Bennett's of Ballinacurra Descriptive List (Ref. B609)

B609/

B609/9

BENNETT AND WEST FAMILY RECORDS

Bennett and West Family Records. This final section of the collection contains personal family records relating principally to John H Bennett and his family, and to Dorothy West nee McNeill and her family.

Consideration was given to forming a separate collection of private papers, but it was felt that many of the records relate closely to business records, and interweave personal and business concerns, in particular the diaries of John H Bennett and Dorothy West. Also, the correspondence in the first section (especially B609/1/B) contains a great number of letters of a personal nature, many of them within letterbooks, making it impossible to remove them and place them with other personal items. Frequently, personal friends were often also business associates or customers, with letters marked ‘personal’ often referring to business events and news. Also, financial records often include estate and personal accounts and charges along with business information. Simple distinctions, therefore, are not easy to draw, and to remove the small body of personal records which do not relate to the business would be to take them out of their proper context. This section is divided into sub-sections based on the family member for whom records are present. Records are placed into sub-sections based on who created them or originally received them. There are two sub-sections for John H Bennett, the first comprised of diaries and other diary-type records, and of personal bank account books, the second of letters and other items. There is also a distinct sub-section for the diaries of Dorothy West, followed by her letters and other items. Other family members and Bennett relatives and ancestors, for whom only small amounts of records survive, receive smaller sub-sections. These include Bennett’s children by his first marriage to Brida Williams, his son Jack and daughter Gwendoline; Mrs Esther Bennett (formerly McNeill, nee Duffey), Bennett’s second wife and mother of Dorothy West (nee McNeill); Edward Hallaran Bennett, uncle of John H Bennett and Professor of Surgery at Trinity College, Dublin, and other Bennett and Hallaran ancestors, represented by a small number of letters and other items.

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