John BENNION

                   The birth of this John Bennion has been a source of question for sometime. See explanations below.
CHRISTENING: 8 Aug 1723, Capenhurst, Shotwick, Chester, England. By Correspondence from a 	researcher in Chester, England, to Howard S. Bennion.
MARRIAGE: F.H.L. Film #275,781, Page 105, Hararden Parish Records.
DEATH: "Walked out of home and was never seen again - about 1744.  Ill fortune fell upon him."  John Bennion's (1820)notes from his mission to England, 1872.

BAPTIZED: (See note at end of notes for explanation). John was rebaptized 11 Sept 1950 SLAKE under the 8 August 1723 birth date. THIS IS THE DATE WE USE. Subsequent ordinances were also performed. Located on TIB, F.H.L. Film  #445,745 SLAKE.

BAPTISM:  Film #1,149,522 (Refilming of Endowment House Records.
   #19621 is John Bennion, Bannel, Flint, No. Wales (They thought this was our John) (Samuel R. Bennion listed himself as 3rd great-grand son for him) #19620 is John Bennion, Bannel, Flint,  b. Mar 1719 Bannell, Flint, N. Wales. This is not our direct line John Bennion. See notes on Bannel. On Film #170,854, 29 Feb 1881 SGEOR he was rebaptized. Listed as John Bennion b. 1719, Flint, N. Wales.  Samuel thought this was the birth date for the John Bennion who was his great-grandfather. Because he was not sure, or did not have the record with him, Samuel had the baptism performed again prior to having this John's endowment work and sealing to Ann Griffith performed. Re-baptized again 8 Mar 1904, F.H.L. Film #184,096 SLAKE. Bannel. When all the entries form the Church FREP program are compiled and entered into the IGI we will, no doubt, find the ordinances for our ancestors performed many times, some with correct dates, some with incorrect dates.
   ENDOWED UNDER 1723 BIRTH DATE F.H.L. Film #445,745, SLAKE. THE DATE WE USE.
   SEALED TO PARENTS.  F.H.L. Film #456,696 SLAKE. This John Bennion is listed as son of John Bennion and Susannah Baxter, born 23 Aug 1723 Capenhurst, Chester, England.  Clearly the correct John Bennion.

   SEALED TO SPOUSE:  F.H.L. Film #170,597 SGEOR, Page 410, #11063.  This entry lists John as 1719, Flint, North Wales.  Ann Griffith, listed by her full name, only has Flint, North Wales entered by her name, but the couple is clearly identified, both by full name, and Samuel Bennion stood proxy for him, Elizabeth Cooper Pixton, a long-time friend, stood proxy for Ann.  The sealing is valid on this date.
   "This John Bennion was one of two church wardens of Hawarden Parish in 1766 and 1767.  He received a bequest in September 1775 from William Griffith of Hawarden.  This is the last official record in which he appears.  The last account of him and the brief story of his son William Bennion is told in John Bennion's account of his early life." Howard S. Bennion, Bennion Family of Utah, Volume 2, p.248.

   John Bennion (1820) said in his history that John Bennion (1723) was said to be an opulent farmer in his time, but ill fortune attended him, and his substance wasted away. The last known of him, one day he went out of his house and was never seen or heard of after.

   HISTORICAL NOTE: John Bennion (1723) was born while King George I reigned.
   King George I died when John Bennion (1723) was five years old.  Therefore most of John's (1723) life was spent under the reign of King George II.
   "King George II was first a German prince. He married Queen Caroline of Anspach. She died in 1737. During the reign of both George I and George II the custom was established that the Cabinet should consist of only one political party. War was declared on Spain in 1739 and was followed by a series of wars which ended in 1815. In 1745 the Jacobites tried once again, unsuccessfully, to restore the Stuarts, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the `Young Pretender' to the throne. Prince Charles had to flee to Europe, where he later died a drunkard.
      In 1752 there was a change in the Calender. Julius Caesar In 46 B.C.fixed the length of the year at 365 days, and 366 days every fourth year. The months had thirty and thirty one days alternately, with the exception of February (then the last month of the year), which had twenty-nine in ordinary years, and thirty in Leap years. To mark this change of calendar July was named after its originator.
       "The Emperor Augustus upset this arrangement by naming August after himself, and in order that it should have the same number of days as July 1, i.e. thirty-one, took one day from February in both ordinary and Leap years.
       "The Julian Calendar made a slight error in the length of the year, a mere eleven minutes and fourteen seconds; but by the sixteenth century the cumulative error was about ten days. This was rectified by Pope Gregory XIII who, in 1582, decreed that 5 October should become the fifteenth.  In order to prevent a recurrence of the fault it was ordained that the centurial years (i.e. 1600, 1700, etc.)should not be Leap years unless divisible by 400.
       "England did not accept this Gregorian calendar until 1752, thereby causing much confusion between English and Continental dates, whilst the disparity between the Julian and Gregorian calendars was now eleven days.  An Act of Parliament in 1750 made 2 September 1752 into 14 September and moved the first day of the year from March 25 (still reckoned as the beginning of the financial year) to 1 January.*  In this way England was brought into line with the rest of Europe.
   *24 March 1700 for example, was followed by 25 March 170l.

