Hi Chloe
Thanks for your swift response. I am the great grand-daughter of John Baxter Sennitt – Agnes’s older brother – so that makes us third cousins once removed. Unfortunately, your email address was removed by Rootschat and this is only the second comment I have posted so, at the moment, I can’t access the Personal Message system – but when I can, I’ll let you have my email address too.
Do you know Valerie Watson? She has a detailed family tree of the descendants of JHS and keeps up with all branches of the family. Through her, my mother and I met Ruth Harrison, a grand-daughter of Agnes - was she your grandmother, or are you descended from her uncle Herbert? I discovered our link to Henry Oasland through Valerie and then worked further back. I sent copies of the William the Conqueror tree to Valerie and to Ruth as well as some other Sennitt descendants. I would be interested to find out more about the Howletts and the Kimptons but have not managed to get very far back.
We are also supposed to be descended from Oliver Cromwell but I have not found the link – though we are descended from the Russells of Stretham which is near to the Russells in Fordham, Wicken and Chippenham with whom the Cromwell family intermarried.
As for Francis Sennitt, he seems to have been the first Sennitt in Stretham but I found some earlier Sennitts in Cottenham, including a Frances, Susanna and Edward. There is a Francis in the generation before who came from Cambridge – so I have tentatively put this Francis as Edward’s father. The first entry in the Stretham parish register for a Sennitt was the baptism of Mary, daughter of Francis, in 1712. Francis was a yeoman and he was buried at Stretham in 1738 – 15 years after his wife Damaris. Damaris is taken by a local historian to be Damaris Reade daughter of another local yeoman, John Reade. Damaris is not a common name so this is probably so but, if so, you would have expected their marriage to have been at Stretham but there does not seem to be an entry for this in the Register.
Are you a member of Genes Reunited? My tree is on there. Will be interested to hear more about your research.
Regards
Anne