Breveted Major and Lieutenant Colonel, 13 March 1865, for faithful and meritorious service in the Ordnance Department
Born January 22, 1827. He was a career military officer who fought through the Civil War, eventually being promoted through the ranks to Brigadier General and Chief of United States Army Ordnance.
He was the father of Colonel James Walker Benet, Laurence Vincent Benet, Ensign, United States Navy, and the grandfather of poets Stephen Vincent Benet (who is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington, Connecticut) and Laura Benet.
Stephen Vincent Benet, soldier, born in St. Augustine, Fla., 22 January 1827. He studied at Hallowell's school in Alexandria, Virginia, then at the University of Georgia, and at the United States Military Academy, where he was graduated in 1849, standing third in his class.
He was appointed to the Ordnance Corps, and served at the Watervliet arsenal, at Washington, at Frankford arsenal, again at Washington, and then at the St. Louis arsenal.
In 1859 he became Assistant Professor of Geography, History, and Ethics at West Point, and from 1861 till 1864 was instructor of Ordnance and the Science of Gunnery, after which, until 1869, he was in command of Frankford arsenal.
In 1869 he was made Assistant to the Chief of Ordnance, and in 1874, on the death of the Chief of the Department, he succeeded to the place, with the rank of Brigadier General. He translated Jomini's " Political and Military History of the Campaign of Waterloo" (New York, 1853), and he is the author of a treatise on "Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial" (1862), and "Electro-Ballistic Machines and the Schultze Chronoscope" (1866).
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