Henry Bennett (1803 to 1861)

Henry Bennett was a grandfather of George Henry Bennett, who was the father-in-law of Sidney Alfred Parsons.

Henry Bennett was born in Romsey in Hampshire but spent most of his life in Chilworth, which is between Southampton and Romsey.

Chilworth is marked on the map with a red C. Romsey can be seen to its north west.

A History of the County of Hampshire, published in 1908, described Chilworth as follows:
“The village of Chilworth is very small, and consists of a few thatched cottages and barns in a little hollow, on the main road from Romsey to Botley. The small parish church stands to the north of the village on higher ground. The children from this village attend the schools at North Baddesley.”

Henry was born on the 1^st of October 1803 and baptised on the 6^th of November. His parents were Henry Bennett and Fanny Butcher. They came from the village of Michelmersh a few miles north of Romsey and had been married there on the 29^th of January 1798.

By 1829 Henry had moved to Chilworth and in October of that year he married Elizabeth Misselbrook who was also from Chilworth. After getting married they settled in the village and by 1841 they were living next door to Elizabeth’s parents.

Henry and Elizabeth had four sons — Henry, George, Richard and Walter, and then five daughters — Frances (Fanny), Kate, Charlotte, Agnes and Alice. Frances was later to become the mother of George Henry Bennett and therefore a grandmother of Dorothy Bennett, the wife of Sidney Parsons.

Henry worked as a labourer for his whole life, probably on the large estate of Chilworth Manor. At the time of Henry’s marriage the estate had just acquired a new owner, John Fleming. Elizabeth’s father, Thomas Misselbrook, was a tenant of the estate and a gamekeeper there. Chilworth manor is now a hotel.

Henry died at home in Chilworth on the 1^st of July 1861 of hydrothorax, which is often caused by serious liver disease. His wife Elizabeth registered his death.

Children of Henry and Elizabeth Bennett

The chart below shows Henry and Elizabeth’s children and grandchildren.

• Henry Misselbrook was baptised in Chilworth on the 11^th of July 1830. Henry grew up with his parents in Chilworth and became an agricultural labourer. As a young man he played cricket. A newspaper report records that in July 1858 he played for Chilworth against Bishops Waltham; he was the last to bat and scored four runs. When he was about 29 years old Henry married Hannah Diaper whose father was a fisherman in the village of Itchen Ferry, just across the river Itchen from Southampton. (There is another connection between the Bennett/Parsons family and the Diapers of Itchen Ferry — Mary Diaper, the daughter of an inn-keeper in Hamble, was a grandmother of Harriett Boyes who married the Southampton publican John Parsons.) Henry’s wife Hannah had an illegitimate son called Dan who was two years old when she married him. Henry and Hannah spent most of their married life in Chilworth where they lived very near to Henry’s parents. They had eight children. Later in life, they moved to an adjoining village, Chandlers Ford, but when Henry died in 1903 he was buried back in Chilworth. Hannah got married again, to Sydney White, an electrician who worked on the railways at Eastleigh.

• George, born about 1832. George grew up with his parents and became an agricultural labourer. But in August of 1861, before he was thirty years old, he died.

• Richard, born about 1832. Richard was the black sheep of the family and was often in trouble with the police. In his early twenties he served nine months in Winchester gaol. In 1855 he informed on two ”friends” of his who had stolen a sheep, because one of them had informed on him for stealing a gun. Richard was acquitted on that charge but during the trial the judge had called him an “unmitigated scoundrel”. In 1863 Richard was accused of stealing a horse. After the police caught him he managed to escape and went into hiding in Nursling with his sister. His mother tried to help him by bringing him a change of clothing. He had taken a job on a ship in Southampton bound for Alexandria but the police, who had been watching his parents’ home, intercepted his mother and caught him. He was tried at the Quarter Sessions and again imprisoned for nine months. After his release he lived with a girl called Anna Maria, who said she had been born in Ringwood. They called themselves man and wife, but there is no record of a marriage ceremony having taken place, and after 1871 there is no further record of either of them.

• Walter William, baptised in Chilworth on the 8^th of January 1837. Walter died in September 1842.

• Frances Bennett, born in Chilworth on the 23^rd of October 1838. Frances went to work as a servant in Romsey and while she was there she fell pregnant. Her child was George Henry Bennett, who was to become the father of Dorothy Bennett, the wife of Sidney Alfred Parsons. Young George was born in 1861, and in 1866 Frances married George Peckham. They settled in Chilworth, where George worked as a labourer and gardener, and had seven children. Frances died in 1917 while she was living with her son Ernest in North Baddesley, not far from Chilworth.

• Kate, baptised in Chilworth in May 1941. Kate lived with her parents in Chilworth until she was about twenty three years old when she married Charley Smith, a labourer. They lived in Castle Lane, Chilworth, and Charley worked as a carpenter. They had eight children. By 1891 Charley and Kate had moved into Southampton where they lived in St.Denys Road, and later in Bitterne Park.

• Charlotte, born in Chilworth in about 1843. Charlotte died in Chilworth when she was only nineteen years old.

• Agnes, born in Chilworth in about 1845. Agnes left home when she was about sixteen year old to work and live in the house of David Morant, a Chilworth stone mason, and his family. When she was eighteen she married George Longland, a gardener, and lived with him in Nursling. They had six children. The family lived at several addresses in Nursling, the Maybush district of Southampton, and Rownhams. One of their sons, Frederick, joined the Royal Navy. George died in 1913, and Agnes died in 1919.

• Alice, also born about 1845. Alice married David Taylor, a gardener who had been born in Wiltshire. They lived for a short while in Midford, near Bath, before returning to Hampshire to live in Nursling. For a while, they lived in the Old School House there. They had eight children. David died some time during the 1890s after which Alice continued to live in Nursling accompanied by one of her sons.

Return to Dorothy Bennett’s Ancestors

You are free to make use of the information in these web pages in any way that you wish but please be aware that the author, Mike Parsons, is unable to accept respsonsibility for any errors or omissions.

Mike can be contacted at parsonspublic@gmail.com

The information in these web pages comes from a number of sources including: Hampshire County Records Office, Somerset Heritage Centre; Dorset County Records Office; Southampton City Archives; the General Register Office; several on-line newspaper archives; several on-line transcriptions of Parish Register Entries; and several on-line indexes of births, marriages and deaths. The research has also been guided at times by the published work of others, both on-line and in the form of printed books, and by information from personal correspondence with other researchers, for all of which thanks are given. However, all of the information in these web pages has been independently verified by the author from original sources, facimile copies, or, in the case of a few parish register entries, transcriptions published by on-line genealogy sites. The author is aware that some other researchers have in some cases drawn different conclusions and have published information which is at variance from that shown in these web pages.