)

Nine William Bennights (and one Willie)
William Bennight, b. Abt 1795
William Miller Bennight, b. 1842
William Bennight, b. Abt 1860
William Bennight, b. Abt 1864
William Miller Bennight, Jr., b. Abt 1888
William H. Bennight, b. 1891
William Wesley Bennight, b. 1891
William Bennight, b. 1894
William Bennight, b. 1907
Willie Bennight, b. 1918

Dawes Roll - Choctaw Bennights

2010-08-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

This is a long post. It was copied from an online transcription of a book called "Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma." I thought it was worth reading all the legal mumbojumbo. My own relatives have claimed Cherokee blood through Mary Melvina Tyree. I have researched this and found numerous Tyrees listed among the Choctaw (I'm still trying to find her name specifically), but none under Cherokee.

Class 5

In the following cases rejected by the citizenship court, the testimony of claimants before the United States courts stand uncontradicted, and the finding of the United States court in favor of claimants should be confirmed by congress.

James C. Johnson Et Al.
Dawes Commission. No. 1026. United States court, No. 62. Citizenship court, No. 39.
Consolidated with
James J. Bennight Et Al.
Dawes Commission. No. 916. United States court, No. 62. Citizenship court, No. 39.

September 7, 1896. Application submitted by James J. Bennight for the enrollment of himself and 30 other persons as members of the Choctaw Nation by blood, adoption, or intermarriage.

September 9, 1896. Application submitted to the commission for the enrollment of James C. Johnson and 23 others, 21 of whom claim their right to enrollment as citizens of the Choctaw Nation by blood and 3 by intermarriage.

Claimants in both applications claim through the same common ancestor.

The record shows: The leading claimants allege that they are the grandchildren of the Choctaw chief Mushalatubbee, a full-blood, and children of Rebecca Williams, nee Mushalatubbee, a three-fourths Choctaw Indian woman. Chief Mushalatubbee and his daughter, Isabel moved to the Choctaw Nation. Ind. T., in 1831. The descent of the claimants from said ancestry is conclusively shown, many of claimants being three-sixteenths Choctaw blood. It is alleged that in 1892 some of the claimants applied to the Choctaw council, through their attorney. J. S. Mullen, for enrollment. Before the Choctaw council would consider the application the payment of a fee of $700 was exacted. Claimants being unable to raise the money, could not secure action on their application. The following year the same claimants returned to the Choctaw council personally, and sought admission. This time the council broke up in a drunken brawl, and no action was taken. Among the witnesses who testify as to the blood and descent of the claimants are two of the oldest and best known citizens of the Choctaw Nation. One of the witnesses was a member of the Choctaw senate in 1890. The record is clear that claimants are of Choctaw Indian blood and have been recognized as members of the Choctaw Tribe.

December 4 and 5. 1896. The commission rendered decisions in both cases in words and figures as follows: "Application denied."

From the above decisions appeals were taken to the United States court, central district. Indian Territory. Additional testimony was taken, many witnesses appearing and testifying.

September 11, 1897. The master in chancery filed his report in the case, which was as follows:

In the United States court in the Indian Territory, central district, at South McAlester, James J. Bennight et al., plaintiffs, v. The Choctaw Nation, defendant.

Report of master in chancery

This cause was duly filed before the Dawes Commission September 7, 1896, the plaintiffs claiming citizenship as Choctaw Indians by blood. The defendant answered or pleaded, denying the jurisdiction and authority of the Dawes Commission to hear and determine the cause, and denying the legality of the rules and procedure of the Dawes Commission, and denying that the evidence adduced in the case is sufficient to establish plaintiffs' claim to citizenship.

The Dawes Commission gave judgment for defendant December 4, 1896, from which the plaintiffs duly appealed.

I find from the evidence that applicants Susan Bennight, Sarah Brogdon, and Mary Vandgriff are each three-sixteenths blood Choctaw Indians; that they and sill of their descendants whose names are set out in this cases are residents of the Choctaw Nation. Ind. T., but the evidence does not show how long they have been here, except R. S. Bennight, three thirty-seconds Choctaw. The evidence shows that he and his children have been living in the Choctaw Nation about four years: that none of the intermarried white men applicants of this branch fit the case were married according to the Choctaw law. I find that the applicant James C. Johnston moved here to the Choctaw Nation from the State of Mississippi 38 years ago: that he is a three-sixteenths Choctaw Indian: that he lived 10 or 12 years of this 38 years in the State of Arkansas, but that he and all his descendants whose names are set out in this case have lived continuously in the Choctaw Nation since 1884: that his descendants (except those born here) were all minors when they were moved back here by their parents in 1884. I find that Laura C. McKinly is a three-sixteenths Choctaw and that she and her family were born and raised and have always lived here in the Choctaw Nation. I find that Lena A. Williams and brother, Samuel C. Williams, are three-sixteenths Choctaw Indians, and were born and raised and have always lived in the Choctaw Nation.

Respectfully submitted this ____ day of August 1897.

W. B. Rutherford.

Special Master in Chancery.

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September 11, 1897. A decree was entered admitting the following persons to citizenship in the Choctaw Nation: Richard S. Benight, Luther Benight, Winn Benight, Dora Jeff Benight, Sarah D. Brogdon, Wesley H. Brogdon, Jodie J. Brogdon, Allamenta Brogdon, Ruby Brogdon, Hazy Ann F. Vandergriff. Amanda I. Vandergriff, James M. Vandergriff, William P. Vandergriff, Emma L. Vandergriff, Annie C. Vandergriff, Davey D. Vandergriff, Sarah McClarty, Elton E. McClarty, Burr McClarty, James C. Johnson, S. Ann Stonecipher, James B. Stonecipher, Essie May Stonecipher, Bessie Berthan Stonecipher, Roscoe Stonecipher, Dortus Parish, Nellie T. Parish, Milus Johnson, Atrus Johnson, Alvin Johnson, William C. Johnson, Jessie B. Johnson, Escoe Johnson, Addie May Johnson, Laura C. McKinly, Samuel M. McKinly, Josephine C. McKinly, John Leo McKinly, Lena A. Williams, Samuel C. Williams, all by blood, and Annie Benight and Delila Johnson as intermarried citizens. (Certified copy hereto attached, marked "Exhibit A.")

October 24. 1898. Case appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and judgment of the United States court. Indian Territory, affirmed. (Reported in 174 U. S. in the consolidated case of Stephens v. Cherokee Nation.)

December 17, 1902. Judgment of the United States court vacated by decree of the citizenship court in test case.

March 9, 1903. Record before United States court transmitted to citizenship court.

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Counsel for claimants offered in evidence the record before the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes in 1896 and the record before the United States court. This evidence was rejected by the citizenship court, the opinion stating:

The evidence submitted to the commission were certain exparte affidavits taken after the l0th day of June 1896, and the parties then making them are not shown to have been dead or beyond the jurisdiction of said commissioners when said exparte affidavits were taken and offered In evidence. Before the United States court below they were also offered, as well as certain depositions taken in 1897 for the purpose of being so offered as evidence, and they were so offered.

It Is plain, therefore, that none of them are competent evidence before us.

The court, in its opinion, refers to additional evidence taken before that court by the claimants, but the record fails to disclose such testimony.

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April 18, 1904. Decree entered denying all claimants enrollment as citizens of the Choctaw Nation.

Counsel for claimants respectfully submit that each of the persons admitted by judgment of the United States court is entitled to enrollment. They are as follows: Richard S. Benight. Luther Benight. Winn Benight, Dora Jeff Benight, Sarah D. Brogdon. Wesley H. Brogdon. Jodie J. Brogdon. Allamenta Brogdon, Ruby Brogdon. Hazy Ann F. Vandergriff. Amanda I. Vandergriff. James M. Vandergriff. William P. Vandergriff. Emma L. Vandergriff, Annie C. Vandergriff, Davey D. Vandergriff, Sarah McClarty. James C. Johnson, Elton E. McClarty, Burr McClarty: James C. McClarty, S. Ann Stonecipher, James B. Stonecipher, Essie May Stonecipher, Bessie Berthan Stonecipher, Roscoe Stonecipher, Dortus Parish, Nellie T. Parish, Milus Johnson, Atrus Johnson, Alvin Johnson, William C. Johnson, Jessie B. Johnson, Escoe Johnson, Addie May Johnson, Laura C. McKinly, Samuel M. McKinly, Josephine C. McKinly, John Leo McKinly, Lena A. Williams, Samuel C. Williams, Annie Benight, and Delila Johnson.

Also the following minor children, for whose enrollment application was made within the time required by law:

May 24, 1900. Teenie M. Bennight, child of Richard S. Bennight.
January 17, 1902. Hildreth Vandergrif.
June 1, 1906. Carl R. Vandergrif, children of William P. Vandergrif.
June 11, 1906. Rorena Vandergrif, child of James M. Vandergrif.
June 18, 1906. Annie Myrtle Manly, child of Emma L. Vandergrif, now Manly.
February 17, 1902. Kully Brake.
May 12, 1906. Marvin T. Brake, children of Amanda I. Brake.
October 8, 1900. Ida Bolin McLarty.
July 12, 1906. Nancy F. McLarty, Thursey McLarty, children of Sarah McLarty.
June 7, 1900. L. C. Stonecipher.
February 21, 1902. Oto Stonecipher, children of Samantha A. Stonecipher.
August 9, 1899. Nannie E. Parish.
August 27, 1901. Ethel May Parish, children of Dorthus (Dortus) Parish.
August 9, 1809. Fannie L. Johnson,
February 11, 1902. Eulalie Johnson, children of Milus Johnson.
August 9, 1899. Amma D. Thomas.
January 9, 1902. Edna Lee Thomas, children of Artus Thompson.
January 9, 1902. Virgie Benton Johnson, child of Alvin Johnson.
June 1, 1899. Agnes Messersmith.
April 26, 1902. Robert Jackson Vanderslice, children of Laura C. Vanderslice, formerly McKinley.
June 1, 1899. Addie May Johnson, child of James C. Johnson.
Exhibit attached.

Respectfully submitted.

Ballinger & Lee and W. S. Field

Copy Of Order Of Court
United States Of America.
Indian Territory, central district, ss:

In the United States court in the Indian Territory, central district, at a term thereof begun and held at South McAlester, in the Indian Territory, on the 11th day of September. A. D. 1897.

Present: The Hon. William H. H. Clayton, judge of said court.

The following order was made and entered of record, to wit:

Jas. J. Bennight et al. v. Choctaw Nation. No. 62. Judgment.

Be it remembered that on this 11th day of September 1897, it being one of the days of the regular April. A. D. 1897, term of this court, came on for hearing the matter of the petition of James J. Bennight et al., for enrollment as members of the Choctaw Tribe of Indians, both the petitioners and the Choctaw Nation appearing by their respective attorneys and announce ready for trial And the court having heard the testimony and the argument of counsel, and being well and fully advised in the premises doth find that the petitioners, Richard S. Bennight, Luther Bennight, Winn Bennight, Dora Jeff Bennight, Sarah D. Brogdon, Wesley H. Brogdon, Jodie J. Brogdon, Allamenta Brogdon, Ruby Brogdon, Hazy Ann F. Vandergriff, Amanda I. Vandergriff, James M. Vandergriff, William P. Vandergriff, Emma L. Vandergriff, Annie C. Vandergriff, Davey D. Vandergriff, Sarah McClarty, Elton E. McClarty, Burr McClarton, James C. Johnson, S. Ann Stonecipher, James B. Stonecipher, Essie May Stonecipher, Bessie Bertha Stonecipher, Roscoe Stonecipher, Dortus Parish, Nellie T. Parish, Milus Johnson, Atrus Johnson, Alvin Johnson, William C. Johnson, Jessie B. Johnson, Escoe Johnson, Addle May Johnson, Laura C. McKinly. Samuel M. McKinly, Josephine C. McKinly, John Leo McKinly, Lena A. Williams, Samuel C. Williams, are Choctaw Indians by blood, and that the petitioners Annie Bennight and Delila Johnson are white persons married according to the Choctaw laws; and that all of the above-named applicants are citizens of the Choctaw Nation and are entitled to all the rights, privileges, immunities, and benefits and be enrolled as such citizens and doth therefore reverse the judgment of the Dawes Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, and doth order and adjudge that the names of the said applicants be so enrolled. And the clerk of this court is hereby ordered and directed to send a certified copy of this judgment to the aforesaid commission, and the same shall be a mandate to the said commission to place the names of the aforesaid applicants upon the proper roll already made or to be made of the Choctaw Tribe of Indians. And it is ordered and adjudged that the aforesaid applicants have mid recover of the Choctaw Nation all their costs in their behalf expended, for which let execution issue.

