Nelson Bennett

[2] Bennett was born the third of six children to Nicholas Bennett and Diana Sprague on October 14, 1843 in the hamlet of Belhaven, Town of North Gwillumbury, York County, Province of Canada to a family of American Canadians; his father's family were New Netherland Dutch/Pennsylvania German Dunkard Simcoe Loyalists originally from Pennsylvania and later western New York and his mother's of English Puritan descent from Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

His two older brothers, Sidney James and David Henry, preceded him in returning to the United States where both served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Bennett left for Ridgeway, Orleans County, New York at 17 where he had paternal family members that had owned and operated at that time the largest salt boiling concern in the Holland Land Purchase and began a career in industry, first building barracks for the Army before moving to Pennsylvania in 1864, where he made a significant amount of money constructing oil wells.

By the 1880s, Bennett was fulfilling contracts for the American railroad industry, which included building the Stampede Tunnel through the Cascade Range in Washington Territory in 1886–1888.

[5] Bennett intended to turn the town of Fairhaven into an international port and western terminus of the Great Northern Railway and so set about developing coal mines and building rail lines through the area.