Thomas Warren Bennett

Thomas Warren Bennett was born the second of ten children on February 16, 1831, in Union County, Indiana. He attended common schools until the age of fourteen when he began clerking in his father’s store. After three years, he spent two years as “wagon boy,” driving a six-horse team between Richmond and Cincinnati. He then served as a teacher in a district school for a year before pursuing his own education in the county seminary. In 1851, he enrolled in the Law School of Indiana, Asbury University (now DePauw University) and graduated in 1854. He was elected professor of mathematics and natural sciences at Whitewater College at Centerville before beginning the practice of law in 1855 at Liberty, Indiana. He became active in the new Republican Party and was elected to the State Senate in 1858. He resigned in 1861 following Lincoln’s call for troops and became captain of the 15th Indiana Infantry. With the 15th, he served in western Virginia and participated in the battle of Richmond and other skirmishes. In September 1861, Governor Oliver P. Morton commissioned Bennett major of the 36th Indiana Infantry, a part of Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio. On April 6, 1862, the 36th was the first to cross the Tennessee River and the only portion of Buell’s army to participate in the first day of the battle of Shiloh. Bennett and the 36th also participated in the siege of Corinth and the Kentucky campaign. In October 1862, Bennett was appointed colonel of the 69th Indiana Infantry and served under General Ulysses S. Grant in all his campaigns from Memphis to Vicksburg. Bennett commanded his troops at the battles of Chickasaw Bayou, Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, Big Black River Bridge, and the capture of Vicksburg. In the winter of 1863, Colonel Bennett was appointed president of a commission to examine and report for dismissal all incompetent officers. He was honorably discharged in January 1865 and brevetted brigadier general March 5, 1865. He returned to Liberty where, for six years, he practiced law. Following a trip abroad, he moved to Richmond in 1868 and was elected to mayor the following year. In 1871, he was appointed governor of the Idaho Territory by President Ulysses S. Grant and served four years before serving in the U. S. House of Representatives from the Idaho Territory. He returned to Richmond and again served as mayor (1877–1883 and 1885–1887). Bennett died February 2, 1893, in Richmond and was buried in Earlham Cemetery.