James Gordon Bennett, Sr.

In June 1840, Bennett married Henrietta Agnes Crean and the couple had three children including James Gordon Bennett, Jr. and Jeanette Gordon Bennett.

James Gordon Bennett, Sr. died in his sleep on June 1, 1872, in New York, U.S.A. He was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

James Gordon Bennett, Sr. was born on September 1, 1795, in Newmill, Banffshire, Scotland, into a Roman Catholic family and was raised in a principally Presbyterian community.

After receiving a classical education, Bennett went to study at a Catholic seminary in Aberdeen, Scotland, at the age of 15. Initially, he wanted to become a pastor and studied at the seminary for four years but later migrated to America in 1819.

At the age of 24, Bennett sailed to North America and landed in Nova Scotia with very little money in his pocket. Later, he reached Boston penniless and lived in a deprived condition for a few days until being hired as a clerk in a publishing firm.

Subsequently, he worked as a proofreader and was able to learn the fundamentals of the publishing business. In mid-1820s, he moved to New York and started working as a freelancer in newspaper business.

Thereafter, Bennett got a job as a translator with the quite influential Charleston Courier, in South Carolina. While translating articles from French and Spanish newspapers, he learned important lessons of journalism from his employer, Aaron Smith Wellington.

Unable to fit in Charleston’s social order, he returned to New York and during the next several years, Bennett worked as a lecturer and freelance writer. In 1827, he earned a job at the New York Enquirer and was chosen to be the first Washington correspondent for a New York City newspaper in history.

After gathering enough knowledge about journalism and failing twice in launching his own newspaper, in 1835, Bennett founded the New York Herald with a working capital of $500.

Between 1861 and 1865, during the American Civil War, the New York Herald had the largest circulation and gained widespread prominence in the newspaper world. With a technological edge and innovative techniques to acquire information, James Gordon Bennett was successful in procuring stories from the battlefield ahead of the dispatches that were sent to the War Department.

Bennett developed unique editorial techniques that increased readership which made his newspaper an essential reading for the citizenry as well as political leaders. He was the first newspaper publisher who used the telegraph to obtain a full report of a major political speech and hired more than 60 correspondents to cover the encounters during the Civil War.