The court doth further find that Susan S. Bennight. Jesse D. Bennight, Millard Bennight, and Eva G. Bennight are Choctaw Indians by blood, but that they were not residents of the Choctaw Nation at the time of the institution of this suit, and their application is therefore denied. The court doth further find that James J. Bennight, William Vandergriff, Harvey E. McClarty, James M. Brogdon, R. B. Stonecipher and Robert T. Parish are white persons and not married according to the laws of the Choctaw Nation, and their application is therefore denied, and the judgment of the aforesaid commission is hereby affirmed. It is further ordered and adjudged that the Choctaw Nation have and recover from the last named applicants all its costs in this behalf laid out and expended, for which let execution issue.

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United States Of America,
Indian Territory, central district. ss:

I, E. J. Fannin, clerk of the district court of the United Slates for the central district of the Indian Territory, do hereby certify the foregoing to be a true copy of an order made by said court on the 11th day of September 1897, as appears from the records of said court now on file in my office.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand, at my office in South McAlester, in said district, this 10th day of March A. D. 1903.

[SEAL] E. J. Fannin, Clerk.
By I. M. Dodge.

This is to certify that I am the officer having custody of the records pertaining to the enrollment of the members of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Tribes of Indians, and the disposition of the land of said tribes, and that the above and foregoing is a true and correct copy of a certified copy of the judgment of the court, dated September 11, 1897, on file In this office in the matter of the petition of James J. Bennight et al. for enrollment as a member of the Choctaw tribe of Indians.

J. Geo. Wright, Commissioner to the Fire Civilized Tribes.
By W. H. Angell, Clerk in charge of Choctaw Records
Dated at Muskogee. Okla., this 12th day of October 1910.

Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma
Notes About the Book:

Source: Five Civilized Tribes In Oklahoma, Reports of the Department of the Interior and Evidentiary Papers in support of S. 7625, a Bill for the Relief of Certain Members of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma, Sixty-second Congress, Third Session, Published 1913, by the Department of the Interior, United States.

Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and then ocr'd. Minimal editing has been done, and readers can and should expect some errors in the textual output. Several spellings have been used for the same tribe of Indians.

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This site includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied.

Free Genealogy
Indian Genealogy
Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma

Sevier County, Ark Land Records 1860

2010-08-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

File: sevier.txt)

SEVIER CO., ARK., FEDERAL LAND RECORDS

This file was compiled from the Bureau of Land Management land records and includes Homestead and Cash Entry Patents before 1908 for what is now Sevier Co, AR.

This compilation was created by Joy Fisher, jfisher@ucla.edu and is part of the free service called ARGenWeb. The front door is located at http://www.usgenweb.com/ar

BENNIGHT JAMES J 25 9S 33W 40 1860/10/01

BENNIGHT JOSEPH B 24 9S 33W 160 1860/10/01

Information from Nancy Dicus Beck

2010-08-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Nancy Dicus Beck

Descendants of William

Generation No. 1

       1. William Miller Bennight was born 20 September 1843 in Missouri, and died 03 December 1927 in Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma. He married Mary Ethel Dicus December 1888 in Cooke or Grayson County, Texas, daughter of James Dicus and Nancy Diamond. She was born 10 June 1865 in Gainesville, Cooke County, Texas and died 05 September 1939 in Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

Notes for William Miller Bennight:
Wm. Miller Bennight:
(1) Source: WFT Archives Vol. 12, Tree #0282, Submission date 16 May 1997.
(2) Preponderance of evidence suggests that Wm Bennight, is the son of William and Sarah Bennight of Hempstead Co. Arkansas. They are also the parents of Joseph B. Bennight. William and Mary (Tyree)
are in Freestone Co., Texas in 1870 but have no children. (The following are records with first wife Mary Tryee)
(3) U.S. Census Hempstead Co. Arkansas Canuse Township D-48.
(4) U.S. Census Sevier Co., Arkansas, Monroe Township, p.63, family 454, dwelling 477.
(5) U.S. Census Freestone Co, Fairfield Post Office, 1870, Texas p. 71, Family #16.
William is a land owner and he probably purchased the land with proceeds from sale of land that was a gift from his Father, William Bennight of Sevier Co, Arkansas.
(6) Sevier Co, Arkansas Deed Records 1853-1861, Book 9, p. 487, Film # 1009442 and 43 LDS Archives, Salt Lake, Utah.
The Bennight family lived in Roseville, TX; Freestone County, Texas; Henrietta, Olmulgee County, Oklahoma; Lehigh, OK; Tallequah, Paul's Valley and Caddo Oklahoma
1st wife Mary Melvina Tyree
Parents; Wm. & Sarah Bennight

More About William Miller Bennight:
Burial: December 1927, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma

Notes for Mary Ethel Dicus:
Mary Ethel "Mollie" Dicus Benight
Born, 10 June 1865, Gainsville, Cooke County Texas.
Married, William Miller Bennight in December 1888.
died, 5 September 1939, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Buried in Hernyetta, Oklahoma.
Parents, James M. and Nancy Catharine (Diamond) Dicus

In my search for James Dicus descendants I came across the pedigree of the Bennight family in a Broderbund Family Archive CD, Volume 12, Tree # 0282 (name of tree Bennight, Fritch, Kyser of TX, KY 1691-1991 ). Submission date 16 May 1997. I found "Mollie" her name was Mary Ethel. Her husband William Miller Bennight, son of William (bn. 1795 in South Carolina) and Sarah Bennight. The Bennight family moved to Missouri where Wm. was born 20 September 1843. The family then moved to Hempstead Co., Arkansas, William inherited land in Sevier Co Arkansas on his fathers death. [Sevier Co., AR Deed records 1853-1861, Book 9, p.487, Film #1009442 & 43 LDS Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah]. William and his brother Josephs came to Texas during or just after the Civil War, living in Fairfield, Freestone County, TX. [ They are both enumerated in the 1870 Freestone Co, Census , Fairfield, TX, p.71, family # 15]
Williams first wife was Mary Melvina Tyree, they are in the 1870 census listed with no children, They are found in Tallequah, Oklahoma in 1872. In 1873 they are in Caddo Oklahoma. In 1879 they are again in Tallequah. They have 5 children Loren; William Miller Jr; Peter; Joseph and Claude. In 1888 they are in Roseville, TX Mary Tyree dies and William Miller marries Mary Ethel Dicus. The children of William and Mary Ethel are: Fannie; Nora ; Samuel; Tolle; Sweet Jewel and Betty.
William and Mary died in Henryetta, OK they are buried there, Mary on 7 September 1939. Name of Cemetary unknown.

More About Mary Ethel Dicus:
Burial: 07 September 1939, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma
Census: 1870, Census Fannin Co, TX age 5, with parents.
Census (2): 1880, Census Fannin Co, TX age 15, with father and stepmother Martha.

Children of William Bennight and Mary Dicus are:
2       i.       Fanny2 Bennight, born WFT Est. 1877-1905.
3       ii.       Nora Bennight, born WFT Est. 1877-1905.
4       iii.       Samuel C. Bennight, born 1890 in Texas. He married Ada Johnson 03 September 1911 in Freestone Co., Texas.

Notes for Samuel C. Bennight:
Samuel Bennight;
(1) Letter from Lena Bonner VP Freestone County General Society, dated 9 September 1993. In general files of T.A. Kyser. (source: Broderbund WFT. Vol. 12, Tree # 0282)

5       iv.       Tolle O. Bennight, born 01 October 1893; died 02 February 1954 in Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
6       v.       Sweet Jewel Bennight, born Abt. 1895. She married J. B. Allen.
7       vi.       Betty L. Bennight, born Abt. 1897.

Descendants of Joseph E. Bennight

2010-08-02T22:37:00.000-07:00

The numbers represent generations. 1 - first generation, 2 - child of #1, 3 - grandchild of #1, 4 - great-grandchild of #1, 5 - great-great-grandchild of #1

1 Joseph E. Bennight b. 1839
    Wife: Susan Francis Williams, b. 1830
    2   Wesley Christopher Bennight b. 8 Nov 1860
         Wife: Tennie C. (Tennasee) Lovett, b. 1871
         3   Houston Wesley Bennight b. 1845
              Wife: Alberta Henrietta Peet
               4   Wesley Albert Bennight b. 1924
                     Wife: Emily Jean Martin b. 1928
                      5   John Wesley Bennight b. 1950
                      5   Brenda Kathleen Bennight b. 1954
               4   Ruby Iris Bennight b. 1922
                    Husband: Richard M. Henson
               4   Allie Mae Bennight b. 1920
          3   Joseph L. Bennight b. 1890
               Wife: Eula Myers
          3   William H. Bennight
               Wife: Lealer Padgett, d. 1968
          3   Mary Bennight b. 1893
               Husband #1: Jim Wilhite
               Husband #2: Clark
          3   Virgie Bennight b. 1898
               Husband: Claude P. Patterson
    2   Emmer G. Bennight, b. 1863
         Husband: Briscoe d. 1930s

Cemetery Records

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Obituaries

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Bennights Unite!: Coal Mining With Dad – about age 5

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Bennights Unite!: Coal Mining With Dad – about age 5

Death Certificates

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Loren F. Bennight

Born 29 Nov 1872

Died 9 Nov 1937

Parents: William Miller Bennight and Mary M. Tyree

==================================================

Tollie Bennight

Born 1 Oct 1893

Died 2 Feb 1954

Parents: William Miller Bennight and Mary M. Tyree

The Aurora of Bastrop, Texas

2010-07-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

I don't know how these Bennights are related to me yet, but it was very fun to discover there was another Loraine Bennight, (Lorayne Bennight), and to see her picture. She is on the top right. I'm not sure which picture is Marie Bennight's. This is a page from "The Aurora" which I assume is a high school yearbook, 1926. Kinda cool, I thought. Anybody have more information about this? I'd love to hear from you.

Joseph Everette Bennight Letters of Recommendation

2010-07-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

My grandpa Bennight was a miner. I have always been fascinated by these old letters of recommendation that my dad passed on to me. I included a transcript under each letter.

Division No. 58

National Brotherhood of Coal Mining Engineers.

Office of Secretary

Bonanza, Arkansas, April 15, 1903

To Whom it May Concern:

This is to certify that the Bearer J. E. Bennight

has bin in the Employ of the Western Coal & M. Co.

for the past year in the capacity of

Hoisting Engineer. During his entire service

he has given eminent satisfaction

as a skilled engineer. Steady, sober

& industrious and as such we

cheerfully recommend him to any one requiren his services. He leaves the service

of this co of his own accord.

