Lyman G. Bennett

Lyman Gibson Bennett, 1832 - 1904 was an American army officer, teacher, surveyor, and civil engineer, from Schuyler County, New York, who served in the United States army during the American Civil War.
Early life
Lyman Gibson Bennett was born in 1832, in Schuyler County, New York. He was educated in New York, then in 1849 when he was 17, his family moved to Oswego, in Kendall County, Illinois. Lyman taught school for five years, then trained as a surveyor and civil engineer. He worked as a railroad surveyor, and later served as the county surveyor of Kendall County, Illinois. Bennett spent most of 1857 in Minnesota in an unrewarding attempt to homestead, first near Winona, then in the Faribault District near Ashland. He supported himself by selling maps through subscription and by employment as a member of the surveying team for the proposed Transit Railroad. He terminated his experience in Minnesota by returning to Illinois late in 1857 to resume teaching school.
Later life
Bennett left the army’s employment in 1866 to return to Illinois. He moved to Springfield, Missouri, in 1880, purchasing a farm on the west edge of the city. He continued to work as an engineer and surveyor, platting additions to the City of Springfield, and surveying railroad lines in Missouri and Oklahoma. Lyman Gibson Bennett died in Springfield, Missouri in 1904, and is buried there.
Legacy
The historically accurate novel Powder River Odyssey: Nelson Cole's Western Campaign of 1865, The Journals of Lyman G. Bennett and Other Eyewitness Accounts, is based upon the diary that Bennett kept in 1865.

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