   SOME FURTHER EXPLANATIONS: Some family members have taken the entry from the Hawarden Parish Records, Film #944,003 as follows:  Mar 1719  31  Johannes fil Johannes Baneon de Bannel to be the John Bennion for this family group sheet.

   "Bannel Township is on a sharp point of Hawarden parish far to the south, projecting far toward Hope. Many of its people went to church in Hope and I shall look for their records there. It is south of Pentrobin."  Howard S. Bennion Research Journal, page l3.

   Because of the distance from Hawarden, and as it is another township, and all of our Bennions appear to have been from Mancott, we can discount this John Bennion as our progenitor. However, when Samuel Bennion went to St. George to do the endowments for his ancestors, he knew of this John Bennion of Bannel and had the work done for him.  FIND

   In a copy of a talk given by Enos Bennion at a Bennion Family Reunion, date not given, but probably in the early 1900's, he has made the assumption that the John, March 1719, of Bannel, is probably our direct line ancestor. (Copy of the report given by Enos Bennion included, but further study by Howard S. Bennion disproves that theory. Copy of Howard's research, with results of his studies are listed below.)

   "Baptisms for the dead were performed in Nauvoo 1840-45 and in Salt Lake City (in the Endowment House) 1867-76.  The first endowments for the dead were performed in the St. George Temple in 1877.   Many early members of the Church who were proxies for their ancestors for baptism were dead by 1877, or if alive lived too far from the St. George or a later temple, or other- wise neglected to have endowments done.  Therefore, ancestors' names are recorded in the baptism books of the Nauvoo Temple or the Endowment House and in no other temple records (including the TIB).  Stephen K. Kendall, Tenth Annual Priesthood Genealogy Seminar Syllabus 1975, p. 224.

   With the above information it became very important for Samuel to go to St. George to take care of the rest of the endowment for his ancestors. He traveled to St. George in February of 1882.  There many  baptisms were done, or done again, toward the end of February.  The first several days of March were then spent in the temple doing the endowment work for many of his Bennion ancestors.  A listing of names of ancestors for whom the work was performed is located elsewhere.

   "In the registers of Hawarden, F.H.L. Film #275,781 (transcribed by Mr. Bell Jones, J.P., F.S.A., Parish Clerk and Secretary of the Flintshire Historical Society are copies the Hawarden Parish records.  "He made them about 1912 or 1913, about the time of the war because the Welsh Disestablishment Act threatened to take the records from them (the Welsh churches) to store them England and he wanted copies of [the] record.  He has a wonderful collection of old maps and charts and miscellaneous data and notes.  He copied the records just as they were spelled and page for page as they were written. He still has the originals but I did not ask for them.  He evidently had to struggle to decipher the writing in the first volume, 1585-1632, and has gone back and changed some names two or three times (crossing out and writing the next names as he guessed them after having seen the name many times later and getting on to the particular names and hand writing of the several clerks & curates. I think his transcription is more accurate than would be the guesses of those who copied the records back in 1870 to get Bennion names.  I have failed to find some of the births & deaths that were noted on the records of earlier searches.  Either they got their information somewhere else, or they misread names or Mr. Jones has omitted them.  He has checked his work so carefully that I am inclined to some of the earlier     interpretations of name entries. The important dates I searched for carefully going over the pages time and again.

   "There are quite a number of Bennion entries at the beginning.  Then comes a period when the records were poorly kept. They are evidently fragmentary. But in the period 1658 to 1688 the family seems to have been careless about making entries as they were  also during the period 1700 to 1746. Of course, sometimes the parson just didn't bother to fill in.  But the burial records are very deficient during this stretch of time.  As for marriage records, I am going to hunt in adjoining parishes for marriage records - assuming the wife sometimes came from another parish and the ceremony was performed there.

   "These notes are written at Hawarden June 18, 1937.  I have spent all day today and yesterday evening delving in the records.  Yesterday I visited the Historic places, saw Mr. Jones, Joseph Bennion's wife, the widow Bennion on Moors Lane, took pictures of the Moors Lane farm where Grandfather John Bennion lived, visited the wife of Mr. S. Iball & arranged for the work on the records." Howard S. Bennion's Journal, pages 21-23.  Friday, June 18, 1937.

   The above excerpts are included to help explain the difficulty in locating the names we search for.
   John Bennion and Susannah Baxter had four sons named John Bennion.
	1.   John Bennion Chr. 29 Aug 17l4 Chorlton, Backford, Chester England  buried 29 Nov 1714
	2.   John Bennion Chr. 5 Oct 1716  Hawarden, Flints, Wales buried 28 June 1717
	3.   John Bennion Chr. 29 June 1719 Hawarden, Flints, Wales buried 29 June 1719
	4.   John Bennion Chr 8 Aug 1723 Capenhurst, Shotwick, Cheshire, England No death date located.
   Of the four John Bennions listed (plus the one from Bannel) it would have to have been #4 who married Ann Griffith.