Signed Harry Powell Sec.

========================================================

Central Coal & Coke Company

Successor to

Keith & Perry Coal Co. & Kansas & Texas Coal Co.

Miners of Coal

Manufacturers of

Lumber and Railway Timber

General Office Kansas City, Mo

Huntington Ark. Sep. 17 1902

To Whom it May Concern

This is to certify that the bearer Everit Benight

has bin the employ of this company for

several months as Hoisting Engineer.

During his entire service he has given

Eminent Satisfactory as a Skilled Engineer

Steady Sober & industrious & as such would

cheerfully recommend him to any one requiring

his services. He leaves the service of this

Company of his own accord.

Respectfully

Harry Powell M. M.

=======================================================

WESTERN COAL AND MINING CO.

Jenny Linds Mines

Jenny Lind, Ark. July 29, 1899

To Whom it May Concern.

This is to certify that I have known Everett

Benight for 2 years as a Pumper and Fire-

man. He has also had considerable experience

with a pair of first Motioned Engines being

Night Engineer for 5 or 6 months. He has been

suspended from work during the Miners Strike

here. I can recommend him as a conscientious

work man.

Thos. Bell

Chief Engineer

======================================================

WESTERN COAL AND MINI (missing section)

Jenny Lind Mines

Jenny Lind, ...

To Whom it may concern:

This is to certify that the bea . . .

been in the employ of the Western Coal and Mining Co., for

a period of one year, engaged in the capacity of hoisting

engineer at our principal Min No.17, which is equipped with

the Litchfield first motion hoisting engines. In this capac-

ity he gave general satisfaction. He is honest, sober and

sustains a good reputation among all of his associates.

Any company requiring the services of such a man will not

regret engaging him. He leaves of his own accord.

B P Davison

Chief Engineer W.C and M.Co.

Jenny Lind Ark.

Thos. Bell, Asst Supt

Photo Album

2010-07-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

Left-Raymond Everette Bennight

Right-Howard Ogden Bennight

Front-Howard Ogden Bennight

Back-Raymond Everette Bennight

Raymond Everette Bennight

and Howard Ogden Bennight

Left-Mary (Mollie) Dicus Bennight

Right-William Miller Bennight

Right-Raymond Everette Bennight

probably at Camp Murray near Tacoma, Wash.

beginning of WWII

Top-Home of the Joseph Everette Bennight Family

in Tacoma, Washington

Bottom-Grandma Lizzie McCormick Cox

with Howard Ogden Bennight (left)

Raymond Everette Bennight (center)

and Printest Owen Gragg (right)

about 1915/16

Bennight Coat of Arms

Tom Keyser's Letter from 1994

2010-07-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a fascinating bit of information I would like to share with you. I used to correspond with Mr. Keyser, another avid Bennight Family researcher, many years ago. Below is the letter he sent to me in 1994 with a possible explanation for our difficulty finding our Bennight Family on the 1850 Census.

Dear Mrs. Nielsen:

After our discussion of the birth date of William Miller Bennight, I think I have a lead on the father and mother and family members of William.

If you have access to the 1850 US Census for Arkansas, Hempstead County, Canuse Township recorded on Nov. 11, 1850, page 46, family 48. It lists as follows:

Wm. Bennett             54                     Farmer                         Born S/C
Sarah "                     46                                                                 S/C
James J.                    21                     Laborer                                 Tenn
Joseph                       19                                                                  MO (Tom's g-g-grandfather)
Andrew J.                 14                     Twin Brother                          MO
Elizabeth                   14                      Twin Sister                            MO
Mary A.                    17                                                                  MO
William                        8                                                                  MO (Loraine's G-grandfather?)

The name is not spelled correctly, but I have followed this family for many generations and I know this is the Bennight Family.

The US Census for Arkansas Sevier County, Monroe Township 1860, page 63, lists as follows:
(Tom's comments are highlighted. These are his opinions, not part of the census record.)

William Bennight         65                S/C
Sarah                         56                S/C
James J.                     30                Tenn
Mary A.                     25                 MO
William M.                 18                  MO
John W.                     34                 Tenn     older son to William and Sarah
Lafayette                   11                 MO      John W.'s son
Sarah                          9                 Ark       John W.'s daughter
George                       22                 MO
Jackson                      24                 MO
Manerva                    20                 Ark      probably Jackson's wife
William                      1/12               Ark      probably Jackson's son

This family according to the census records is quite wealthy because of the amount of real and personal property held by the old man and some of his sons.

The US Census for 18770 Freestone County, Fairfield PO, page 71 lists the following information:

Family 15    Joseph Bennight                    38
                  Sarah                                    22
                  Carey A.                                4
                  John A.                                 12
                  Mary                                     16
                  James J.                                 9
                  George

Family 16    William Bennight                   28    Owns $200 in real estate
                   Mary                                   24     Born in Arkansas

The 1880 Texas Census indicates that Joseph Bennight is still in Freestone County, but William and his wife, Mary, are not shown.

According to these census records, if this William M. Bennight is your guy (and I think he is), then he was born abt 1842 and his wife, Mary, was born abt. 1846. I will check deed records from Freestone County as soon as I can. I have much more information on the Bennight Family, and if you are interested I will gladly share it with you.

One other side note. In 1863 at the height of the Civil War in Ark. the older William Bennight deeds to William M. Bennight and Morgan Bennight (I do not recognize the latter name) for love and affection 360 acres. This information can be found in Sevier Co. deed records 1853-1861 Book 9 Page 487 Film # 1009442 and 43 from LDS archives, Salt Lake, Utah.

This might have been at the end of the old man's life and he was giving his property away before he died. He would have been 68 years old. The deed records do specifically call out the middle initial as M. so this recipient is William M. Bennight. The deed was witnessed by John W. Bennight. As you can imagine, there is a lot of guess work in putting together the family after so many years, but the evidence does show without too much of a doubt that this is probably your William and Mary.

More Bennights from Bastrop, Texas

2010-07-18T18:28:00.000-07:00

The following is information I received from Michele Hand in 2005.

Amelia Olivia Bennight (Michele's grandmother) was married to Clarence Karl Johnson.

Her parents were Lee Moriel Bennight and Virginia Ola Knowles.

Lee's parents were Joseph Wortham Bennight and Amelia Elizabeth Johnson.

******************************************
Joseph Wortham Bennight
Born 1874
Died 1958

Married to
Amelia Elizabeth Johnson
Marriage date: 4 Nov 1894

Their children:

Lee Moriel born 1893/4
Marie born 1908
Ola
Mary
Verda
Dink(?)
Joe Wortham
Paul Revere

*******************************************

Lee Moriel Bennight and Virginia Ola Knowles
had eight children:

Amelia Olivia born 1920
Lee Moriel Jr. born 1923
J. Gordon born 1928
Joe Robert born 1926
Tom Augustas born 1934
Amanuel Melvin born 1914
Clifton born 1917
Melvin (Bob)

Joe B & Sarah Bennight Family (from 1880 Census)

2010-07-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

1880 Census, County of Freestone, State of Texas, June 10th and 11th, 1880

Bennight -                                          Age                                                     Born
     Joe B                    White male       47                     Farmer                      Mo
     Sarah                    White female    30         Wife     Keeping house           Ark
     Jerome                  White male       22         son       Farm laborer              Ark
     Carrie                    White female    13         dau                                        Tx
     George                   White male      10         son       Farm laborer               Tx
     Seth                       White male        8         son                                         Tx
     Joe                        White male        6          son                                         Tx
     Tommie                 White male        3          son                                         Tx
     Sarah                     White female   6/12       dau                                         Tx

The following information was taken from One World Tree. I think these records may refer to Sarah, the youngest of the children listed above. However, in order for them to be one and the same, her birth year would have to have been entered incorrectly ont he One World Tree records (should be 1879, making her 6 months old in June 1880 when the census was taken).

Sarah Sallie Bennight
Born 29 Nov 1880
Freestone, Texas
Died 15 Feb 1925
Bastrop, Texas

Husband:
Jepp Hill Miller
Born 21 Oct 1877
Texas
Died 23 Apr 1955
Bastrop, Texas

Their Children:
Woodrow Bryson Miller, 1914
Martha Miller, 1915
Maybell Miller, 1917
Fred Miller, 1920

Descendants of William (1795) & Sarah

2010-07-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

This chart can be a little confusing. The numbers refer to the generation, the number 1 being Wm Bennight, the number 2's being his children, the number 3's being his grandchildren, the number 4's his great-grandchildren, and the number 5's his great-great-grandchildren.

1-William Bennight b. Abt 1795, South Carolina
    Wife: Sarah b. Abt 1804, South Carolina

   2-John W. Bennight b. Abt 1826, Tennessee
     Wife: Unknown

      3-Lafayette Bennight b. Abt 1849, Missouri

      3-Sarah J. Bennight b. Abt 1851, Arkansas

   2-James I. Bennight b. Abt 1830

   2-Joseph Bennight b. Abt 1831
      Wife: Unknown

      3-Mary Bennight b. Abt 1854

      3-John A. Bennight b. Abt 1858

      3-James J. Bennight b. Abt 1861

      3-Carey A. Bennight b. Abt 1866

   2-Mary A. Bennight b. Abt 1835, Missouri

   2-Andrew Jackson Bennight b. Abt 1836, Missouri
      Wife: Manerva b. Abt 1840, Arkansas

      3-William Bennight b. Abt 1860, Arkansas

   2-Elizabeth Bennight b. Abt 1836

   2-William Miller Bennight b. 20 Sep 1842, Missouri, d. 3 Dec 1927,
      Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma
     Wife #1: Mary Melvina Tyree b. Abt 1846, d. Abt 1888

      3-Loren F. Bennight b. Abt 1872, d. 9 Nov 1937
         Wife: Rosa Lee Null b. 18 Jun 1876, Hancock, Miller, Missouri, d.
         12 Jun 1947,Kirksville, , Missouri

         4-William Bennight b. 1 May 1894, Hartford, Sebastian, Arkansas, d. 12
            Nov 1918
            Wife: Pearl Haun

         4-Velma Lou Bennight b. 5 May 1896, Hartford, Sebastian, Arkansas
            Husband: Eldredge V. Ledford b. 4 Feb 1889, d. 12 Mar 1955,
            (Oakwood Cemetery, Macon, Missouri)

            5-Lillian Louise Ledford b. 29 Jun 1914, Macon, Macon, Missouri

            5-Alphadean Ledford b. 29 Mar 1919, Macon, Macon, Missouri, d. 2
                 Apr 1939

            5-Norma Jean Ledford b. 1 Mar 1925, Macon, Macon, Missouri

         4-Margaret Bennight b. 11 Apr 1897, Hartford, Sebastian, Arkansas, d.
             6 Apr 1970, Macon, Macon, Missouri
            Husband: Earl Norman b. , Marion, , Illinois, d. , Marion, , Illinois

            5-Loren William Norman b. 10 Aug 1922, Sioux Falls, , South Dakota

         4-Earnest Bennight b. , Hartford, Sebastian, Arkansas

         4-Melvin F. Bennight b. 1 Feb 1904, Hartford, Sebastian, Arkansas, d.
            5 May 1935, Macon, Macon, Missouri
           Wife: Pauline Talbot b. 12 Oct 1904, Hartford, Sebastian, Arkansas,
            d. 29 Oct 1957, Macon, Macon, Missouri

            5-Hettie Raines Bennight b. 4 Mar 1925, Macon, Macon, Missouri, d.
               15 Apr 1927

            5-Donald Lee Bennight b. 3 Jan 1927, Macon, Macon, Missouri, d.
                9 Jan 1927

