Bunt treeHEDLEY BENNETT (1888 - 1969)
Hedley Bennett was born November 27, 1888 in St, Dennis, Cornwell, England, the son of Daniel and Emma Jane Bennett. Daniel was an accredited local preacher and Hedley followed in his foot-steps, being placed on trial as a local preacher at the age of 18 in 1906 in St. Dennis. He took the local preacher's written examination and was fully accredited in St. Columb Circuit Bible Christian Church after oral examination at Carne Hill, St. Dennis in 1907. He served as a local preacher while working in the kaoline clay pits.
In 1912 he decided to emigrate to the United States of America to work in the copper mines in the Michigan Keweenaw Peninsula where many Cornish men were already working. He purchased a ticket on the wonderful, new, unsinkable Titanic, but his large travel trunk with all his worldly possessions inside had not arrived in Southampton and he turned in his ticket and waited for the trunk to catch up with him before booking on the next ship.
He arrived in New York City in April 1912. His journey to Michigan entailed several railroad lines, New York to New Jersey to Buffalo, NY to Penn Haven Junction on the Lehigh Valley Rail Road. He traveled through Canada from Hamilton to London to Sarnia and into Port Huron. He then went via Lapeer, Lansing and South Bend to Chicago on the Grand Trunk Railroad where he transferred to the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad with only minutes to spare between stations. It was a three hour lay-over on the schedule, but it was on to Green Bay with no pause for food or drink. As he journeyed north from Green Bay, Wisconsin he described the "wild country", saying good-bye to any large scale cultivation of land and seeing only patches of cleared land as they traveled through miles and miles of trees. Occasionally the remnants of an old lumber camp or the evidence of a forest fire could be seen.
From Iron Mountain, Michigan he journeyed on the Copper Range Railroad and evidence of mining activity came into view. Arriving in Houghton at noon on April 29th allowed time for lunch in a Chinese "Cook Shop" before proceeding by train to Painesdale. He described this leg of the journey as the slowest of slow rides, as the "stiff" grade made heavy work for the engine. As he passed Trimountain and South Range depots he watched for a familiar face but it was not until arriving in Painesdale that he felt he was among friends again. The first treat on arrival was a hot cup of "English" tea, They had traveled from New York to Houghton with nothing hot to drink. He settled in to a local boarding house and was soon working in the mines. His physical self was in Michigan but he left his heart behind in St. Dennis where his fiance Mary Grace Bunt was teaching in the primary school. The plan was for him to work and save money to send to her for passage to the United States, thinking this would take about a year. After six months of working in the copper mines in Painesdale, Hedley decided that was not what he wanted to do the rest of his working life. The mine conditions were unacceptable for long term employment. He applied and was accepted at Northwestern University in Illinois, going on to Garrett Bible Institute, graduating in 1918. To supplement his meager savings for tuition and daily bread he served as a supply pastor to several congregations.
In 1914 he was appointed supply pastor to Engadine, Michigan. He would tell his family of how he rode his bicycle on the railroad tracks out to various stops along the line where baptisms, weddings and funerals were conducted. Being a young single man he was assured of a dinner invitation from several mothers where unmarried daughters lived. He was glad to be able to honestly say he was already :spoken for". The trips out from Engadine often meant he would be returning late at night after dark on the railroad tracks that ran through dense woods right up to the edge of the tracks and he admitted to being quite frightened at times when the wolves could be heard howling in the woods. Until I was a young adult, I believed he rode a bicycle on a single rail with wonderful acrobatic skill, only to learn that he had a "railroad attachment" - available from Sears Roebuck for $8.50, which consisted of three braces between the bicycle and an adjustable steel wheel which fit on the opposite track of the bicycle track, holding the bicycle in place. This was the only means of transportation he could afford and often the only kind available.
In September of 1917 he was admitted on trial to the Detroit Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and served charges in Turner and Twining. At last he had saved enough money to send to England for Mary Grace Bunt who had been teaching school and hand sewing her wedding dress and filling her hope chest. But once her ticket money was received she had to find someone acceptable as a travel companion, as single young women did not travel unescorted. A suitable couple known to her family was to come to the United States and Mary Grace Bunt left Cornwell to arrive in Montreal, Canada in October of 1919. Her escorts saw that she got on the train in Montreal and she journeyed to Port Huron, Michigan, Hedley met her at the train station and after collecting her trunk he took her to the parsonage of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Port Huron where she changed from travel clothes into her wedding finery from her trunk, and they were married by the Rev. D. Stanley Shaw a friend of Hedley's on October 25, 1919. When asked why she didn't wait and look him over after seven long years of separation, she replied she only had a one-way ticket. Hedley was ordained a Deacon in 1919 and an Elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church Detroit Conference in September of 1920. They served charges together in Vanderbilt, Bently, Troy and Big Beaver, Perry, Unionville and Owendale, Oxford, Crystal Falls, Ironwood, Flint Bristol and Diamond, Milford and Vernon. They raised five children in many parsonages - some lovely places and a few barely adequate. He, early on, became a jack-of-all trades in the fixing-up and repair of living quarters. Raising five children in the Great Depression of the 1920's and 1930's on a preacher's salary was difficult at best. Sometimes the only cash in the house was what was in the offering plate on Sunday, but we as children never felt poor or went hungry. Farm produce - vegetables - a chicken - would often be left on the porch, and at Christmas time treats of fruit and candy and my first doll with real hair were left for us to find on our return home after Christmas Eve services. Our parsonage life was a happy time.
Both Hedley and Mary Grace were born and raised in Cornwall, England - an area where people were trading their tin and clay with far away countries in 1400 B.C. long before the rest of England was engaged in any similar enterprise. Driving winds and raging seas on north and south coasts forged a fierce independence and stubborn pride into the Cornish peoples. The teachings of Methodism found fertile ground in these no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is people and their sense of community and depndence on each other made sharing their faith and preaching came naturally. Hedley always acknowledged his indebtedness to his home Chapel in St. Dennis and to his first appointment at age 18 as a local preacher to Talskiddy where a hearth-side visit to a Mother Pearce found him kneeling by her chair as she placed her hands upon his head and blessed the boy that was to preach at chapel that evening. Hedley died at the age of 81 after living on Providence Street in Flint, Michigan for several years, saying he had lived by the grace of Providence all his life. How rich our memories are - Bertha Grace Bennett Fenwick - daughter
