Martha Coreen Bennett was born February 1, 1852, in Jackson, Mississippi, and came to California as a girl by the Isthmus of Panama — carried across on a porter’s back at fifteen, with her parents and sister, to a San Francisco still half a boom town.
She married Byron Gianavil Plaskett, eldest son of the valley’s founder, and came to Pacific Valley — a beautiful, empty place a very long way from Mississippi. She was eighteen. She told friends afterward that she cried every day for the family she had left, through those first months on the coast, with the fog coming in and no road out.
She stayed sixty years. She raised eleven children in the valley — Edward Abbott, Dudley, Wesley and the rest — in the sturdy two-story house Byron built to hold the coastal weather, and outlived him by decades. The homesick girl of 1870 became one of the mothers of the coast; her descendants number in the hundreds, and this site is largely their inheritance.
Parents: Stephen Dudley Bennett · Ann Dorsett Appling
Married: Byron Gianavil Plaskett
Children: Dorsett Plaskett · William Dudley Plaskett · Charles Plaskett · Charles Henry Plaskett · Albert T Plaskett · Albert Allen Plaskett · Laura Dorsett Plaskett · Frances Marion Plaskett · Mary M Plaskett · Mary Elizabeth Plaskett · Edward Abbott Plaskett · Lawson McKern Plaskett · Lucy Elizabeth Plaskett · Fannie Harriet Plaskett · Fanny Harriet Plaskett Mansfield · Wesley Barnes Plaskett
Brothers & sisters: John Mitchell Crawford Bennett · Sarah P Bennett · Stephen E Bennett
Parents: Stephen Dudley Bennett · Ann Dorsett Appling
Grandparents: Sarah Prewitt · Stephen Bennett · William Vittortha Appling · Martha Ann Nunnally
Great-grandparents: William Appling · Susan Nunnally
2× great-grandparents: William Allen Burton · Martha Grubbs · John Appling · Mary Walthall (Burton)
3× great-grandparents: Richard Walthall
place history
The Schoolteacher Brides of Pacific Valley
The county kept sending young women to teach the coast's children — and the Plaskett boys kept marrying them. How two brothers married two sisters, and the schoolhouse became the town.
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Martha Bennett Crossed Isthmus Piggyback at Age 15
At fifteen, Martha Bennett crossed the Isthmus of Panama on a porter's back — bound for a new life in California.
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Martha Bennett Cried Every Day for Her Family
Eighteen years old and homesick, Martha Plaskett cried every day for the family she left in Fresno.
- birth 1852-02-01 — Born in Jackson, Mississippi
- immigration 1867 — Crossed the Isthmus of Panama piggyback at fifteen
- residence 1870 · Pacific Valley — Came to Pacific Valley as an eighteen-year-old bride
- death 1931-02-13 · Jolon — Died at age 79 at son E.A. Plasketts home
- burial 1931-02-13 · Jolon Cemetery — Buried at Jolon Cemetery beside husband Byron G. Plaskett
- burial · Jolon
born life events land died