The Peyton family homestead in Traverse County, Minnesota
James V. Bennett spent his formative years living with his sister Sarah (20 years older than he) and her husband Thomas Peyton on the Peyton farm in Traverse County, MN. It is unclear why he (along with his favorite sister Lizzie) chose to leave their mother and father in favor of this arrangement.
Thomas and Sarah Peyton had a large family, into which James and Lizzie were readily absorbed. "Tom" was a role model for young James, who later emulated his brother-in-law in a variety of ways. According to a 1904 Compendium of History and Biography of Central and Northern Minnesota, Peyton was not only "a gentlemen of exceptional business ability" who had "prospered by dint of honest effort and good management and gained an enviable reputation as a farmer and citizen," but also "a man of progressive ideas" who was "in political faith a Republican."
These years were so significant that James' first child--born in 1919 in Deer Lodge, MT--was given the unusual first name Peyton.
