Source: https://captainbennishouse.weebly.com/simpson-family.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:37:30+00:00

Document:
Lizzie was born on June 2, 1840 and died on April 1, 1929. She was the daughter of Paul Simpson, Jr. (1809-1849) and Hannah Thorndike Dyer.
Her father Paul, Jr. was the son of Paul Simpson and Hannah Sullivan.
Hannah Sullivan was the daughter of Daniel Sullivan and Abigail Bean.
​So when Spiro V. Bennis married Lizzie Simpson, he was marrying into one of the longest family lines in Sullivan. Daniel Sullivan, Lizzie's great grandfather, was who the town of Sullivan was named after!
"WAS A GRAND OLD LADY"
SULLIVAN, April 6 - In the passing of Elizabeth Hannah Bennis on April 1, Sullivan loses one of its oldest and most beloved daughters, and loses also its last direct connection with its founders. She would have been eighty-nine years of age in June.
The family of her grandparents settled on the end of Waukeag Neck, now Sorrento, where the cellar walls and old lilac bushes still mark the site of their early struggles and historic home. Their house was burned to the ground during the revolution by a company of British soldiers who landed from a war vessel sent to capture Capt. Daniel Sullivan, a brother of General John Sullivan in command under Washington, and of Governor James Sullivan of Massachusetts. Capt. Sullivan's wife and children were turned out unprotected into a winter night and their husband and father taken to the ill famed Jersey prison ship.
One of the daughters, Hannah Sullivan, was the grandmother of Mrs. Bennis who had from Hannah Sullivan's own lips the story of the raid and burning. Mrs. Bennis was therefore one of the now slender company who had talked with an actual participant in revolutionary events.
During the Civil War Mrs. Bennis, then in her early twenties, enlisted as a nurse and was on duty in a hospital in Baltimore which received wounded men from the nearby battlefields. At the close of the war she returned to her home in Sullivan and met there Capt. Spiro V. Bennis who had likewise come from war service having served as an officer in the navy during the full term of the war.
Capt. Bennis had come to Sullivan as the representative of James E. Ward & Company of New York at the old Sullivan ship yards during the building of the brig Havana for the New York West Indies trade. A most happy marriage resulted from the acquaintances. It was terminated by the death of Capt. Bennis in 1916 less than a year before they would have celebrated their golden wedding. They are survived by their four children, Rosa V. Saunderson of Boston, Fred V. and Ida V. Bennis of Sullivan and Karl V. Bennis of California, all of whom still look upon Sullivan as their home.
Mrs. Bennis made many voyages to the West Indies in the brig Havana and her memories of these trips were stirring and clear to the end of her life. She was one of the organizers of the Liberal Christian Society of Sullivan and one of the earliest members of the Sullivan Sorosis. During the youth of her own children she conducted some years a Sunday school class for boys at her home. The character of her unusual hold upon the affections of those who knew her well was illustrated in the unfailing return to her of these boys, now middle aged men, whenever any of them came back for a short visit to his old home.
Mrs. Bennis' active mind was clear to the end of her long and happy life, when without suffering or a wasting illness she quietly closed her eyes with two of her children beside her. To the end she kept the extraordinary sweetness of character which so endeared her to all who came within the circle of her friendship.

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