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Descendants of Hardiman Bennett
52.ZELMA KATE5 BENNETT (JOHN CARMINE4, JASPER NEWTON3, YOUNG2, HARDIMAN1) was born Private.She married ROBERT K. BARNES Private.He died 1995.
Children of ZELMA BENNETT and ROBERT BARNES are:
| i. | ?6 BARNES, b. Private. | ||
| ii. | ? BARNES, b. Private. |
53.JOHN CARMINE BENNETT5 JR (JOHN CARMINE4BENNETT, JASPER NEWTON3, YOUNG2, HARDIMAN1) was born January 15, 1912 in Waynesville, N.C., and died December 26, 1997.He married GRACE CAROLYN MANEY Private, daughter of JAMES MANEY and DORA BURLESON.She was born Private.
Child of JOHN JR and GRACE MANEY is:
| 84. | i. | CAROLYN DELAINE6 BENNETT, b. Private. |
54.DOCTOR GEORGE WILLIS5 BENNETT (JOHN CARMINE4, JASPER NEWTON3, YOUNG2, HARDIMAN1) was born 1919, and died January 02, 1994.He married CAROLINE DILLARD.She died August 1995.
Children of GEORGE BENNETT and CAROLINE DILLARD are:
| i. | ?6 BENNETT, b. Private. | ||
| ii. | ? BENNETT, b. Private. | ||
| iii. | ? BENNETT, b. Private. |
55.JALIE FRANCES GILLETT5 JARRETT (ELIZABETH EMOLINE4BENNETT, JASPER NEWTON3, YOUNG2, HARDIMAN1) was born May 12, 1888 in Haywood County, NC, and died October 03, 1914 in Charlotte, NC.She married CARL M. DANNER May 27, 1906.He was born May 12, 1888, and died October 03, 1960.
More About CARL M. DANNER:
Burial: Unknown, Elmwood Cemetery, Charlotte, NC
Children of JALIE JARRETT and CARL DANNER are:
| i. | ALICE ELIZABETH6 DANNER, b. April 06, 1907, Maryville, TN; d. February 20, 1996; m. ALLEY WARNER; d. 1949. | ||
| ii. | JAMES RALPH DANNER, b. Private. | ||
| iii. | WILLIAM RAYMOND DANNER, b. Private. | ||
| iv. | DENNIS CARL DANNER, b. February 19, 1911; d. August 06, 1935. |
| More About DENNIS CARL DANNER: Burial: Unknown, Elmwood Cemetery, Charlotte, NC |
| v. | RAYMOND FREDRICK DANNER, d. 1931. |
56.KELLY EDMON5 BENNETT (AURELIUS MCDONALD4, ARCHIBALD LAFAYETTE3, YOUNG2, HARDIMAN1) was born 1890 in Haywood County, NC, and died 1974 in Bryson City, NC.He married OLA TELA ZACHARY December 30, 1913 in Sylva, NC.She died Unknown.
Notes for KELLY EDMON BENNETT:
****The following information was compiled by Winston and Barbara Bennett from the following sources:The Heritage of Swain County 1871-1987 published by the Swain County Genealogical and Historical Society.Stories found in the Asheville Times written by John Parris.
Kelly Edmon Bennett was the Mountain Man of a thousand stories and a thousand legends.They called him the Apostle of the Great Smokies.
For more than half a century, the mountains had been a love he cherished to himself and championed to the nation.To him the mountains were heaven, and heaven was his home."Of course, " he said, "there are taller mountains, but none so friendly and none so beautiful.They are truly great."And at the age of 81, he knew the Smokies like th palm of his hand.There's not a peak he hasn't climbed nor a stream he hasn't fished.
When he was born just up the way at Whittier in 1890, the Smokies were a lost world, a land back of beyond, an untamed wilderness in America's front yard.His father Aurelius McDonald Bennett, was a doctor.They moved to Bryson City when Kelly was two years old.Bryson City was only a village then.The forest was all around.He and his younger brother Percival took to the woods when they were barely "hoe-handle-high."
But both were equally fascinated by the medical lore they picked up from their father and at the age of 15, Kelly had already started helping with prescriptions.In 1905, Kelly helped his father set up a drug store in Bryson City.Then he went to the University of North Carolina and became a licensed pharmacist.He returned to Bryson City to carry on his chose profession."It never entered his mind to settle down some place else," he said.He came back and took over the drug store in 1912.His brother, Percival came back in 1917 to share an office with their father.