         4-Vernon Bennight

         4-Leona Opal Bennight b. 29 Sep 1910, Stahl, , Missouri
            Husband: Russell Itschner

            5-Julia Jo Itschner b. 23 Dec 1930, Macon, Macon, Missouri

            5-Shirley Ann Itschner b. 28 Jan 1934, Macon, Macon, Missouri

            5-Janna Lee Itschner b. 29 Jan 1948, Hannibal, Marion, Missouri

         4-Catherine Louise Bennight b. 21 Mar 1913, Macon, Macon, Missouri,
              d. 10 Nov 1927

         4-Mildred Virginia Bennight b. 3 Nov 1915, Macon, Macon, Missouri
             Husband: Shelby Wright b. 19 Oct 1910, Woodville, Macon, Missouri,
             d. 14 Dec 1965, Moberly, Randolph, Missouri

            5-Roger Terrence Wright b. 7 Oct 1943, Macon, Macon, Missouri, d.
               31 Oct 1968

         4-Juanita Jane Bennight b. 10 Mar 1921, Macon, Macon, Missouri, d.
             22 Aug 1971
            Husband #1: Leroy Pastor or Poston
            Husband #2: Jim Verges

      3-Peter P. Bennight b. Abt 1874
         Wife: Emma Belle Null b. 23 Apr 1873, Hancock, Miller County, Missouri,
          d. 27 Mar 1949, DeRidder, Louisiana

         4-Lora Bennight
             Husband: Dee True

         4-Marie Bennight

         4-Elmer Lee Bennight b. 13 Aug 1904, Hartford, Sebastian, Arkansas,
             d. 9 Oct 1971, Phoenix, , Arizona
            Wife: Bennight

            5-Maureen Bennight

            5-JoAnn Bennight

            5-Elmer Lee Bennight Jr.
               Wife: Lucy Joe Tennyson b. 1 Dec 1909, Haskell, , Oklahoma

            5-Benny Joe Bennight

         4-Evelyn Bennight

      3-Joseph Everette Bennight b. 25 Nov 1879, Tahlequah Indian Territory
          Oklahoma, d. 4 Apr 1960, (Winton District Cemetery, Merced, California)
         Wife #1: MaryAnn Evelyn Cox b. 26 Oct 1889, Vesta Crawford Arkansas, d.
           2 Jan 1915, Centralia Lewis Washington

         4-Howard Ogden Bennight b. 17 Dec 1910, Glenrock, Converse, Wyoming
            Wife: Laverne Jane Roberts

            5-Robert Lee Bennight b. 23 Mar 1948, Red Bluff, Tahema,
               California, d. 13 Mar 1949, Livingston, Merced, California

         4-Raymond Everette Bennight b. 21 Aug 1912, Centralia Lewis
             Washington, d. 13 Apr 2000, Seattle King Washington
            Wife #1: Helen Gene Wilson

            5-Stephen Ray Bennight b. 1 Jul 1949, Westwood, Lassen, California

            Wife #2: Zina Pearl Rowley b. 14 Jan 1923, Magna Salt Lake Utah,
               d. 23 Mar 1994, Port Angeles Clallam Washington

            5-Zina Loraine Bennight b. 11 Oct 1956, Merced Merced California

            5-Michael Allen Bennight b. 15 Jun 1959, Atwater Merced California

            5-David Jeffrey Bennight b. 14 Oct 1961, Atwater Merced California

      Wife #1 (of Joseph Everette Bennight): Etta Runyon b. , Chant Haskell
           Oklahoma, d. Nov 1917, Denver Colorado

         4-Flotilla Bennight b. 29 Mar 1903, Jenny Lind, Arkansas, d. Abt 1967,
             San Francisco, California
             Husband: Richard Carr d. , San Francisco, California

         4-Denver Bennight b. 2 Mar 1905
            Wife: Esther May Cross b. 9 May 1914, Vashon Island, Washington

            5-Robert M. Bennight

            5-Eileen M. Bennight

       Wife #2 (Joseph Everette Bennight): Ann Elizabeth Aitken b. 26 Feb 1900,
          Unionville, Putnam, Missouri, d. 3 Feb 1964, Livingston, Merced,
            California

        4-Barbara Allene Bennight b. 31 Jan 1920, Mendota, , Washington
            Husband: Archie Marion Heckman b. 31 Oct 1911, Armenia,
             d. 21 Aug 1980, Selma, , California

           5-Vicki Sandra Ann Heckman b. 10 Jun 1941, Turlock, Stanlislaus,
              California

            5-Randall Lee Heckman b. 14 Jun 1943, San Francisco, , California

            5-Ted Alan Heckman b. 29 Jul 1949, Selma, Fresno, California

            5-Patrician Lynne Heckman b. 21 Dec 1950, Selma, Fresno, California

         4-Parker Clayton Bennight b. 1922, Tacoma, Pierce, Washington, d.
            1926, Mine near Yoncalla, Oregon

         4-Constance Ann Bennight b. 10 Jun 1924, Azusa, , California
            Husband: Glenn Plaster b. 26 Feb 1917, Ava,,Missouri

            5-James Michael Plaster b. 8 Mar 1942, Turlock, Stanislaus,
               California

            5-Sharon Rae Plaster b. 29 Mar 1944, Merced, Merced, California

         4-James Donald Bennight b. 9 Jan 1929, Grants Pass, Douglas, Oregon
           Wife: Claire Cephise Cardoza b. 17 May 1925, Los Banos, Merced,
            California

            5-Bradley Bennight

            5-Rebecca Bennight

      3-Claude Ernest Bennight b. 27 Jan 1884, Caddo, Stephens, TX or OK, d.
          22 Feb 1920
         Wife: Elsie Grey Reed b. 20 Mar 1888, Cabool, Texas, Missouri,
            d. 29 May 1955, Bemus Point, Chtg, New York

         4-Laura Melvina Bennight

      3-Pauline Bennight

      3-William Miller Bennight Jr.

      Wife #2 (William Miller Bennight): Mary A. Dicus b. 10 Jun 1865,
      Gainesville Cooke Texas, d. 5 Sep 1939, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma

      3-Samuel Bennight b. Abt 1890, Texas

      3-Tollie Tonie Bennight b. 1 Oct 1893, Navarro County, Texas, d.
         2 Feb 1954, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma

      3-Sweet Jewel Bennight b. Abt 1898
         Husband: John B. Allen

      3-Bettie L. Bennight b. Abt 1901
         Husband #1: B. B. Byer
         Husband #2: Brown

       3-Fanny Bennight
          Husband: Plat

       3-Nora Bennight
          Husband: Smith

Sarah J. Bennight Pdgr

2010-07-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

Pedigrees

2010-07-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

Benny Joe Bennight Pdgr

2010-07-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

Roger Terrence Wright Pdgr

2010-07-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

Ped Chart ZLBN

2010-07-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

Ray Bennight Info and Stories

2010-07-03T09:20:00.000-07:00

Raymond Everette Bennight

Born August 21, 1912
Centralia, Lewis, Washington

Father: Joseph Everette Bennight
Mother: Maryann Evelyn Cox Bennight

See posts regarding him:
Coal Mining with Dad
Dad Remarries and We Move to Washington
WWII Summary
WWII Full Written History

Coat of Arms

2010-07-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

Coal Miners' Memorial Park

2010-06-25T00:15:00.000-07:00

Coal Miners’ Memorial Park

Greenwood, Arkansas, Historical District

The Memorial was dedicated to honor the coal miners of Sebastian County, Arkansas.

Coal miners were the heart of our heritage that we enjoy today. These walls of memories include names of the men who mined the coal that fueled the industrial might of America. Miners, mine bosses, and mine owners, together, applied skills, financing, and know-how to an industry that demanded unusual dedication. Many of these men and boys gave their lives in explosions, floods, cave-ins, and accidents. Other were injured or died of black lung disease.

Many of the miners were immigrants from Europe. They are a part of the ethnic and cultural mix that enriches our culture today. From early 1870 to 1965, coal mining and coal miners were a dominant force in Sebastian County, Arkansas

Miners Named Currently Listed on the Memorial

Updated April 15, 2005
J.E. BENNIGHT

L.F. BENNIGHT

P.P. BENNIGHT

California Bennights

2010-06-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

Issue date: February 11, 2000

Obituaries @caphed:Jean Sophie Bennight

Private services have been held for Jean Sophie Bennight, 85, who died at El Camino Hospital last month. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, she was a resident of Moountain View for 50 years. She graduated from Dickinson High School in New Jersey and married to Medford J. Bennight, who preceded her in death, in Berkeley. She was a charter member of the Navy Wives Club at Moffett Field, a member of St. Joseph's Church, and later St. Simon's while a resident at the Mt. View Health Care Center for about the last year. She volunteered at St. Joseph's School. She is survived by two brothers, Victor and Salvy Rubel and sister Josie Black, all of New Jersey; three children, Victor of Redwood City, Virginia McCready of San Jose and Violet O'Malley of Ft. Wayne, ID and six grandchildren. Internment arranged by Cusimano Family Colonial Mortuary, Mountain View. Contributions may be made to a charity of your choice.

Please edit this any way you see fit. Yours very truly, Violet O'Malley Ft. Wayne, In.

Louisiana Bennights

2010-06-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

Beauregard Cemetery

Beauregard is one of two really big cemeteries in DeRidder, LA. It is located on the east edge of town, on the north side of US 171. There are over 50 known, but un-named, graves.
Collected by Roberta B. Doty, completed Oct. 2, 1992.

BENNIGHT, EMMA BELLE 1873 1949 w\o PETER P BENNIGHT

BENNIGHT, PETER P 1874 1962 h\o EMMA BELLE BENNIGHT

Texas Bennights

2010-06-25T00:06:00.000-07:00

Freestone County, TX - Census - 1870 Index
*************************************************************************************
USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced
in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative
of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access.
http://www.rootsweb/~usgenweb/

*******************************************************************************************
Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Jimmy Epperson
eppy@ticnet.com

http://www.rootsweb.com/~txfreest/records/index.htm

Surname,Given Name,Age,Sex,Race,Birth Place,County,Locality,Page
BENNIGHT,JOSEPH,38,M,W,MS,FREESTONE,FAIRFIELD P O,36,
BENNIGHT,WILLIAM,28,M,W,MS,FREESTONE,FAIRFIELD P O,36,

Newfoundland Bennights

2010-06-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

Cape Breton Marriages of Newfoundlanders

St. Matthew - Wesley United Church
North Sydney,N.S.
1903 - 1930

Transcribed from Reel no: MG 13, 91 MB 43 at the Beaton Institute, U.C.C.B., Sydney,N.S.

GROOM/BRIDE
(status 1, age, religion)
MARRIAGE DATE/PLACE
BORN
RESIDING
(at time of marriage)
PARENTS
WITNESSES
MINISTER
LICENSE
NOTES2

Thomas SMITH (23, UC of C) married Lillian (BENNIGHT?) (21, UC of C)
Mar 25, 1926 At St. Matthew - Wesley.
He was born in Scotland and she in NFLD.
Both were residing at Colonial.
Parents of Thomas: James SMITH , (Jessica F. WIDLY?)
Parents of Lillian: George (BENNIGHT?) , Susanna (ANDERSON?)
William (D...?) , Mrs. William (D...?)
(K. M. MUNRO?)

