Sarah Bennett was one of the children who traveled from Cross Anchor, South Carolina, in 1873 to help found the Kingdom of the Happy Land. Like her cousin Elmira Montgomery, she was surrounded by family on the journey.

In the 1870 census, Sarah was listed in the household of her parents, Wiley and Rachel Bennett, in Cross Anchor. Also living with them was Easter Bennett, presumed to be Sarah’s grandmother, though there’s no record of Easter moving to North Carolina. At the time, Wiley worked as a farmer, Easter as a housekeeper, and Rachel stayed home with Sarah.

By 1880, the family had relocated to Green River Township in Henderson County, North Carolina, where Sarah still lived with her parents. This was the last known census to document Sarah. In 1900, Sarah’s household could not be located, but her cousin Elmira was living with Wiley and Rachel, and Sarah was no longer residing with her parents.

Sarah did not disappear entirely from the public record. In 1914, in her late forties, she was committed to the state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina. A court order stated she had been “adjudged an insane person” and was jailed until the hospital could receive her. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1965 the facility, now called Cherry Hospital, served as the segregated “Asylum for the Colored Insane” and was located over 300 miles from Henderson County.

In 1916, Sarah was released after Superintendent W.W. Faison determined she was not a danger to herself or the community. She returned to Henderson County under probation. However, in 1919, she was committed again by court order. The length of this second stay is unknown, and no further records have surfaced detailing her mental health challenges during this period.

Like many segregated mental health facilities, it has been documented that the residents of the North Carolina Asylum for the Colored Insane were underresourced and mistreated compared to their white counterparts at the other two state mental hospitals. The hospital also regularly engaged in "hiring out" their patients to pick cotton and other crops on local commercial farms. 

Sarah lived at least two more decades. In 1938, when her mother Rachel died, Sarah was listed as owning a one-half interest in Rachel’s house on Robinson Avenue in Hendersonville, which was sold at public auction for $300. If Sarah had been deceased, county records would have noted it. However, her absence suggests she was either unwilling or unable to return to Henderson County at the time of her mother’s death.