Taylor County, West Virginia Biography of Lee Earl BENNETT ************************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: Material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, AND permission is obtained from the contributor of the file. These pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain the written consent of the contributor. Submitted by Valerie Crook, , March 1999 ************************************************************************** The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 96-97 LEE EARL BENNETT is business manager of the Grafton Sentinel, and has been associated with that stanch old West Virginia newspaper the greater part of the time since he was released from army service. He is one of the younger mem- bers of an old and prominent family in Taylor County, a more complete record being published on other pages. He was born at the old county seat, Pruntytown, November 1, 1892, and during his boyhood was a pupil in the grade schools there. He had two years of high school work in Grafton and also a commercial course, and then took charge of his father's paint store. He left that to become deputy sheriff under his father, serving through the four-year term. and also had charge of the office during the term of Sheriff Melvin Newlon until called to the colors. As a selective service man he was enrolled for duty in Company F. Fortieth Infantry, in the Fourteenth Division. His first assignment was at Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, then at Camp Custer, Michigan, and after the signing of the armistice the regiment was ordered to Camp Sherman, Ohio, for guard duty. He was discharged there as a first-class private, and he resumed civilian life March 1, 1919, as a clerk in the accountants office of the Baltimore & Ohio Division at Grafton. Soon afterward he joined the business department of the Sentinel as bookkeeper, and since 1921, has been business manager. Mr. Bennett is finance officer of Taylor County Post of the American Legion, is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and belongs to the Methodist Protestant Church. September 7, 1917, Mr. Bennett married Eileene Burdett Batson, only child of G. H. A. and Lucy Maud (Burdett) Batson. She was born at Pruntytown, March 8, 1893, and was educated in the grade schools there and had two years in the Wesleyan College at Buckhannon. Mr. and Mrs. Bennett have a daughter, Georgeanna, born July 29, 1918, and a son, Louis Lee, born February 21, 1922. Mrs. Bennett's family is an old and conspicuous one in the Pruntytown community. Her great-grandfather, James Batson, came from Loudoun County, Virginia, in pioneer times, was a shoemaker by trade, and followed that occu- pation during the rest of his active life at Pruntytown. He married Sarah Rawlings, and both are buried at Pruntytown. Their children were: Elizabeth, who became the wife of Lamkin Newlon and lived in Taylor County; Thomas, a saddler who followed his trade at Pruntytown and later returned to his home in old Virginia, where he died; John W., whose record follows; James W., who was a shoemaker and later a farmer; Mary Jane, who married Christian Core and lived in Pruntytown and later in Grafton, where she died; Calvin Emery, who was a shoemaker, later in the coal busi- ness and died at Flemington; Susan B., who married Milton Holland and lived in Monongalia and Marion counties, dying in the latter; Washington Randolph was a soldier of the Union Army, an early stage-driver between Fairmont and Morgantown, later a teamster at Fairmont, where he died. John W. Batson, grandfather of Mrs. Bennett, was a native of Loudoun County and a small boy when the family came to Pruntytown, where he learned the shoemaker's trade and worked at it as long as he was able. He died there in 1913, at the venerable age of eighty-eight. He was active in the Methodist Protestant Church, was a strong partisan of the great whig statesman Henry Clay, and an equally ardent follower of Abraham Lincoln in politics. John W. Batson married Elnora Kunst, who died in 1920. Her father, G. H. A. Kunst, was a native of Germany, came to the United States many years before the Civil war, and spent his life at Pruntytown, where for many years he was an active merchant. Of the four children of John W. and Mrs. Batson the two survivors are George H. A. and Mrs. John W. Newlon of Keyser, West Virginia. George H. A. Batson is a native of Pruntytown, his birth occurring on the property of Charles E. Bunner. He at- tended a subscription school and then the public school, and during vacation spent most of his time around a village store, an association that caused him, when he decided that the time had arrived for a permanent vocation, to become an employe in the store of C. F. W. Kunst at Grafton. A few years later he joined the store of John H. Kunst at Prunty- town, and for ten years was connected with the West Virginia Reform School, now known as the Industrial School for Boys, at Pruntytown. He was steward and subsequently assistant superintendent of that institution. Politically he has always voted as a republican, has been a party worker in Taylor County and has been a delegate in numerous local and congressional conventions. He is one of the Official Board of the Pruntytown Methodist Protestant Church and is a Scottish Rite Mason. In Taylor County Mr. Batson married Miss Lucy Maud Burdett, who is also a native of Pruntytown, and daughter of James Burdett.