Alfred Bennet was born in 1780.  Twenty years later he was born again and joined the Baptist church of Hampton, Connecticut.  After his marriage to the deacon’s daughter, the young couple moved to the unbroken wilderness of central New York, where Alfred began his life as a farmer.  After a few years, the Bennets encouraged others, and a Baptist church was started in their community.  Because visiting preachers were rare, the Homer Baptist Church was often encouraged by the preaching of Brother Bennet.  Eventually that congregation called for his ordination, and Alfred served the community and his Lord in that church for twenty-five years.  During that time he baptized 770 new believers.  As one might expect, Alfred Bennet was thoroughly evangelical.  Not only did his church grow under God’s blessings, but two groups of members were dismissed with the church’s blessings to form other churches in neighboring villages.  Brother Bennet also consistently visited even other small, struggling churches encouraging them in doctrine and evangelism.  But then after a full and rewarding ministry, at the age of seventy-one, Alfred Bennet died on this day in 1851.