                                                Oct. 18, 1950
                                                New York 28
                                                49 E 96th Street
   "Dear Ivy,
	 During the past few weeks I worked up the pedigree charts of our grandfather John Bennion as far as I knew and could surmise the data.  I put question marks where there were surmises.  In making this chart I marshaled together what I consider to be rather convincing evidence of a larger family group sheet for the John Bennion who was born 7 Dec 1690, the son of John Bannion and Alice Street of  Mancott township in Hawarden Parish.
   This John married Susannah Baxter, daughter of Thomas Baxter of Chorlton in Backford Parish, county of Chester, about 5 miles southeast of Hawarden across the Dee River. They were married 8 Oct 1713. Susannah's mother (or, barely possible, stepmother) had died the previous February.  The first child of John and Susannah was christened 29 Aug.  1714 in Backford parish and the entry lists the father, John Bennion as `of Chorlton,' the township where his father-in-law, Thomas Baxter, yeoman, lived. I conclude that the first year of their married life John & Susannah lived with her father on his farm.
	John Bennion, Senior, died 23 April 1714.  The will of John Senior left the farm to his son John.  The Hawarden register shows the burial in Hawarden on 29 Nov. 1714 of John, son of John Bennion of Mancott [son of 1723 John]. This indicates that the family moved in the meantime from Chorlton to Mancott.
	 There is no doubt of the identity of John Bennion who married Susannah Baxter in another county. Since the young couple came from different parishes they had to get a license from the Chester Diocesan Registry or to wait upon an expensive banns publishing program, and they had to have bondsmen; and these bondsmen were the respective fathers - John Bannion, yeoman [gentleman farmer] of Mancott and Thomas Baxter, yeoman of Chorlton.  John Bannion the groom in this transaction is described as `Son of ye bounden John Bannion ye elder, of Mancott, parish of Hawarden, Co. Flint, Yeoman.' The marriage was an event.
	 After the burial of the first child, John, the Hawarden register for the next five years shows several christenings and burials of children of John and Susannah.  Then there are no more entries for this family in the Hawarden register until 36 years later when is recorded 11 Apr 1755 the burial of Susan Bennion, widow of Pentrobin, a township 3 miles south of the town of Hawarden and 4 1/2 miles south of Mancott. She left an administration leaving her personal property to her son John Bennion of Mancott (the husband of Ann Griffith).  The burial of her (Susannah's) husband is not shown but I have a photograph of a document he signed as a member of a jury panel to survey the Dee River and mark  the boundary between  Flintshire and Cheshire.  It was signed 19 Apr 1740.
    Beginning in 1723 the Shotwick parish register, just across the river Dee from Mancott, has a record of Christenings and burials of Children of John and Susannah Bennion of Capenhurst, parish of Shotwick. The record runs to 1733.

    Thomas Baxter, yeoman, died in Capenhurst in 1729 and was buried, not in Shotwick, but in Backford, his old home parish. The record of Backford indicates that a son of Thomas was raising a family on the Chorlton farm during the intervening years.  Later a grandson of Thomas Baxter raised a family in Capenhurst, Shotwick parish.  Chorlton & Capenhurst are about three miles apart.

     I conclude that having lost all but one child in Mancott John and Susannah moved over to Capenhurst to have their children.  The father-in-law, with whom they lived their first year, had moved to  Capenhurst. The years for child bearing are conformable.  There is a good fit among the records on this family.
     It is most improbable that there would be two John and Susannah families bearing children in these  years. The name John was common to the family but not Susannah.

   Here is the John and Susannah Bennion family as I see it:

   John Bennion born 7 Dec 1690 of Mancott Married Susannah Baxter of Chorlton, Backford, Co Chester Married 8 Oct 1713 Susannah died 11 Apr 1755 at Pentrobin, Hawarden Parish.

   1. John    Chr 29 Aug 1714 at Backford buried 29 Nov 1714 Hawarden Parish.
   2. Mary    Chr 30 May 1715 at Hawarden (evidently died).
   3. John    Chr  5 Oct 1716 at Hawarden buried 28 June 1717 at Hawarden.
   4. Mary    Chr 30 May 1718  buried 25 June 1723 at Shotwick.
   5. John    Chr 29 Jun 1719 at Hawarden buried 29 Jun 1719 at Hawarden.
   6. John    Chr  8 Aug 1723 at Shotwick.
   7. William Chr 27 May 1726 at Shotwick.
   8. Jane    Chr 30 Jan 1730 at Shotwick.
   9. Mary    Chr 15 Feb 1733 at Shotwick.

   John the son of John and Susannah was married 22 Apr 1746 to Ann Griffith.
   This conforms well with a BIRTH DATE in 1723, though his wife was born in 1721. The Mary buried in Shotwick in 1723 probably was another Mary born in 1720 or 1721 or 1722.