2797
Mar 22, 1926

Civil War Bennights

2010-06-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/soldiers.htm

Soldier Name
Side
Function
Regiment Name

Bennight, Edwin R.
Union
Infantry
54th Regiment, Indiana Infantry (3 months, 1862)

Bennight, George
Confederate
Infantry
33rd Regiment, Arkansas Infantry

Bennight, John H.
Union
Infantry
48th Regiment, Missouri Infantry

Bennight, John W.
Union
Phelps County Regiment, Missouri Home Guard

Bennight, William B.
Union
Infantry
18th Regiment, Indiana Infantry

Benight, Charles W.
Union
Infantry
8th Regiment, Iowa Infantry

Benight, Charles W.
Union
Infantry
32nd Regiment, Iowa Infantry

Benight, Edwin R.
Union
Infantry
54th Regiment, Indiana Infantry (3 months, 1862)

Benight, G.
Confederate
Infantry
33rd Regiment, Arkansas Infantry

Benight, Hamilton J.
Union
Infantry
85th Regiment, Indiana Infantry

Benight, J. B.
Confederate
Cavalry
2nd Battalion, Texas Cavalry State Toops (6 Months, 1863-64)

Benight, Joseph L.
Union
Infantry
85th Regiment, Indiana Infantry

Benight, William B.
Union
Infantry
15th Regiment, Indiana Infantry

Benite, G.
Confederate
58th Regiment, Arkansas Militia

Benite, William
Union
Infantry
6th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry (Colored)

Benit, D.C.
Confederate
Cavalry
19th Battalion, Georgia Cavalry

Benit, Daniel
Union
Infantry
32nd Regiment, Ohio Infantry

Benit, Daniel
Union
Engineers
1st Regiment, Engineers and Mechanics, Michigan

Benit, Frederick
Union
Infantry
81st Regiment, Ohio Infantry

Benit, George
Union
General Mounted Service (Regular Army)

Benit, H. C.
Confederate
Infantry
30th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry (Sumter Regiment)

Benit, Henry
Confederate
Infantry
30th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry (Sumter Regiment)

Benit, I. B.
Confederate
Cavalry
2nd Regiment, Louisiana Cavalry

Benit, Isaac
Union
Infantry
28th Regiment, New Jersey Infantry

Benit, J.C.
Confederate
Cavalry
19th Battalion, Georgia Cavalry

Benit, John C.
Union
Infantry
99th Regiment, Illinois Infantry

Benit, Martin
Union
Infantry
28th Regiment, New Jersey Infantry

Benit, Oliver
Union
Infantry
48th Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry

Benit, Peter
Union
Artillery
9th Independent Battery, Ohio Light Artillery

Benit, W.R.
Confederate
Cavalry
19th Battalion, Georgia Cavalry

Benit, William
Union
Cavalry
11th Regiment, Kentucky Cavalry

William M. Bennight

2010-06-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

Lhoward96@hotmail.com

My great-great uncle was Joseph Buchannen Bennight. Brother of my g-g grandfather, William Miller Bennight. I have info that Joseph B. Bennight was born in 1831 in Missouri. Married: #1 Sarah A Ward, #2 Louisa A Coffee. Parents: William (born 1795 in S Carolina) & Sarah (born 1804 - SC)
***********************************************************************

Need information on the children of William and Mary (Dicus) Bennight. Any help would be appreciated. I am posting all I have on this family. This information was found in a WFT Archive CD.
Thanking you in advance,
Nancy Dicus Beck

Descendants of William
Generation No. 1

       1. William Miller Bennight was born 20 September 1843 in Missouri, and died 03 December 1927 in Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma. He married Mary Ethel Dicus December 1888 in Cooke or Grayson County, Texas, daughter of James Dicus and Nancy Diamond. She was born 10 June 1865 in Gainesville, Cooke County, Texas and died 05 September 1939 in Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

Notes for William Miller Bennight:
Wm. Miller Bennight:
(1) Source: WFT Archives Vol. 12, Tree #0282, Submission date 16 May 1997.
(2) Preponderance of evidence suggests that Wm Bennight, is the son of William and Sarah Bennight of Hempstead Co. Arkansas. They are also the parents of Joseph B. Bennight. William and Mary (Tyree)
are in Freestone Co., Texas in 1870 but have no children. (The following are records with first wife Mary Tryee)
(3) U.S. Census Hempstead Co. Arkansas Canuse Township D-48.
(4) U.S. Census Sevier Co., Arkansas, Monroe Township, p.63, family 454, dwelling 477.
(5) U.S. Census Freestone Co, Fairfield Post Office, 1870, Texas p. 71, Family #16.
William is a land owner and he probably purchased the land with proceeds from sale of land that was a gift from his Father, William Bennight of Sevier Co, Arkansas.
(6) Sevier Co, Arkansas Deed Records 1853-1861, Book 9, p. 487, Film # 1009442 and 43 LDS Archives, Salt Lake, Utah.
The Bennight family lived in Roseville, TX; Freestone County, Texas; Henrietta, Olmulgee County, Oklahoma; Lehigh, OK; Tallequah, Paul's Valley and Caddo Oklahoma
1st wife Mary Melvina Tyree
Parents; Wm. & Sarah Bennight

More About William Miller Bennight:
Burial: December 1927, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma

Notes for Mary Ethel Dicus:
Mary Ethel "Mollie" Dicus Benight
Born, 10 June 1865, Gainsville, Cooke County Texas.
Married, William Miller Bennight in December 1888.
died, 5 September 1939, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Buried in Hernyetta, Oklahoma.
Parents, James M. and Nancy Catharine (Diamond) Dicus

In my search for James Dicus descendants I came across the pedigree of the Bennight family in a Broderbund Family Archive CD, Volume 12, Tree # 0282 (name of tree Bennight, Fritch, Kyser of TX, KY 1691-1991 ). Submission date 16 May 1997. I found "Mollie" her name was Mary Ethel. Her husband William Miller Bennight, son of William (bn. 1795 in South Carolina) and Sarah Bennight. The Bennight family moved to Missouri where Wm. was born 20 September 1843. The family then moved to Hempstead Co., Arkansas, William inherited land in Sevier Co Arkansas on his fathers death. [Sevier Co., AR Deed records 1853-1861, Book 9, p.487, Film #1009442 & 43 LDS Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah]. William and his brother Josephs came to Texas during or just after the Civil War, living in Fairfield, Freestone County, TX. [ They are both enumerated in the 1870 Freestone Co, Census , Fairfield, TX, p.71, family # 15]
Williams first wife was Mary Melvina Tyree, they are in the 1870 census listed with no children, They are found in Tallequah, Oklahoma in 1872. In 1873 they are in Caddo Oklahoma. In 1879 they are again in Tallequah. They have 5 children Loren; William Miller Jr; Peter; Joseph and Claude. In 1888 they are in Roseville, TX Mary Tyree dies and William Miller marries Mary Ethel Dicus. The children of William and Mary Ethel are: Fannie; Nora ; Samuel; Tolle; Sweet Jewel and Betty.
William and Mary died in Henryetta, OK they are buried there, Mary on 7 September 1939. Name of Cemetary unknown.

More About Mary Ethel Dicus:
Burial: 07 September 1939, Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma
Census: 1870, Census Fannin Co, TX age 5, with parents.
Census (2): 1880, Census Fannin Co, TX age 15, with father and stepmother Martha.

Children of William Bennight and Mary Dicus are:
2       i.       Fanny2 Bennight, born WFT Est. 1877-1905.
3       ii.       Nora Bennight, born WFT Est. 1877-1905.
4       iii.       Samuel C. Bennight, born 1890 in Texas. He married Ada Johnson 03 September 1911 in Freestone Co., Texas.

Notes for Samuel C. Bennight:
Samuel Bennight;
(1) Letter from Lena Bonner VP Freestone County General Society, dated 9 September 1993. In general files of T.A. Kyser. (source: Broderbund WFT. Vol. 12, Tree # 0282)

5       iv.       Tolle O. Bennight, born 01 October 1893; died 02 February 1954 in Henryetta, Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
6       v.       Sweet Jewel Bennight, born Abt. 1895. She married J. B. Allen.
7       vi.       Betty L. Bennight, born Abt. 1897.

Oklahoma Bennights

2010-06-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

Civil War Veterans Buried in Stephens County, Oklahoma

Bennight, J. H.
b.3/10/1849; d.9/18/1905.
USA? or CSA?
Marlow city cemetery
(section 8, block 2, lot 5).
********************************************************
Index to Coffey Cousins Clearinghouse Newsletter Issues 1 – 98

Copyright 2005 Coffey Cousins Clearinghouse
Compiled by R. Reams Goodloe
This document is not in the public domain
Contact R. Reams Goodloe, P.O. Box 942, Ormond Beach, FL 32175-0942 (goodloev@bellsouth.net) for price and availability of index in Word Perfect format. Index available on diskette or CD. Back issues of Coffey Cousins newsletters are available from editor, Bonnie Culley, 1416 Green Berry Road, Jefferson City, MO 65101-3620

BENNIGHT, JACKSON (COFFEY), m.1856 AR, 70-8

BENNIGHT, JOSEPH, -livestock appraiser 1855 AR, 61-10

BENNIGHT, WILLIAM, -livestock appraiser 1855 AR, 61-10

Arkansas Bennights

2010-06-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

HEMPSTEAD COUNTY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

Loose Marriage Certificates-Hempstead County Arkansas
In 1987 the Hempstead County Clerk's office released to the Hempstead County Genealogical Society all the loose marriage certificates that were not picked up by the couple after marriage was recorded.

Descendants seeking one of these certificates may write:
HEMPSTEAD COUNTY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY
P.O. Box 756
Hope, AR 71802
or
Sharon Goldman, HCGS Librarian
136 County Road 142
Hope, AR. 71801
Please enclose $2.00 check made out to the society for each marriage for handling fee. If the original has already been claimed a photocopy will be mailed.

Group I-prior to 1875

Bennight, Jackson A. to Mary A. Coffee 1857
********************************************************
HEMPSTEAD CO., ARK., FEDERAL LAND RECORDS
Submitted by: Joy Fisher jfisher@ucla.edu
Date: 8/16/97
Copyright: All rights reserved.
This file was compiled from the Bureau of Land Management
land records and includes Homestead and Cash Entry Patents
before 1908 for what is now Hempstead Co, AR.

L Name F Name MI Sec No T R Acres Date Remarks

BENNIGHT JOSEPH 32 12S 23W 160 1857/12/01
******************************************************************
File: hemgroom.txt)

Hempsted Co., Ark. Marriages 1817-1875
Submitted by: Marie Harvey
Date:Dec 1997
Copyright: All rights reserved.
USGENWEB ARCHIVES DISCLAIMER:
In keeping with our policy of providing free Information
on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities,
as long as this message remains on all copied material. These
electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for
profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations.
Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for
purposes other than stated above must obtain the written
consent of the file contributor.
This record was compiled by Mrs. Kathleen Sechrest,deceased,
who hand copied them from the records in the Hempstead County
Courthouse.Her typewritten copy is now in the hands of Marie
Harvey, a childhood friend, and posted here as Katie would have
done had she lived.

BENNIGHT, Jackson A., 21, to Mary A. Coffee, 19; 13 Apr. 1857 by Jesse H. Beauchamp,
Meth. MG.

EDWARDS, W. F. to Miss M. J. Bennight; 11 Feb. 1869 by Jas. J. Byers, MG.

*********************************************************************

Bennight's Mill, Missouri

2010-06-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

The Civil War Archive

Union Regimental Histories
Missouri
Phelps County Company Home Guard Infantry (Bennight's)

Organized at Rolla July, 1861, by authority of Co Wyman. Scouting in Phelps and Adjacent counties. Skirmish at Bennight's Mills September 1. Mustered out September 20, 1861.

This informational webpage has been created by the MO Commandery of MOLLUS.

