Gertrude M. Barrows Bennett (1883-1948)-Part Four

First Husband

Gertrude M. Barrows (1883-1948) was married twice, first to Charles Montgomery Stuart Bennett (1874-1910), then to Carl Franklin Gaster (1892-1952). She probably met her first husband on the East Coast and her second on the West. Her first drowned near Key West, Florida. Her second lies at rest on almost the exact opposite end of the country, in Portland, Oregon. It looks like liquid played a part in his death as well.

Charles Montgomery Stuart Bennett was born in the period April-May-June 1874 in West Derby, Lancashire, England. His parents were Henry Mellor Bennett (1847-1938), an ironfounder like his father before him, and Catherine "Kate" (Stuart) Bennett (1850-1922). Both lived and died in England. Whether they ever came to America is open to question.

C.M. Stuart Bennett arrived in the United States possibly in the 1890s or about 1896. On October 6, 1897, he married Madeline A. Hobson (1872-1961) in Bristol, Virginia. According to a contemporaneous newspaper article, "The groom came to Bristol a few months ago with his parents, who recently completed a tour around the world." That article continued: "Mr. Bennett is a young man who has seen much of the world, but whose habits and manners are still those of the genial Englishman." The couple was to live in a newly purchased home in nearby Paperville, Tennessee. (Chattanooga Daily Times, Oct. 8, 1897, p. 3.) They had two daughters, Catherine "Kate" (Bennett) Burton Bachman (1898-1984) and Helen Marguerite (Bennett) Biden (1900-1988). I can't help but see omens in that newspaper article from 1897.

I haven't found the young Bennett family in the U.S. Census of 1900, but it's clear that their marriage didn't last long, for on August 3, 1904, Bennett married Luella Wilson Stewart (1881-1965), daughter of Sylvester Noble Stewart and Nannie (Wilson) Stewart (then deceased), at the Madison Avenue (Dutch) Reformed Church in New York City. ("Married" in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 7, 1904, p. 13.) By 1910, the couple were divorced.

Bennett's marriages kept coming. There are three more to go.

According to her friend, Emma Diffenderfer, Marie La Ton or Laton (ca. 1886-?) of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Manhattan married Charles M. Stuart Bennett in about 1909. Presumably that was in New York or New Jersey. Marie La Ton was supposed to have been the first woman to take out a boat pilot's license or skipper's license in Philadelphia. In 1909, she piloted a boat for her husband, then or later called "Captain," on a treasure-hunting expedition off the Carolina coast. That effort came to grief, and Marie returned to New York City, promising her stepmother that she would never again attempt such a thing. ("Manicurist Says That Laton [sic] Girl Had Given Up Search" in the Press of Atlantic City, Dec. 29, 1910, p. 1+.) On April 18, 1910, Marie La Ton was enumerated in the U.S. Census at 19 East Thirty-Second Street in Manhattan. She was the proprietress of a restaurant, the name of which we know by a later newspaper article was Dixie Kitchens. She was divorced at the time. A month later, on May 12, 1910, C.M. Stuart Bennett became a father again with the birth of his daughter, called Josephine Christy Bennett (1910-2001). The newborn's mother was Gertrude M. Barrows Bennett, whom Bennett had married in New Jersey in 1908. I guess that means that if he and Marie La Ton really were married in about 1909, he was a bigamist. Either that or he and Gertrude had divorced by the time he and Marie were married, and Josephine, later called Constance, was born out of wedlock. Or maybe the year 1908 is in error. Or maybe they were married twice and divorced once. Or twice.

It sure looks like Charles M. Stuart Bennett was what people called in those days a scoundrel. The name Constance would have been in strong contrast to his habits.

Despite Marie's promise to her stepmother, the treasure hunting continued, and on Christmas night, December 25-26, 1910, it came to an end when C.M. Stuart Bennett, also called Stuart Bennett, was drowned after his 45-foot launch, called the Lebra (referred to in some accounts as the Phra), was wrecked against the west jetty or northwest jetties near Key West, Florida. There were six people all together on the boat. Three were rescued the morning after the wreck, while a fourth, Herman Parker, drifted or swam to a nearby key and was thereby saved (or saved himself). Bennett was the first drowning victim that night. His wife, who clung to a mast of the wrecked boat but after six hours slipped into the water, was the second. Bennett's body was found near the western banks the day after the wreck. Hers was never found. He is supposed to have been buried at Key West city cemetery.

Emma Diffenderfer felt sure that the Mrs. Bennett who was lost was not Marie La Ton, even though she had not seen her in five months. For a time there were reports that it was Bennett's newer wife, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, who had drowned. Then, on December 29, 1910, Mrs. Jessie (Newnham) Pillault (1869-1952) of Jacksonville, Florida, came forth with word that it was her daughter, Beatrice Pillault Bennett (1890-presumably 1910), who had drowned. The Bennetts had been married in June without Mrs. Pillault's knowledge and had gone around in Florida by boat before setting off on that fateful voyage. Mrs. Pillault, by the way, was also English and also a proprietress, in her case of an ice cream parlor and/or a small bakery. ("Find Mother of Woman Lost in Key West Wreck" in the Miami News, December 29, 1910, p. 1.)

Christmastime must have been a sad and stressful time of year for Gertrude Barrows Bennett. Her older brother Reginald "Reggie" Barrows (1880-1896) had killed himself on December 23, 1896, in Minneapolis, where the Barrows family were living at the time. (There isn't any mention of her in newspaper accounts of his suicide, but at age thirteen, she must have been at home when the newspaper reporters came around with their terrible news.) And now, in 1910, with her only daughter not even a year old, she learned that her husband, by then obviously a philanderer and possibly a bigamist, had drowned while on a treasure-hunting adventure . . . like her grandfather sixty years before.

Next: The Second Husband.

A map of Key West and the area to the west, presumably the location of the foundering of the Lebra, "Captain" Charles M. Stuart Bennett's boat, on the night of December 25-26, 1910. Look for "West Jetty" in the upper left of this map from 1921.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley