However, Morgantown expanded its city limits to accommodate its growing population at the same time as when the house was built.

At this time, upper-class residents had yet to move out to the high-end suburbs that were developed later in the twentieth century and still lived in large houses in the downtown area.

William H. Berry, the rector of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, and his wife, Venetia, living at the address.

In 1965, the Bowers conveyed the property to the trustees of the Trinity Episcopal Church of Morgantown who rented the house to students.

Around 1971, the Trinity Episcopal Church leased the building to the University Christian Council (UCC), a relatively new ecumenical campus ministry.

Thomas Bennett was a conscientious objector who was killed in Vietnam while serving in the Army Medical Corps.

[5] In late twentieth-century Morgantown, many campus ministers, particularly those of liberal Protestant denominations, worked closely with student activists and were involved in social activism.

[6] In the 1970s, campus ministers in the Bennett House were involved in a number of student and community projects, including draft, drug, and abortion counseling.

The Trinity Episcopal Church disagreed with some of the activities of the University Christian Council, specifically the Women's Information Center.

The UCC moved to a building of the old downtown hospital which no longer exists, and then to the Rogers House, where it has been located since 1984.