PHELPS COUNTY COMPANY HOME GUARD INFANTRY (BENNIGHT'S). Organized at Rolla July, 1861, by authority of Col. Wyman. Scouting in Phelps and adjacent counties. Skirmish at Bennight's Mills September 1. Mustered out September 20, 1861.
Source of Data: "A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, V.III" by Frederick H. Dyer, c1908, p.1342

1860 Census Sevier, Arkansas - 2 Bennight Families

2010-06-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

A note from Loraine: My Bennight line is through William M. (Miller) Bennight, age 18 in the family on top.

Stories of Little Owen by Ann Gragg Lynch

2010-06-06T19:55:00.000-07:00

Owen Gragg was Raymond Bennight's first cousin

Sunday, June 15, 2008

STORIES OF LITTLE OWEN
     I will always remember my grandma telling me that the birth control pill was the greatest discovery of my lifetime. She had lost eight children. (six babies in the eighth month of her pregnancies and she had two more children die before they reached the ages of two). She said she just kept getting pregnant knowing that her children most likely would not survive
     Grandpa and Grandma raised one child. This child was a miracle. His name was Owen. When Grandma was pregnant with my father she says she went into a field and got down on her knees and bargained with God. She promised God if he would let this child live, she would dedicate him to the service of the Lord.
     Her faith was tested when Owen was born weighing less than two pounds. My grandma and grandpa lived in a coal mining community in Oklahoma and medical needs were difficult to tend to. They kept my dad warm this December 5, 1914, by placing him in a shoe box near the wood stove.
     This child grew nicely for two years until he was suddenly stricken by a crippling disease. Polio was the scourge of the nation and thankfully my great-grandmother had read that massaging the limbs of the victim on a 24 hour basis would keep the patient from being crippled by the disease. My dad had a slight limp and a barely noticeable withered hand but overall he came out of the illness with barely any lasting effects.
     It was around 1919 when the Swine Flu epidemic hit the United States. At that time my grandparents had relocated to a coal mining community in New Mexico. The family legend has it that my dad was the only person in the small community that did not get the flu and took care of his family as well as running errands from house-to-house for all the people who were incapacitated.
     Grandma and Grandpa and little Owen were visiting family one Independence Day. Grandma and Grandpa decided to take Owen to watch the Parade while the rest of the family watched from the porch. While they were gone, a deranged family member pulled a gun and began shooting. My grandparents returned with Owen to find many were killed or injured.
     Dad was curious about the coal mines. His dad and his dad’s friends and brothers were all coal miners. One day grandpa took 8 year old Owen into the depth of a coal mine and told him to remember what he saw because it would be the first and LAST time he was ever to be in a coal mine. It was.
     My dad died at age 85 on September 23, 1999 after a long, eventful, productive and influential life. He held many college degrees and had advanced in his chosen field to high levels in the United Methodist Church during his 40 ½ year ministry. He was a genuinely good man, reaching out beyond his retirement years to help anyone in need. He did, however, believe in a hand up more than a handout.
     My grandma always insisted that she never influenced dad’s decision to enter the ministry and that she never told him of her field dedication. He was a business major in college. He met my mother and she had always vowed that she would never marry a preacher. Dad was on a trip to visit his fiancé when he “felt his heart warmed” and felt the call to the ministry. He told my mother and once she got over the initial shock she said she would marry him anyway.
     Dad had some problems in his 80’s with strokes and dementia and his doctor ran many tests. One specialist discovered that dad never had polio. He had contracted encephalitis at age two, not Polio, which caused damage to the right side of dad’s brain. We had to laugh knowing all that dad had accomplished in his life, his continued education, the people he had helped, the family that looked to him and adored him and his tremendous abilities, only to learn he suffered brain damage at the age of two!
     He was a wonderful father and I will always miss him.
And
Did I mention that he was a miracle?

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY ALL YOU GUYS WHO WERE INSPIRED AND INFLUENCED BY OWEN AS YOUR FATHER, GRANDFATHER, FATHER-IN-LAW, GRANDFATHER-IN-LAW. YOU'RE BETTER DADS BECAUSE HE TOUCHED YOUR LIVES.

My Bennights

2010-05-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

1st generation Loraine Bennight (Rick Nielsen)

2nd generation Raymond E. Bennight (Zina P. Rowley)
3rd generation Joseph E. Bennight (Maryann Evelyn Cox)
4th generation William Miller Bennight (Mary Melvina Tyree)
5th generation William Bennight (Sarah)

If you’re reading this blog, I'm guessing you’re related to the Bennights somehow. If you want to send me your information, I’ll post it here if you like. Maybe those of us monitoring this blog will find some family connections we didn’t know about (hoping that’s a good thing!). Until my next post, best wishes.
Loraine Bennight Nielsen

Experiences in World War II - Raymond Bennight

2010-05-30T19:09:00.000-07:00

I was drafted into the army on February 4, 1941. I hadn't even thought about going into the service yet, as the US wasn't involved as yet. I was the oldest on the job and the first to get called.

The day of induction and the next day was a real nightmare. We were shuffled along like animals and given shots and vaccinations, issued clothing after being transported to Fort Ord (near Monterrey, California). Then out in the “company” street in the rain we were taught how to make a bed at 1 o'clock in the morning. We finally got to bed and were up again at 4:30 a.m., for our first meal with the Army, breakfast in a mess kit! What a mess! Rolled oats, milk, fried eggs, toast all piled in one compartment, most unappetizing. I soon learned to handle the equipment and those who would try to “foul things up” for a newcomer.

The first Sunday I was in, some of my friends drove down from Oakland to see me, and I was on KP. Peeling potatoes and dressed in blue fatigues, I was a laughable sight, and laugh they did. Me, too!

I gained some identity fairly soon and was sent on some jobs around the base where my skills could be used. One day I was “loaned” to the engineers to back their semi-trailers onto RR flatcars to ship them to another area. It was easy for me, an old truck driver anyway. Then another job came up when Captain Parks wanted his personal car worked on. A Japanese boy “Yoshida” and I went to his home and overhauled the engine.

I started in the Army at the pay rate of $21 per month. After the first month-and-a-half, the base pay was raised to $50 and I soon was promoted so I could start to save a little toward the day when I would again be a civilian and able to get started again.

In August a couple of us were sent to school in St. Louis, Missouri. It was a great experience, since we were already mechanics and learned some of the finer “touches” so later I became a teacher of carburetor and ignition in a large military school near Tacoma, Washington. While there in St. Louis, I made a cruise on a large paddle wheeler down the Mississippi for a few miles and back. One day while on a street downtown, my friend and I were approached by an old gentleman who took us to a restaurant and bought us a nice meal. The people were very friendly. While there I also got the chance to make a trip to northern Missouri. I went to Unionville to see some of mom's family, and especially one of her sisters about my age that I had known for a while in California when she and her dad had come out for a visit.

When I returned back to California after graduating from the school in November, I learned that I was eligible for release, as I had been too old when I was drafted. So I applied and was sent for a “physical.” They promptly put me in the hospital at Stockton Airfield. My company had moved to Stockton while I was away at school. The x-ray had spots, which they said was tuberculosis, and I was put into “isolation” and they tried their best to get me to be sick, but I insisted that I was okay, and they had made a mistake. Finally they took some more x-rays and sent them to Denver, Colorado to be read. Some system, but this was only 1941. They determined that I had some scar from something, but was okay to be released. So after 12 days in the hospital I was released and transferred to the reserves. Well this all happened just 12 days before Pearl Harbor, so you know in a short while I was back in the service again.

This time instead of being in B Company, I was sent to C Company at Fort Lewis, Washington. While there I was able to visit the house in Tacoma where I had lived when I was about 9 and 10 years old. I made some really good friends there, too. Earl and Helen Ballard, Frank Verbraeken (from Portland). Earl and I went to Portland a few times with Frank, and he taught us some of the fine points of golf and I proceeded to teach them to play “bridge.” Earl and Helen had just been married a little while when he got called, so she moved up to Tacoma from San Francisco to stay until we were shipped overseas.
The Army built a huge shop building (600 feet square) a few miles south at a place called Camp Murray. We (our company) started a giant mechanical school there and our colonel said no way would we ever leave until the war was over because we were able to teach every phase of mechanics and carpentry and upholstering. Welding, crank shaft grinding, you name it, we had someone in our company of 312 who could do it. We felt like that would be a good place to stay. I had been promoted to T3 (same as staff sergeant) and was teaching carburetor and ignition school and felt like I was doing something worthwhile. We soon found out that when General Patton wanted the best outfit for maintenance on his tanks, etc., he got what he wanted, school or no school.

Right - Ray Bennight

Well we left for maneuvers in Virginia to get us ready to go overseas, where to we didn't know. While in Virginia, we were introduced to the most substandard conditions imaginable. Even the most hardy of us got dysentery or some other sickness. I don't know what they were preparing us for because, when left on our own overseas, we were able to fair much better with only one time of much sickness. We finally moved to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey for a few days. I got to visit New York City and look in some phone books and see if any Bennights had come that way. None had remained. In fact, I had looked in all the large cities and found none.

I also got to go to Washington DC for a visit and still thrill at some of the things I saw, especially looking down the side of the Washington Monument from the top, 500 feet straight down. After many more shots and clothing checks, we boarded ship, an Italian ship, which had been seized by the English and was manned by them. This was the flagship of the convoy and our home for the next 18 days (it is November 1942 now). Also General Patton's crew were on this ship (the 1st Armored Division). It soon became apparent that most of the men were going to be “seasick,” so I got guard duty and ended up being one of the permanent sergeants of the guard for the rest of the trip. Well, we circled so much to throw the enemy off that we couldn't tell where we were going, but it was finally announced that some of the other ships had invaded French Morocco in Northern Africa, and we would be landing at Casablanca, Morocco.

It was pleasant weather there, like southern California, only a little warmer. Our landing was uneventful, but a couple days later we were in an air raid and some of our equipment ships in the port were sunk. One of our first jobs was to clean up and put back into service some of the vehicles that had been fished out of the sea. They were a mess, covered with black heavy fuel oil and already corroded from the saltwater. We had to disassemble, clean each part and oil and reassemble. It was slow, but we salvaged a lot of equipment.

Because we were short on transportation, the Army “took over” a lot of civilian vehicles that had been idled for a couple of years for lack of fuel. The people were paid for them. We got the job of making them (the vehicles) run, which in some cases was a pretty good trick.

3rd picture, Ray Bennight in middle

One time one of our boys towed one into the shop and was putting gasoline into the tank (he thought), only it was running on the floor and down a gutter about a hundred feet to where another fellow was welding. We just about ran out of fire extinguishers that time. Our colonel's name was Colonel Hopping and he was hopping mad for sure that time.

We stayed in Casablanca several months, making living quarters and offices in the France auto building, which had been the “Citroen” dealer before the war. During this time I was sent with a crew of men and equipment to move vehicles from ship side as they were hoisted to the ground from the large ships. This involved hooking up batteries, adding fuel and getting them started and driving a couple blocks to a field. They were then picked up by the company that they were issued to. It was interesting, but sometimes a strange monster of a vehicle would be unloaded and we would get behind in our work trying to find the battery, etc. One such time a large shovel was lowered and I finally got the thing running and started pulling levers to find one that would make it go. I almost hit the ship with the bucket, but fortunately I found the Horse brake in time to stop its swing. After I got it moving, I took it over to the lot and tried scooping up some dirt, but it was hard packed and when I swung around and dumped and a few pebbles dropped out, I really got a laugh from the other guys.