Kelly not only found the time but made the time to hike and fish the Smokies.Meanwhile, he set out to help better his people's lives by getting into a fight for better roads that would open up Swain County to the outside world.In 1917, he got himself elected to the State Senate.Right off the bat, he introduced a good road bill.It got clobbered.The down-east lawmakers could have cared less about the mud tracks and sled roads of the mountains.
But Kelly Bennett didn't give up, and two years later they passed his bill in its original form.By the time the state took over the county road system in 1931, Swain County boasted $2 million worth of gravel roads.
Meanwhile, he had started on the crusade that was to earn him the sobriquet of Apostle of the Great Smokies.
One day while meeting the train at the Bryson City station, a stranger stepped down from one of the cars and introduced himself to Bennett."My name," he told Bennett, "is Horace Kephart."He said he was a librarian from St. Louis and he was looking for a place where he could get away from all the hustle and bustle of civilization.
"Kephart spent two days with me," Bennett said."He wanted to know about the mountains and the mountain people.He was full of questions.He wanted a place where he could get off by himself.Kelly sent him down to Hazel Creek."The two became good friends.Kelly let him to the high peaks and into the remote cloud hung coves.They walked the spine of the Smokies, camped out under the stars and in the rain, fished the cloistered streams where trout had never felt the hook.And all the time, Kelly was preaching the gospel of the Smokies.He told Kephart that the world should know about the beauty and mystery and magic of the mountains.
Kephart, from his lonely cabin on the Sugar Fork of Hazel Creek, began putting down on paper what Kelly felt about the Smokies.He sent some of his articles off to some of the national magazines, along with scenic shots Kelly had captured with his camera.But while Kephart wrote, the lumbermen moved in and began leveling the forests of virgin timber.Sawmills sprang up on every creek and loggins railroads fanned out to the very tops of the Smokies.This wasn't what Kephart and Bennett wanted.
So they joined others in a crusade to save the Smokies from the woodsman's ax and set it aside as a sanctuary.Kelly got up money and sent Kephart up to Washington to plead with government offcials.The secretary of the Interior proved sympathetic and delegated a commission to come down and look over the Smokies.
"The folks who came down from Washington spent several weeks here, " Kelly recalled."Kephart and I and a woodsman named Bill Wiggins took them all over the Smokies.We hiked up Nolands Creek to Clingmans Dome where they could really see what the Smokies were like."In time, what with Kephart and Bennett flooding the country with stories and pictures about the Smokies, the Rockefeller family came up with a proposition to put up half the money needed for the purchase of a half million acres of Smokies land.
The people of North Carolina and Tennessee chipped in with their pennies and nickels and dimes to match Rockefeller dollar for dollar.
"The federal government," Bennett pointed out, "didn't put up one red cent.The park lands were bought by the people of North Carolina and Tennessee and the Rockefeller family."
But before he could see this dream come true, Kephart was killed in an automobile accident near Bryson City in 1931.But Bennett kept right on fighting and soon the park was a reality.
Meanwhile, under a contractual agreement, Swain County gave up an additional 44,000 acres of land for inclusion in the park with the provision that the federal government build a road along the southern boundary from Bryson City to Fontana.The contract was made in 1943, but the federal government has refused to build the road.ONly a little more than six miles have been completed.
"The supercharged conservationists who are fighting the road now," Bennett said, "didn't open their mouths when the contract was made.Now they want to pretend it was never made.All of which is a shame and a disgrace."
"This is the one national park that was paid for by the people and not by the government.And it was set aside for the people and the use of all people.It was never meant to be locked up and made available to only a small minority.And as long as I have a breath left in me I will fight to see that the government either lives up to its contract or returns those 44,000 acres to the people of Swain County."
Those who tangled with Kelly Bennett came to learn that he was not a man to be taken lightly.He was outspoken and frank, even in situations where it made him enemies.But at all times, he strived to do what he thought was best for the mountains and the mountain people.
