Other Jennings English Immigrants Found

Last night, I was looking over some Xeroxes of notes taken of the Vaughn Cemetery. I found at least two, maybe three instances where it was noted that they, like our William, were born in England. They were of William's generation and older.

From what I can gather, there were two specific areas where the English Jennings were from. One, of course, was Bath, and the other was Holt, which is further north. For example, Paul Bishop Jennings was from Holt.

(By the way, did you know poor Paul Bishop had three children die quite young before he and his wife finally had a child who survived to adulthood?)

I have yet to link any of these other contemporary Jennings immigrants to William, but if I can I think it would be a huge help, especially to get closer to the reason why William came to America.

Jennings & Kintner Building

Here is a link to this week's star attraction: the mysterious Jennings & Kintner Building. Over the next few days I'll sort out the correspondence between cousins Sandy, Paula and myself, and post a transcript of our views.

As it stands now, a panel of volunteer theatrical costume experts has weighed in on the date of the photo. They feel that the period that fits the clothing styles is the post-Civil War era, but not too long after it. Look for the link at the bottom of the blogs main page.

In my humble opinion the photo is not of the hotel William owned and operated, but is of a side-business he either set up or was a partner in. The "JENNINGS" in the sign may not necessarily represent him, but possibly one of his sons (my money is on Frank). AND...here's the kicker...the two woman standing by the chair to his right are his wife Harriet and his daughter Lizzie. Ameila, his other daughter, would only have been 12 years old when I suspect this photo would have been taken. That leads me to a ballpark date of...drumroll...1870.

From the pages of, "A Directory For the Borough and City of Bath and It's Environs, 1852"

Here's a cool look into the Jennings Family that William left behind. On page 126 are listed eleven Jennings, including two with the first name of William. Obviously, since our William left the country 18 years earlier, these ain't him.

However, what are the chances that one of them is William's dad? Also, take note of the "Samuel", because this is a lead I have for ID'ing Jabez Jennings, but that's another story.

This entire directory is a single PDF file, found at : http://www.bathbmd.org.uk/pod.html, along with links for three other Bath directories for the years 1872, 1895 and 1912. Happy hunting!

Here I Go!

After a rather frantic week of emailing between the members of the cousins, I thought it would be best to build a single depository for all things William Jennings.

What this means is that any discoveries and discussions explicitly about William's branch of the family goes here!

Feel free to post your news and views. Slowly but surely we will put this story together!