Bennett, Vardamon

Although Vardamon Bennett (d.1849) himself may never have set foot in Santa Cruz County, his family did. Bennett and his family came to California in 1843, after trekking west via the Oregon Trail the previous year. Wife Mary and the children moved to Santa Clara ~1845 while Vardamon stayed in San Francisco, and the Bennetts acquired San Lorenzo Valley timber land in 1847, where a sawmill was built on what is now called Love Creek (for Mary's second husband Harry Love). Daughter Catherine married Isaac Graham in 1845, and later ran away from him. That story and many others are told in Quite Contrary, The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett Love, a 2014 biography.

Mary "the widow" has a bio in Riptide (CE42). Also in Riptide is William F. Swasey (CPL8), a notary public who Riptide asserts was appointed in Santa Cruz as receiver of Mary Bennett's affairs in the early 1850s (because of Vardamon's death?). Mary's grave is in Watsonville (1803-1868).

Son Winston and daughter Mary (Shelby) were Soc. of Pioneers members. Son Mansell V. (1836-1884), has a biography in Martin and is buried in Santa Cruz. Another son, Dennis, was killed in the early 1850s in a gunfight with Isaac Graham's son-by-first-marriage Jesse.

Riptide identifies Thomas Jefferson Shadden (1809-1894), as an Arkansas native who - with his family - accompanied the Bennett family from Arkansas to Oregon, and soon thereafter to California. The Find-a-Grave page identifies Shadden as emigrating to Oregon via the Oregon Trail in 1843, which does not conflict with what is known of the Bennetts. Daughter Drusilla Shadden married John Hames.