Eleanor Richardson Bennett

Eleanor (Richardson) Bennett, remembered in Billerica as Mrs. Joshua Bennett, was born in Billerica on September 11, 1794, the daughter of Ebenezer Richardson Jr. and his wife Susanna. As a schoolgirl in the Shawshin district she worked a sampler under the eye of her teacher, Miss Hannah Jaquith; it later belonged to the Billerica Historical Society. On October 8, 1815, she married Joshua Bennett, a young Billerica schoolteacher who became a wealthy Boston merchant in hops and real estate and president of the Old Lowell Bank. Their daughters were Ellen, who married George Holden of Boston, and Rebecca, who married William Wilkins Warren.

The Bennetts lived in Boston in their early married years and later on their farm on the west side of Long Street, in the north part of the village, the estate later known as Bennett Hall. After her husband's death in 1865 the property went to their grandson Joshua Bennett Holden on the understanding that she would live there for the rest of her life, and she did, a widow for more than a quarter of a century. Writing in 1883, Henry A. Hazen described her there "in a genial and beneficent old age" and thanked her and her son-in-law W. W. Warren for help with his History of Billerica.

Her lasting gift to the town was its public library. For years the town's only books had been the old social libraries kept in a room of the First Church by Sarah Annable. In Hazen's words, "in 1880 the generous munificence of Mrs. Joshua Bennett laid the foundation for their better supply." At her own expense she built the brick library building just north of the First Church, designed by the Boston architects Rotch & Tilden and costing about $9,000, and deeded it to the Bennett Public Library Association. Her daughters, Mrs. Holden and Mrs. Warren, gave $2,000 for furnishings and books; William W. Warren gave the reading-room mantel, and Mr. Joshua Holden gave the rose window. The building held a library room for ten or twelve thousand volumes, a reading room, a committee room and an entrance hall, and the old parish and sewing-society collections passed to it, with Miss Annable as the first librarian. Hurd's county history of 1890 records that she gave the library "in honor of her husband."

Eleanor Bennett died in Billerica on May 6, 1891, aged 96 years and 8 months, according to the town's register of deaths for that year. The library that bore her husband's name served the town for decades, and a later account of Billerica's generous women in the town magazine Billerica still recalled that "to the generous munificence of Mrs. Joshua Bennett we owe the library bearing her name."

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 315 (the Bennett Public Library, 1880)
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), plate: portrait of Mrs. Joshua Bennett (register p. 10)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 11, BENNETT 3 (her home on Long Street)
4. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850 (1908), births p. 156 (Eleanor, d. Ebenezer Jr. and Susanna, Sept. 11, 1794)
5. Hurd, History of Middlesex County, vol. 2 (1890), p. 356 (widow living at 96; library given in her husband's honor)
6. Billerica annual town report 1892, deaths in 1891 (Eleanor Bennett, aged 96 years 8 months)
7. Billerica (magazine), vol. 1 (1912-13), article on Billerica women and their gifts to the town (Bennett Library)
8. Wikipedia, Billerica Public Library (Bennett building, 1880; Rotch & Tilden)