Ancestors

Zar Benedict Sr.

Born January 11, 1885 at Lebanon, New York, son of Franklin Jeril Benedict and Mary Louisa Benedict. The 1900 census caught him at fifteen in a household spanning nearly a century: his widowed grandmother Lois, born 1806, still lived under the family roof. He was carrying the mail at Lebanon in July 1909 when he married Nina Belle Niles, a Georgetown schoolteacher who went by Belle.

He farmed at Georgetown for the rest of his life, and for many years he also carried a rural mail route. In November 1929 the town elected him Justice of the Peace. A town justice in New York was the local magistrate, hearing small civil suits and minor criminal cases. Zar held the office for twenty-eight years, until his death. He was also treasurer of the Hillside Cemetery Association, a trustee and treasurer of the Georgetown Baptist Church, and for a time a member of the Georgetown Central School board.

He and Belle raised two daughters, Winifred and Marie, and two sons, Edwin Jeril and Zar Jr., keeping both of the family's hereditary names alive. In 1942, at fifty-seven, he was farming for himself on the Georgetown-Lebanon road, a man of five foot eight and 212 pounds with brown eyes and a ruddy face. He died at home in Georgetown on February 6, 1958, aged seventy-three, six days before the Association of Towns was to honor his twenty-five years in office. He is buried at Hillside Cemetery, Georgetown.

If Zar Benedict Sr. is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Zar Benedict Sr. (1885-1958)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/zar-benedict-sr-1885-1958-beabeb.