I was able to visit Rabad (Rabat), the capital of French Morocco, and many other places nearby, like Port Lyanty and Mekness, Marakesh, Sidi, Kel, Abis. Near Rabad was a large forest of trees from which the harvest is cork, the bark is cork. Casablanca, as well as the other towns and cities of much size are built with white stucco and tile roofs like the Spanish buildings of California. Casablanca is quite large and was a really interesting site, as we could see it for a long time from the Atlantic Ocean before we actually did land. There is a really old Catholic cathedral and it's quite large.

While there we were changed from General Patton's 1st Armored division and assigned to the 7th Army. We still retained a tank transport company that we did maintenance for. We had them all the way through the war and they would tow their trucks over 100 miles to get back to our shop, where they knew we could fix it.

We finally got transfer orders and left on a big convoy. I was assigned to bring up the rear and I had a Jeep loaded with tools and all kinds of small parts, generators, starters, fuel pumps, water pumps, etc. Also an acetylene welding outfit, all kinds of fan belts. I couldn't come into camp at night until all the other trucks got in. I didn't have a problem I couldn't fix, but was always last to get in and last to leave in the morning. We went over the Atlas Mountains and on past Algiers to a town called Constantine, a beautiful place just off the edge of the Sahara Desert. The town (city) was built on the flats above a deep canyon. The canyon was narrow enough to have a bridge over it connecting the two parts of town. Some of our pilots would fly under the bridge for a lark. We set up shop on the desert or south side and I was put in charge of the battlefield recovery platoon. We had six 10-ton wreckers and four 4-ton wreckers assigned to us. Also we had a big 10-wheeler diesel truck pulling a 24-wheel trailer that had a winch with one-inch cable and could drag a crippled 40-ton tank onto the trailer. I drove this rig. Our job was to go out into the desert about 25-50 miles away and bring the crippled tanks back into Constantine to a rail head and load them onto flatcars and ship them to Algiers to either junk or put back into service. It was hard and interesting work. We felt we were doing some good. We had some guys with tents and with a kitchen out in the desert and we got one of the abandoned tanks running and then used it for a “wrecker” to pull other tanks out to the road so we could load them on the trailer. I hauled all of them out, as we only had one trailer rig. One of the 10-ton wreckers traveled with me all the time to help load and unload, and then load the junk on flatcars at the railroad yard. Donald Baer (we called him “Grisly Bear”) drove the wrecker. He was from Sandpoint, Idaho, and about the only one I ever heard of again when we got home finally. We put railroad tracks on the front for a bumper and he could push a tank around sideways if it wouldn't go on the trailer straight. We were out on our own and away from strictly military life.

We pretty well cleaned up that battlefield and were sent on to Tebessa, Tunisia, not far from Biserte one way, and not far from Tunis the other direction. I managed to visit Tunis a few times. It is a large town with streetcars and all. Also we got to visit Carthage, or what is left of it. It is the place mentioned in the Bible where the conquerors sewed the fields with salt so no crops would grow. We didn't do much in this area except get ready for the invasion of Sicily. We put tools and parts into square 5-gallon cans and soldered them shut to keep out seawater, and so they could be floated to get them to shore. We were all set to go, but got our orders canceled because we were 95% sick with dysentery, etc. I hadn't noticed, as I don't catch things easily, it was winter again and cold in the tents with no heat, so I built a stove from a round 5-gallon can and burned crank case drainings in it. Sure made our tent warm, but the black soot didn't do much good for the laundry on the outside lines. From this beginning some of the others built really fancy stoves. This all came to an end soon, however, as we shipped out for Naples, Italy (we missed Sicily altogether).

We loaded all of our truck trailers, etc., on a Navy LST (landing ship transport). It is like a big, flat-bottomed ferry boat in some ways. We had 15 semi-vans on the lower deck along with some trucks and wreckers. My truck was on deck along with many others. The sleeping quarters had 5 hammock-like things hanging from the ceiling, one above the other, metal pipes around them to hold them in shape and to use for a ladder. I never did get into one of them, as we soon got into a storm you wouldn't believe on the Mediterranean Sea. The men who tried to sleep on those bunks got sick and vomited all over the floor. No one could stand up on the slick floor, and then the ship would come up out of the water and slam back down on the water. The chains holding the bunks broke and the guys fell on the messy floor and were sicker than ever. I didn't get sick, and couldn't get anything to eat, either. No one was working in the kitchen either (all sick). The waves looked like they were 100 feet high, and the top 20 feet would break over the top of the ship. Our vehicles on top had heavy damage from the saltwater. The pot metal carburetors and the fuel pumps really corroded fast. Fortunately, the storm let up before we got to Italy, and it was a pleasant relief to pull into Naples Bay, past the Isle of Capri and to see Mount Vesuvius with smoke coming out the top. Naples is a large city and white stucco over rock buildings. All the city around the docks was bombed out during other air raids. We set up shop in the bombed-out place where the Otis Elevator Company had been. The floor was all that was left. We used tarps to make a roof and walls. We stayed there several months and used a nearby building for barracks. While there, some of us got acquainted with some of the civilians and they cooked chicken and homemade noodles. It was a pretty good dish for a change from Army food.

Mount Vesuvius erupted while there and at night we could see the streams of lava coming down the mountain to the villages around the base of the mountain. My friend, Carl Bastady, and I drove out to one of the villages and the lava was barely moving and incredibly hot. The pressure of it against 2-feet thick rock walls was so much the wall would fall down and buildings collapse. The ash from the volcano had built up to about a foot deep. It is easy to see how the Lord destroyed Pompeii when it was ripe in iniquity. Just buried it over 50 feet deep in lava ash from Mount Vesuvius. I went on a tour of Pompeii after it had been dug out and the murals on the walls are still there and the mosaic work is still intact. The evidence of the wickedness of the people shows, too. I would like to show some of the places I have seen to my family, but it is a pretty remote possibility.

We spent the spring and summer in Naples and I made some side trips to Rome and Capua and Salerno, where the great and terrible invasion battle was staged. In Capua (a jewelry-making town) I bought some cameos and sent them home to mom. She gave some to my sisters and to my wife, Zina. The swimming in the warm waters of the Mediterranean was fun. I'm not much of a swimmer, though. While there, we had air raids, but the Army put out smoke screens so the enemy couldn't see the target. One night the bombs were coming right toward us (you could see the flashes). The last one blew up about a block away, fortunately. I was on guard on the roof of this 3-story building. The building was strong with 2-feet thick rock walls at the bottom. The walls wouldn't fall, but when hit the floors all fall to the basement, leaving an empty shell. I went to an R&R area (rest and recuperation) on the southern coast of Italy. Nothing to do, just loaf and swim for a week. It was a welcome change, though.

I did heavy work in all parts of the shop and replaced brake shoes on the 24-wheel tank transport trailers. I took a 10-ton wrecker and turned the trailer upside down, and after all repairs were completed, turned it upright and gave it a road test to see if all the brakes worked. I also did a lot of work on the diesel engine trucks that pulled these trailers.

We finally got everything packed up again and knew that we were on the move again. They never say where for security reasons, but when we boarded ship again, we knew it wasn't back to Morocco. Had to be France. We went past Corsica and landed east of Marseilles. The invasion forces had gone in ahead of us and they used huge gliders that were towed aloft and then silently coasted into France and were abandoned everywhere you looked. They hauled in lots of men and machine guns and Jeeps. When it was safe, we moved up to Besancon, France and started a shop, but only stayed for a couple months. This place was in the mountains right on the edge of the Alps, only 40 miles from Switzerland. We soon moved further north to Nancy, France and spent a cold, frozen winter there. I worked on some motorized cranes and did other heavy maintenance in this area. One of our men, Leonard Mintey, learned French really well and got a girlfriend and decided to be released from the Army in France and get married there. (He did that and later brought her home to the States, but after a few years, they were divorced. He lives in Palmdale, California.)

About the time of the “Battle of the Bulge” we moved up near the Rhine River near Mannheim. I had to drive a large truck crane so couldn't travel with the company, as the truck was too big to go through the underpasses, etc. So I had to find my way as best I could by going around obstacles. I took “Red” Feltman with me. He worked on the railroad at Portola, California before the war, and then returned there afterward. He was a heavy drinker and gambler and he had me taking care of his bankroll (about $3,000) so he would get home with something, but he kept drawing from his bank until he got home broke anyway. We got there finally and the heavy artillery was firing across the river into Germany at the same time the Germans were making a push south of us trying to hook up with the “Bulge” push in the north. All of our push would be cut off, so a great retreat was ordered. We took all our company things back to Nancy again and set up shop in the same place as before. Then we took every available cargo truck and began moving back other companies caught too far into enemy attack area. It was snowing on the mountain roads and visibility was very poor and we couldn't turn on our lights because of enemy aircraft strafing the roads. I doubt if they were nutty enough to fly in a snowstorm, but the MP's sure got mad when you turned on the lights to find which way the road went.

The Germans were unsuccessful in all their efforts. Their sources for fuel for their equipment were blocked and they just ran out of gas so to speak, food and all. The war with Germany was over.

This next move we went to Stockstadt, Germany, but did only minor maintenance for moving vehicles there. It is near Frankfurt. We soon moved to Augsburg, which is north of Munich and east of Stuttgart. From here I got to go down to Munich and to the Alps and see the great ski areas. It was summer, but with binoculars you could see the lifts going very high into the mountains and a big ski jump right downtown with a large semicircular place for seating hundreds of spectators (Garnish-Partigon or something like that). Since I am a member of the church now, I hear of the church holding area conferences there and our daughter, Diane, and Jack were able to go also while stationed in Germany about 1967-68.

Munich is a large city on the Danube River. I expected the “blue Danube” to be something different, but down on the flatland the rivers are all just canals full of boats and barges and locks to change levels as they go down to the sea. It was fun to visit around the area, though, and we got down to the Brenner Pass into Italy once, but of course, weren't allowed any further. I went to Strassburg, France, on the border, and to Struttgart, Germany and to Heidelberg. Heidelberg is a famous university town with students from all over the world and you could see when visiting that not any of that part of town was bombed, only the railroads and roads, to slow down or stop transportation. Struttgart is the home of the Mercedes Benz car factory, which interested me a lot.

Some of the higher ranking Army officers got the new Mercedes and one Colonel brought his to my tuneup shop because it didn't have any power. My reputation really increased when I made it really go. The factory had installed different gaskets under the carburetor with different size holes, so you could only drive so fast during break-in and they would remove them one by one according to the miles driven, but I took them all out at once.

My friend, Frank Verbraeken, from Portland, Oregon, had an uncle and cousins in Antwerp, Belgium, and was able to get a pass and transportation to go visit them. He didn't want to go alone and the Army decided he shouldn't anyway, so I got to go with him (actually I drove a Dodge command car). We drove most all the way in one day. Gives you an idea how small those countries are. Brussels (the Glass City) is beautiful. The buildings downtown are mostly glass. They make glass of all kinds there and much fancy things. We found Frank's uncle (a Catholic priest) at a large school where the students and teachers all lived. He invited us to come back the next day for dinner (he was 75). A cousin of Frank's was there, too. The dinner was outstanding with wine, cigars, and all the trimmings you wouldn't expect to find in wartime countries. All these towns had streetcars and bicycles, not many cars. We had an interesting and enjoyable trip. They speak Flemish there, but many know English. It is only across the water 50 miles or so to England.

