Benjamin Hoffman Barnett

retired executive with his family’s firm, Wm. Barnett & Sons; June 8. The business was founded in 1780 as the first wheat-starch company in the United States, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. When the Barnetts bought it in 1817, the firm became a distributor for starch and later for dry-cleaning supplies. He retired as company sales manager and vice president in 1970. He was a former president of the Chapin Home for the Aged and Blind in Philadelphia. In 1974 he and his wife, Catherine Thacher Barnett, sold the historic Grange Estate, which they had inherited, to Haverford township for a small sum; in 1990 the Friends of the Grange named the Barnett Environmental Educational Center on the property in their honor. His son-in-law is John W. Frazier IV L’68, whose daughter is Catherine S. Frazier C’99