James and Nancy Bennett, owners of the meeting place, were simple yeoman farmers who had suffered tremendously during the four years of war. They lost a son and son-in-law: Lorenzo, who served in the 27th North Carolina, buried in Winchester, Virginia; and their daughter Eliza's husband, Robert Duke, who died in a Confederate Army hospital and is buried in Lynchburg, Virginia. Their 3rd child, Alfonzo, was not in the war but died during the Civil War years (1864). The Bennetts never fully recovered from the war, and in 1878, James Bennett died and the family moved to the new community of Durham to begin a life without him.