life, and it is doubtful whether any man in his locality is a better judge of the productive capability or the value of land. Without aid from others, depending upon his own strong arms and an unalterable determination to win, he forged his way to an independent position financially and is now accorded the respect that rightfully belongs to one who has fought and won in the great battle of life.
PROFESSOR ALFRED ALLEN BENNETT.
Professor Alfred Allen Bennett is numbered among those who have won for the Iowa State College its splendid reputation as a strong center of learning. His labors have been an element in the growth of the school and his ability as an instructor is widely acknowledged. Under his guidance the chemistry department has been built up and developed until it is today one of the strong departments of the school, having an enrollment of about eight hundred pupils at a time. Thorough university training qualified Professor Bennett for his work in this connection and for twenty-six years he has been one of the capable professors at Ames.
A native of New Hampshire, Professor Bennett was born in the town of Milford, in 1850, a son of Rodolphus D. and Mary (Woodard) Bennett, the former born in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1816, and the latter in Merrimack, New Hampshire, in 1820. Their entire lives were spent in the east. In 1856 they went to Ohio with the idea of remaining and Mr. Bennett purchased a farm, but after a few months they returned to New England and both died in New Hampshire, the father passing away in Milford, while the mother's death occurred in Manchester. Each was sixty-eight years of age at the time of demise. Mr. Bennett had followed farming through the greater part of his life but spent his last years in honorable and well earned retirement in Milford.
Professor Bennett, the third in order of birth in a family of six children, resided with his parents until eighteen years of age, during which period he attended the village and country schools. Better educational advantages were afterward afforded him, however, and he became a student in the Massachusetts Normal School at Bridgewater, where he completed the course in 1871. He entered upon the profession of teaching at Carver Green, Massachusetts, where he spent a half year, while later he was for two years principal of a grammar school in Manchester, New Hampshire. In 1873 he matriculated in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and on the conclusion of a four years' course was graduated in 1877 with the Bachelor of Science degree. Nearly a year had been given to post-graduate work and after his university course was completed he engaged in teaching for two and one-half years in Michigan as a member of the faculty of the military academy at Orchard Lake. He then returned to the univer-