About Edward
Biography
Edward B. Bennett was born in 1889 in White Township, and worked with his brothers and their father, Michael, in the family contracting firm, M. Bennett and Sons.
Edward left Indiana in 1917 to fight in World War I and served as a lieutenant in the military.
He returned to Indiana and M. Bennett and Sons, became president in 1932 and guided the firm in the construction of hundreds of miles of highways in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.
From 1928 to 1930, Bennett was instrumental in securing the Pennsylvania Highway Department barns and offices on North Fourth Street in Indiana, now the site of an S&T Bank office.
Bennett served 27 years as the president of First National Bank in Indiana beginning in 1933, and for a time was the president of Indiana Real Estate Company, Indiana Contracting Company and Indiana Equipment Company.
Edward and his wife, Nellie, had one son and three daughters. He passed away in 1960. But a major part of Bennett’s legacy was in the political sway he held in Harrisburg on behalf of the Indiana County region.
In the arena of politics, Bennett was elected in 1930 to the Republican State Committee and served from 1933 to ’36 in the state Senate.
As a senator, he fought for the selection of the district as the home for a government funded sanitarium for the treatment of tuberculosis patients.
Bennett developed his policies of fighting for declarations for economy in public government, for adequate provisions for the men who upheld their country’s flag on the battle field, for better and more economical schools, and for better school transportation at the state’s expense as the region’s delegate to the state Senate.