Our next move was to Kassel, Germany, even north of Frankfurt. Here we set up a large shop and worked over the trucks from a motor pool area that had 15,000 disabled trucks. Our shop turned out 20 completed trucks each day. I ran a shop where I had 16 mechanics with 32 German helpers and we worked on 16 vehicles at a time. It kept me busy with all their problems, and 48 people to keep track of. It began to look (after the war was over for 6 months in Germany) like we were going to have to fix all those trucks before we could go home. Morale was very low and some just about quit working. Finally, we were loaded into “40 ET8” boxcars on the railroad. 40 ET8 means 40 men or 8 horses. I don't remember how many we had, but it was a mess. They would stop the train so we could go to the car with the kitchen to get food.

We traveled across Germany and France to the port town of LeHavre and caught a small ship to England and stayed a few days at Southampton. We couldn't get any leave here because we were on the move back to the States and they didn't want to “lose” any of us. Finally, we boarded the luxury liner “Queen Elizabeth,” one of the largest ships ever built. It carried 5,000 passengers. So they put 15,000 GI's aboard and gave each an 8-hour chance at the bed. I found a spot under a stairway and didn't use a bed. The ship became a giant gambling hall and many lost all they had in the five days it took to get to New York. My friend, Red Feltman, was one of them.

When we got back to the States, many of us had dreamed of a good dinner and drinking gallons of real milk, but when we tried it, we only got sick. Our bodies had to adjust again to such good food. They split us up here and some of those guys I've never seen again.

The ones going to California were loaded into a C47 airplane with all our belongings and started out to Los Angeles. That was the vibrating-est ride I ever had. The thing felt like it would shake to pieces. We were supposed to go to Fort Worth and gas up, but we got into a storm you wouldn't believe, thunder, lightening, rain, the works. I told someone just put me on the ground and I'll find my way back to California. I don't want to blow it now, after surviving 3 years overseas. The plane took too much fuel and we had to stop at Memphis, Tennessee. We were past the storm by now and no one would believe we came from New York 'cause everything was grounded that direction. We went on and one of our motors went out, so we got a different plane at Fort Worth, Texas and finally, after 23 hours, got to Los Angeles, where I was discharged. They offered to work on my teeth if I would wait until the next day, but I told them I was through waiting, goodbye! But I still had to wait at the bus station. The line was really long and it finally got about time at midnight - daylight savings time ended and it was only 11 p.m., another hour to wait. It was really good to get home to Livingston, California and start trying to be a civilian again after nearly 5 years. I couldn't believe how much prices had gone up!

Raymond Bennight and WWII - summary

2010-04-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon: Raymond's entire written history of his experiences in the Army

Raymond E. Bennight
Military Information

(Taken from his written account, summarized by Loraine Bennight Nielsen on 01/23/2009.)

Date: 02/04/1941
Location: Fort Ord near Monterey, CA
Details: Drafted into the Army, Company B

Date: 08/1941 to 11/1941
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Details: Attended military school for mechanics, graduated 11/1941

Date: About 11/1941
Location: Stockton, CA
Details: Company B moved while dad was in school (above).

Date: 11/1941
Location: Stockton, CA
Details: Was told he could be released from the service because he had been too old when he was drafted. Got a physical exam in order to be discharged and was put in isolation for 12 days with tuberculosis. Later determined that he never had tuberculosis and he was released.

Date: End of 11/1941
Location: Stockton, CA
Details: Released and became part of the Army Reserves 12 days before attack on Pearl Harbor.

Date: 12/1941 or 01/1941
Location: Fort Lewis, WA
Details: Returned to active duty assigned to “C” Company at Fort Lewis.
Taught mechanic skills at a military school called Camp Murray (near Tacoma, WA).
Promoted to T-3 (Staff Sergeant).

Date: About 10/1942
Location: Virginia
Details: Field training before going overseas as part of General Patton’s 1st Armored Division.

Date: 11/1942
Location: Camp Kilmer, NJ
Details: Departed on the flagship of the convoy, an Italian ship the British had seized and manned. 18-day journey to Casablanca, Morocco.

Date: Late 1942/early 1943
Location: Constantine, Morocco
Details: Assigned to the 7th Army - Battlefield Recovery Platoon
Began traveling behind the troops to recover and repair equipment left behind.

Date: Spring and summer 1943
Location: Naples, France
Details: Recovering and repairing trucks/tanks

Date: About the latter half of 1943
Location: Besancon and Nancy, France
Details: Recovering and repairing trucks/tanks

Date: About 1944 to 10/1945
Location: Mannheim, Stockstadt, Augsburg, Kassel, Germany
Details: Recovering and repairing trucks/tanks

Date: About 10/1945
Location: South Hampton, England
Details: Journeyed back to the states on the “Queen Elizabeth” to New York

Date: About 11 or 12/1945
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Details: Released from duty and returned to Livingston, CA, where parents were living at the time.

Raymond Bennight - Birth - 2 years of age

2010-04-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

I was born Wednesday, the 21st of August, 1912, to Joseph Everette and Mary Ann Elizabeth (Cox) Bennight. My dad was 32 years old and my mother was 23. I have a brother, Howard Ogden Bennight, who is a little more than a year older than I. Dad had been married once before and from that union was born a boy and a girl, Denver and Flotilla.

I was born in Centralia, Washington, and we lived there until a short while after my mother died (2 January 1915). Before she met and married dad, she had been Assistant Postmistress to her mother, Elizabeth Cox, who was the Postmistress of Vesta, Arkansas. This is where my dad met her while he was working for the Western Mining Company, nearby. She had only one sister (my Aunt Myrtle) and no brothers. I have one picture of my mother and she looked a lot like my daughter, Loraine. Editor's note: The picture Raymond refers to in his history is on the Home Page. The Picture picture above right was given to our family many years after this hiistory was written. It is MaryAnn Evelyn Cox Bennight with Howard Ogden Bennight in the Centralia, Washington area, about spring/summer of 1911.

Mary ann Eve;This

A Family Portrait, circa 1902

2007-03-28T17:18:00.000-07:00

Parents:
Tandy Kidd Cox
Elizabeth Jane McCormick

Daughters:
Standing - Maryann Evelyn Cox
(later married to Joseph E. Bennight)
Sitting - Myrtle Cox
(Later married to Print Gragg)

More Facts About the Town of Bennight, Washington

2007-03-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Contributed by D. Jeffrey Bennight

Since we live in Lewis County I have had an opportunity to try and find where Bennight Washington was located. I have always been under the impression that this Mine was near Morton, Wa but the people at the Lewis County Historical Museum have found that it was actually a few miles due east of Centralia. They sent me a letter regarding their research and the following paragraph is an excerpt from their letter:

“ The Empress Mine is located on the north half of the southwest corner of Section 8, T 14 N, R 1 W., on a spur of the Eastern Railway and Lumber Company’s line, which runs east from Centralia up the South Fork of Hannaford Creek. This mine, formerly called Bennight’s mine, was opened in 1913 by the Washington Coal and Mining Company. After two years the Empress Coal Company was formed and since 1916 the Centralia Coal mining company has operated the Property.” Taken from the Washington Geological Survey, Henry Landes, State Geologist, Bulletin #19, The Coal Fields of Southwestern Washington , by Harold E Culver, Frank M Lamborn Public Printer 1919.

In the letter I received from The History Museum of Lewis County they also wrote that they looked at some maps and found what could be the site of Bennight Washington. It seems that another railroad, the Centralia and Eastern Railroad Company (formed 1899) spurred off the Eastern Railway line. One map indicates that the C & E line went through section 8. It may have been this separate line that served the Bennight Area.

From this info it seems very likely that this coal mine is the same mine that is now owned by ‘Trans Alta" Canadian corporation. North east of Centralia is the coal fired power generation plant called the Centralia Steam Plant, which up until 3 months ago was getting all of its coal from the neighboring Trans Alta coal mine which is in the same area of Bennight’s mine or which use to be Washington Coal and Mining. The coal mine was closed and 500+ people were laid off about 3 months ago because the power plant can buy coal cheaper from Wyoming coal mines, and have it delivered by rail.

I need to go visit the museum again and see if I can get more info and then look into finding the actual spot of Bennight Washington .

Town of Bennight, Washington

2007-03-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

BENNIGHT, a town in Lewis County. On December 11, 1913, the town was named in honor of J. E. Bennight, manager of the Washington Coal and Mining Company, whose mines at the place so named are on the line of the Eastern Railway & Lumber Company's line to Kopiah.

Pg. 18 of “Origin of Washington Place Names” by Edmond S. Meany, Professor of History, University of Washington Press (Seattle), 1923.
www.drizzle.com/~jtenlen/walewis/meany-lewis.html

Dad Remarries and We Move to Washington – about ages 5-7

2007-03-23T22:37:00.000-07:00

(an excerpt from Raymond E. Bennight’s personal history, 1912-2000)

(Missouri) One of dad’s miners had a pretty and talented daughter. She had finished high school and graduated from “Normal School,” a school for training school teachers, and was teaching school – all eight grades in a country school, and all of this by the time she was 18 years old. Well, she and dad were married on the 25th day of November, 1917. She became my mother and brought much to our home. (Her maiden name was Anne Elizabeth Aitken – Scotch ancestry.) Though she was only 12 years older than I, it seemed okay to Ogden and I. Denver and Flo, being older, went to live with an aunt for a while, but we did see them lots of times during the following years.

Since the mine was all worked out by this time, dad decided we should move back to Washington. We started out in the spring of 1919. We traveled in a red “Baby Overland,” a touring car. www.adclassix.com/images/19willysoverland2.jpg

It was a tremendous trip right from the start. Because of floodwaters, the road bridge approaches were flooded, so dad drove the car across the railroad bridge while we all walked across. We were afraid a train would come or that we might fall off, or the car might bounce off. It took months to get to Washington as the “main” roads were all dirt and gravel or two rows of ruts. I remember when we had 13 flat or blown-out tires all in one day. Dad was fit to be tied. The mountain roads were frightening. I remember how “mad” dad would get because mom was so afraid sometimes she would get out and walk around some of the bad places. Although it was a long and tiring trip for the adults, it was a great adventure and fun for us boys. Imagine going camping every day for months. I remember dad had a big Colt ’45 revolver he carried in a holster on the car door and he shot some animals for food. We saw lots of animals in those days of few people – deer, buffalo, elk, mountain goats, badger, prairie dogs, coyotes and rattlesnakes. And in Yellowstone, lots of bears.

My brother, Denver, and sister, Flo, were with us in Yellowstone and one night we were sleeping and there was a rattling noise. Flo yelled, “Wake up, Dad – there’s a bear in the beans,” but it was only dad getting some carbide from the car to put in his “Miner’s Lamp” so he could scare the bears away with the bright light. Carbide looks like little rocks and when put in the lower part of a carbide light and water is allowed to drip from the upper compartment through a metering valve onto the carbide, it produces acetylene gas, which shoots through a jet and when lighted makes a very good light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/carbide_lamp

Coal Mining With Dad – about age 5

2007-03-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

(an excerpt from Raymond E. Bennight’s personal history. 1912-2000)

We next moved to Missouri where dad bought a coal mine at Macon, Missouri near Unionville, Missouri. This mine was worked out during World War I. Dad didn’t go into Military Service because the coal mine was necessary to the war effort. They told him to keep the mine running and produce a needed commodity. Unlike the war profits of today, the mine was worked out with no big profit for anyone. In this area I remember quite a bit, like hiding in the storm cellar during a bad storm, and going with dad down into the mine after the miners had “cleaned up” (removed the coal shot loose by powder blasts the day before). They had then drilled a new set of holes for another round of shots. After the miners had left the mine, dad would “set the shots” and then one by one, light the fuses. When he lit the first one I wanted to run, but he was so calm and unhurried I knew it must be all right. It was a long way out of the mine and the blasts would start going off one by one before we were all the way out, but we were safe around some corners.