His credentials for public service cover a breathtaking range.They cover 14 years as a mayor of Bryson City, four as Bryson City Alderman, 20 years on the school board, and five years on the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy.He served since 1947, when it was established, on the North Carolina National Park, Parkway and Forests Development Commission.He was a member of the State Senate in 1917, 1931, 1937, and two special sessions.He was district governor of Rotary International in 1955-56.He was named North Carolina Pharmacist of the Year for 1954.He was one of the founders of Western North Carolina Associated Communities and the Western North Carolina Tourist Association.He was one of the founders and trustee of the Cherokee Historical Association, producer of the famous outdoor Indian drama, "Unto These Hills."
He was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, a 32nd degree Mason and a Shriner.He was an expert gardener and a grower of prize-winning flowers.For 68 years he carried his camera into every cove and up every mountain and stream of the Smokies.His picture file of the Smokies contains 8,000 black and white negatives and 5,000 color slides.
He worked seven days a week behind the prescription counter of his drug store where his daughter, Mary Alice, the region's first woman pharmacist, helped him.Even with all this, he somehow found the time to carry on the civic projects and get off into the Smokies to hike, take pictures, and occasionally wet a hook.And when the folks of Swain County got ready to celebrate the county's centennial, the picked Kelly Bennett to head it up.
He was truly the man of a thousand stories and a thousand legends.And somehow he seemed as durable and the mountains of his love.
-----Shortly after his death in 1974, a peak about 4 miles north of Bryson City, in the Park was named "Mount Bennett."His friend, Lamar Gudger, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, spoke at the dedication ceremonies:
"We have come together to dedicate a peak named for Kelly Bennett, not the highest peak, but certainly one which had muchmeaning in the life of both Kelly and his beloved Tela.This was the mountain on which they would look each afternoon as the sun set in the Smokies.You had to know Kelly to understand that the mountains were the love of his life, that despite his service to his profession, to the government by his election to the general assembly, he was first and foremost a mountaineer.Gazing at his peak from here, I recall the words of my own home county's motto:'Give us men to watch our mountains.'You in Swain County had such a man in Kelly Bennett.I personally want to thank you for sharing him with the rest of Western North Carolina, the rest of the state, indeed the rest of the nation and world."
**Kelly E. Bennett, Jackson County District 37, Senate District 38, 1917 to 1919 Senator's Home Swain Co., NC.(Obtained from the book:North Carolina Government: 1585-1974 a Narrative and Statistical History Raleigh :Department of the Secretary of State, 1975.) -Information found by Winston and Barbara Bennett.\
***Jackson County Marriage Records **File #13-000066 Kelly Edmon Bennett and Ola Tela Zachary married.12-30-1913 in Sylva, NC.Witness J. Whitehead and W.M. Hughes. -Information found by Winston and Barbara Bennett.
More About KELLY EDMON BENNETT:
Burial: Unknown, Hill Top Cemetery of Bryson City, NC
Children of KELLY BENNETT and OLA ZACHARY are:
| i. | JEAN ZACHARY6 BENNETT, b. Private; m. WILLIAM S. SWANT, Private; b. Private. | ||
| ii. | MARY ALICE BENNETT, b. Private; m. JOSEPH WARREN GRAYER, Private; b. Private. | ||
| iii. | GWENDOLYN MARIE BENNETT, b. Private; m. SAM JENEAL COLEMAN, Private; b. Private. |
57.MACK ELDRIDGE5 BENNETT (WILLIAM J.4, CREIGHTON MAURY3, YOUNG2, HARDIMAN1) was born April 13, 1891 in Cataloochee, NC, and died June 17, 1970 in Franklin, Macon Co., NC.He married ZENA ALMA YARBOROUGH April 21, 1917 in White Oak, Haywood Co., NC.She was born October 11, 1891 in Haywood County, N.C., and died May 29, 1992 in Franklin, Macon Co., NC.
Notes for ZENA ALMA YARBOROUGH:
Burial - Iotia Baptist Church Cem - Franklin, Macon Co., NC(Zena Yarborough Bennett died at home in the Iotla Community of Franklin, Macon Co., NC***From Patti Carpenter).
Child of MACK BENNETT and ZENA YARBOROUGH is:
| 85. | i. | ESTELLE MARY6 BENNETT, b. March 21, 1919, Waynesville, N.C.; d. April 15, 1994, Franklin, Macon Co., NC. |