Benjamin Whitefield Haight
Benjamin Whitefield Haight was born on 7 December 1893 at Watsonville in McKean County, Pennsylvania, the first child of Harry Robert Haight and Anna Esther Haight. His parents were cousins of a kind: both were Haights, grandchildren of two brothers, Joel Albert and Ambrose Haight, who had come from Westchester County, New York, to the Clarion River country in the 1830s. His father was a woods laborer. By 1900 the family was in Barnett Township, Forest County, where Benny, 6, was the oldest of three; in 1910 there were seven children in the house at Barnett.
He married Elsie Evelyn Silvis at Tionesta, the Forest County seat, on 5 June 1916. She was a lumberman's daughter from Jefferson County whose mother had died when she was six. Their first child, James Wakefield, was born at East Hickory on the Allegheny on 2 April 1917. Two months later, on 5 June 1917, Benjamin registered for the wartime draft at Limestone in Warren County. He gave his trade as bark peeler, employed by Frank Wolford at Wolford's camp in Limestone Township, and said he had a wife and child depending on him. The registrar described him as tall, of medium build, with blue eyes and light brown hair. Bark peelers stripped the hemlock in the spring sap season for the tanneries, and the camps moved with the timber.
Seven more children followed: Merle Eugene in 1919, Warren Wakefield in 1921, Glenn Leroy in 1923, Nellie Mae in 1925, Edna Jeanette in 1928, Lawrence Robert in 1930 and Raymond Howard in 1934. In 1920 the family was in Elk County; in 1930 at Howe Township in Forest County, Benjamin a laborer of 37 with seven children at home; in 1940 at Sheffield Township in Warren County. When he registered again in 1942, aged 48, he was living at Sheffield and working for the Ajax Iron Works at 26 West Washington Street in Corry, Erie County, a maker of oil-field engines. He was five feet ten, 196 pounds, with hazel eyes and brown hair, and he gave his wife as the person who would always know his address.
Two sons died before him, Lawrence in 1949 at nineteen and Raymond in 1961 at twenty-seven. His father died in 1951 and his mother in 1953. Benjamin Haight died in April 1970 at Marienville, Forest County, aged 76. He is buried in North Forest Cemetery at Marienville under a gray granite stone that reads HAIGHT, Benjamin W. 1892-1970, Elsie E. 1893-1982. The stone gives his birth year a year early.
Children
Sources
If Benjamin Whitefield Haight is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Benjamin Whitefield Haight (1893-1970)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/benjamin-whitefield-haight-1893-1970-ccb8e6.