Bennett

(De Robigne Mortimer), founder and editor of the New York Truth seeker , b. of poor parents, Springfield (N.Y.), 23 Dec. 1818. At the age of fifteen he joined the Shaker Society in New Lebanon. Here he stayed thirteen years and then married. Having lost faith in the Shaker creed, he went to Louisville, Kentucky, where he started a drug store. The perusal of Paine, Volney, and similar works made him a Freethinker. In 1873, his letters to a local journal in answer to some ministers having been refused, he resolved to start a paper of his own. The result was the Truth seeker , which in January, 1876 became a weekly, and has since become one of the principal Free thought organs in America. In 1879 he was sentenced to thirteen months’ imprisonment for sending through the post a pamphlet by Ezra H. Heywood on the marriage question. A tract, entitled An Open Letter to Jesus Christ , was read in court to bias the jury. A petition bearing 200,000 names was presented to President Hayes asking his release, but was not acceded to. Upon his release his admirers sent him for a voyage round the world. He wrote A Truth seeker’s Voyage Round the World , Letters from Albany Penitentiary , Answers to Christian Questions and Arguments , two large volumes on The Gods , another on the World’s Sages, Infidels and Thinkers , and published his discu ions with Humphrey, Mair, and Teed, and numerous tracts. He died 6 Dec. 1882.