Biographical Sketch of George S. BENNETT (1893); Chester County, PA

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Source: "Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Chester County, Pennsyl-
vania, comprising a historical sketch of the county," by Samuel T. Wiley
and edited by Winfield Scott Garner, Gresham Publishing Company, Phila-
delphia, PA, 1893, pp. 828-9.

"GEORGE S. BENNETT, a member of the window glass manufacturing firm of
G. S. Bennett & Co. of Spring City, and a representative business man of
Chester county, is a son of David S. and Annie (Abel) Bennett, and was
born December 4, 1858, at Winslow, New Jersey.  He received his education
in the common schools of his native town, and took a thorough course in
one of the leading commercial institutions of Philadelphia.  Being thus
specially fitted for business life, he engaged with his father in the
window glass trade.  In 1882 they established a window glass and painters'
supply house in Philadelphia, which they are still conducting at No. 114
North Ninth street, that city.  Their success was of such an encouraging
character that at the end of six years business transactions in the Quaker
City, they resolved to widen their field of operations by embarking in the
manufacture of window glass.  They built a plant at Millville, New Jersey,
which they operated under the firm name of G. S. Bennett & Co. for three
years, when its capacity was not sufficient to meet the demands of the
trade which they had secured by that time.  They were then faced by the
alternative of enlarging the plant or removing to a more favorable local-
ity and erecting larger works, and after a careful study of the situation
resolved upon the latter course.

"Of the many places offering favorable inducements they selected Spring
City as having superior advantages for their line of business.  They lo-
cated their present plant here in the spring of 1891, and it has been pro-
nounced by those able to judge, as one of the best equipped window glass
plants in the United States.  Their two main buildings are respectively
ninety by ninety and ninety by one hundred and fifteen feet in dimensions,
while an additional building forty by two hundred feet has been lately
erected.  They employ one hundred and fifteen men, of whom nearly all earn
six dollars per day.  Their annual output is now three million feet of
window glass, but their trade has increased so rapidly during the last
year that the firm contemplates doubling the capacity of their works in
order to meet the future orders of their daily increasing number of
patrons.  They also own and operate a pottery for the manufacture of
crucibles for glass house consumption, and rank among the most successful
business men of Pennsylvania and the leading window glass manufacturers of
the United States.  Mr. Bennett is a republican in political sentiment,
and but few men of his years have been more successful in the business
world.

"On October 13, 1887, Mr. Bennett was united in marriage with Annie Berger,
daughter of Levi Berger, a member of the firm of Berger Bros. of Philadel-
phia.

"The Bennett family has been settled for over a century in New Jersey,
where William Bennett, the grandfather of George S. Bennett, was born and
reared.  He was a glass worker, married and reared a family.  His son,
David S. Bennett (father), was born at Cumberland, that State, in 1838.
He learned the business of window glass making, and by thirty years of
steady and continuous work in every department of that industry, thorough-
ly fitted himself to undertake the manufacture of window glass, which he
did in 1882, at Millville, New Jersey.  In 1891 he came to Spring City,
where he is a member of the present window glass manufacturing firm of
G. S. Bennett & Co., which has been noticed fully in a preceding para-
graph.  He married Annie Abel, a native of Burlington, New Jersey, and
they have had six children: George S., Laura E., wife of R. E. Pond, a
route agent of the Adams Express Company, and who resides in Trenton,
New Jersey; Harry, manager of his father's Philadelphia glass store;
Frank, who is connected with the same store; Lily and Lizzie, the latter
now deceased."