Pughs and Bennets

Above: 1910 Census, North Braddock Borough, Allegheny Co., Pa.

This is a story about connections between the Pugh family of
Somerset Twp., Somerset Co., and Oscar French Bennet of Pittsburgh.

The Pughs and Oscar French Bennett

By William R. Tipton ~ February 2011 (Rev. April 2016)

Elizabeth E. “Lizzie” Pugh was born on March 14, 1867, in Somerset Township, Somerset County, Pa., to Ephraim and Margaret “Maggie” (Will) Pugh. On Aug. 27, 1888, she married Charles R. Bittner, who was born in Aug. 1867. They had a daughter, Maggie E., born in December of 1888. Maggie died January 16, 1891, aged 2 years and 28 days. She was buried in the Frieden's Lutheran Cemetery, Somerset Township, Somerset County, Pa. Lizzie had no more children after Maggie.

Sometime during the next few years, Charles and Lizzie moved to East Pittsburgh, near Braddock, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pa. Lizzie’s younger brother Edward Dorsey “Dorse” Pugh came to live with Charles and Lizzie. We know that Charles, Lizzie, and Dorse were there by the spring of 1899 because another of Lizzie’s younger brothers, Ross Elwood Pugh, wrote in his 1899 diary about his trip to Braddock to visit Lizzie and Dorse. Ross went there on April 3 and stayed until April 8, when he came home by train.

Charles, Lizzie, and Dorse are still together in East Pittsburgh Borough according to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census. Charles’s occupation is a painter. Sometime between 1900 and 1910, Charles and Lizzie split up. Charles eventually returns to Somerset County and dies July 12, 1936, in Somerset. He is buried in the Union Cemetery, Meyersdale.

Meanwhile, by 1910, Lizzie has become a housekeeper for the John T. Bennett family in North Braddock Borough, Allegheny County (this borough borders on East Pittsburgh Borough, where Lizzie lived with Charles). John was a widower with three children, having lost his wife Lizzie (Elizabeth Lundy) in 1907. He hired Lizzie Bittner to help manage the household. John’s youngest child was his son Oscar, who was seven years old in 1910. More about Oscar later.

How Lizzie came to be John Bennett’s housekeeper is not known. Perhaps she answered a newspaper ad. However, there could have been a connection back in Somerset County. In 1860, there is a Catherine Bennett, age 6, living in the household of Ephraim Pugh and four of his younger siblings (this was 7 years before Lizzie was born). By 1870, this same Catherine Bennett had moved next door to the home of Ephraim’s parents, James and Rachel Pugh, and was a domestic servant for the aging couple. Nothing more is known about her, and no connection between Catherine and John T. Bennett in North Braddock has been found.

Another interesting fact is that Ephraim Pugh had a neighbor named Bennett. The 1876 Beers Atlas of Somerset County shows the A. Bennett farm next to Ephraim’s farm along Sheep Ridge Road in Somerset Township. This was probably Abram Bennett, as the 1870 census shows this man and his family in the same area. Any connection between Abram Bennett and John T. Bennett or Catherine Bennet is not known.

On the 1910 census record, Lizzie claimed to be a widow; this was common at that time to avoid the stigma associated with being separated or divorced. Her former husband, Charles, did the same, claiming in the 1920 census that he was a widower. Lizzie never married again, and it is probable that Charles also never married again. By 1920, John Bennett’s children are grown and gone, but Lizzie is still his housekeeper. By 1930, Lizzie is back home in Listie, Somerset County, and caring for her elderly widowed mother, Maggie.

Tragedy came to the Pugh family when on election day, November 8, 1932, Lizzie’s brother Robert Garfield Pugh and Robert’s wife Emmaline Imelda "Emma" (Custer) Pugh were struck by a drunk driver (John G. Zevely, attorney from Morgantown, W. Va., and future mayor of Morgantown) in the lane beside their home along the Stoystown Road while they were walking home from voting in town (Somerset). Coincidentally, passengers in a car behind Zevely were Robert's nephew, Richard E. Pugh (son of Robert's brother Ross), and Richard's three-year-old son. They witnessed the horrific event along with the car's driver and Richard's friend, Jim Werner. Robert Pugh died the next day and Emma passed a few days later. They left many orphans behind, and their Aunt Lizzie moved in with the children to keep the kids together.

Now our story returns to Oscar Bennett, the child that Lizzie helped raise in her years as John Bennett’s housekeeper.

Oscar French Bennett was born February 25, 1903, in Allegheny County, Pa., the third child of John T. and Lizzie Bennett. According to the 1920 census, Oscar was a 16-year-old sailor on board the U.S.S. Pittsburgh based in what is now Croatia. He was discharged from the Navy in 1922. In 1923 he married Ethyl Kathleen Kneebone, and they had two children: Ethel Elizabeth (1924) and Oscar John (1926). By 1930, Oscar had joined the Army and was stationed at Fort Howard, Baltimore County, Md. By 1940, Oscar was back with Ethyl and the children in North Braddock. But not for long.

Meanwhile, Lizzie is raising her neices and nephews (Robert’s children), which included Ethel Margaret Pugh. When Ethel was 18 years old, in 1922, she gave birth to a daughter she named Sibyl Virginia Pugh. Ethel was young and unmarried, so she and Sibyl lived with Robert’s other children in the household managed by Lizzie. After Lizzie died in 1938, Ethel became the head of the household and disposed of her parent's house, then moved into Somerset town taking along Sibyl and three of Ethel's younger siblings.

The circumstances that brought Oscar Bennett and Sibyl Pugh together is a mystery, but somehow they got together and in the Spring of 1942 Sibyl got pregnant by Oscar (who was still married), and Kathleen Bennett was born on Jan. 16 1943. Oscar finalized his divorce from Ethyl on August 19, 1944, and one week later he and Sibyl were married on August 26, 1944, in Somerset. This union produced three more children; Michael R. (1945), Jerry A. (1946), and Thomas D. (1948).

So it happened that the boy Oscar Bennett whom Lizzie helped raise in the Bennett household near Pittsburgh grew up, served in the Navy, got married and had children, then left his family in North Braddock to start a new family with Lizzie's Grand Niece Sibyl in Somerset.

Oscar enlisted again in the military, serving in the Army during WWII from July 7, 1942 to March 19, 1945. Oscar passed away in Somerset February 9, 1970, and is buried in St. John's Cemetery, Somerset Co., Pa. Sibyl passed on June 3, 2000, and is buried with Oscar. Elizabeth E. “Lizzie” (Pugh) Bittner passed away on April 1, 1938, and is buried next to her daughter in the Frieden's Lutheran Cemetery.

Oscar French Bennett and son, ca. 1950

Epilogue: A grandchild of Oscar's from his first marriage (a son of Oscar John Bennett) has written online that Oscar had very little to do with his first family, and had pretty much separated from his first wife after seven years of marriage (about 1930, when Oscar was doing a stint in the Army). However he must have remained close enough to be enumerated with his first family in the 1940 census. Here is a quote from that writer (whose identity is misplaced):

"My memories of Grand Pap Bennett are quite limited and are primarily of a cheerful man who strutted around like a banty rooster and who was proud of his children by his second wife. I was not close to him and saw him rarely, and my father did not speak often of him. The most colorful memory I have of him is of Grandma Bennett calling him "that damned Irishman," which she never explained, and which I know she did not mean to be complimentary."

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