Frances Neill Benét

Frances Neill Benét (Rose)

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15905365/frances_neill_benét

Wife of James Walker Benet.
Chicago Tribune (IL) - July 09, 1940

Mrs. Frances Neill Rose Benet. New York, July 8 [Special].--Mrs. Frances Neill Rose Benet, writer of essays and poetry, died today at Amagansett, New York, at the age of 80. She also was the mother of three well-known writers, Laura Benet, who received the medal as honor poet from the National Poetry center in 1936; Stephen Vincent Benet, author of "John Brown's Body," which received the Pulitzer prize for the best volume of verse in 1928, and William Rose Benet, author and contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. Mrs. Benet in 1883 was married to the late James Walker Benet, former colonel, U.S.A.

Burial will take place at Arlington National cemetery.
---------------------------------------------------
Laura, William Rose, and Stephen Vincent Benét were the children of James Walker Benét and Frances Neill Rose. James Walker Benét was a colonel in the U.S. Army, following in the footsteps of his father, the first Stephen Vincent Benét, a brigadier general. Both father and son managed ordnance, and because of this, Laura, William and Stephen spent much of their early childhood living at a series of arsenals: Fort Hamilton on the shores of the New York Harbor, the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts, the Frankfort Arsenal near Philadelphia, the Watervliet Arsenal near Albany, and finally the Benicia Arsenal in California. They also spent periods with Colonel Benét's grandparents in Washington, D.C., and lived for several years in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York.

It was while the family was at the Watervliet Arsenal, that the boys were sent to Albany Academy (then a military school), and Laura attended the Emma Willard School in Troy. Laura went to Vassar College to continue her education, and William went to Yale. Stephen, who was much younger, attended Hitchcock Academy in California while his father was stationed in Benicia, then followed his brother to Yale.

Laura Benét employed herself as a social worker, newspaper editor, poet and author. She worked as a settlement worker at the Spring Street Settlement in New York City, 1915-1917; as a placement worker at the Children's Aid Society, New York City; a sanitary inspector for the American Red Cross, Augusta, Georgia, 1917-1919; a secretary and assistant book page editor at the New York Evening Post; an editor at the New York Sun; as a book review editor's assistant and book review substitute at the New York Times; and as a free-lance writer from 1930 until her death. She received and award from the National Poetry Center in 1936, and an honorary degree from Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1967.

William Rose Benét was an author and poet as well. He wrote for Century Magazine, the Saturday Review of Literature, and published several books of poems, and one novel. He was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Dust Which is God, an autobiographical verse narrative. He was married four times. He had three children with Teresa Thompson (sister to the novelist Kathleen Thompson Norris), who died during the influenza pandemic in 1919, just seven years after they were married. He had another child with the poet Elinor Wylie. They were married from 1923 until her death in 1928. His third marriage was to Lora Baxter (1932-1937), and his last marriage was to Marjorie Flack, an author and illustrator of children's books. Their marriage lasted from 1941 to his death in 1950.

Stephen Vincent Benét was also an author and poet. He too won a Pulitzer Prize, in 1929, for one of his most noted poems, "John Brown's Body". He may be best known, however, for his short story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster". Stephen married Rosemary Carr, a reporter in Paris for the Chicago Tribune, in 1921, and had three children. He had severe cases of scarlet fever and typhoid as a child, and suffered from arthritis as an adult; he died in 1943 of a heart attack at the age of 44.

Sources

1. http://kirjasto.sci.fi/sbenet.htm
2. https://digitallibrary.vassar.edu/collections/finding-aids/15041943...