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This project began in 1968, the result of curiosity about the maiden name of my dear grandmother Julia Blennerhassett, and has continued on and off ever since. Delving deeper and wider, the ancient family proved a genealogical goldmine, revealing fascinating individuals from many walks of life and tales of historic and cultural interest from the 13th century onwards.
I soon realised that much printed and manuscript material existed that had not been referenced by any easily available source, and many branches of the family were not documented at all. The object is to complete the Blennerhassett pedigree world-wide, connecting all branches and recording a brief history of individuals. The extended family through female lines of descent, i.e. descendants carrying other surnames, are included whenever such information comes to hand but these are not systematically researched.
GENESIS
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The origin of what is now essentially an Irish name may be found at the manor and village of Blenerhayset (now Blennerhasset, with single 't') in the northern English county of Cumberland, close to the border with lowland Scotland. Pronouncation has been Blen'hayset, Blen'hassett, Blen'rassett or simply 'Rassett. Carrying no surname and owning no property, the family will no doubt have worked the land or otherwise served their Lord of the Manor. In the twelfth century one of them adopted or was given the name of the manor as a personal surname, he and his descendants being described as "de Blenerhayset" (i.e. "of Blenerhayset").
Subsequently the family left the manor of Blenerhayset for the nearby City of Carlisle, where in the 1350s is found Alan de Blenerhayset, a merchant active in local politics, who in 1390 sealed a deed as illustrated here, with the arms still used by the family. Alan's brother(?) John Blenerhayset has the earliest dated representation of Blenerhayset arms, displayed in Thomas Jenyn's Roll, Queen Margaret's version temp. Edward III (1327-1377). His arms are " gules three dolphins hauriant, argent" without the "chevron ermine" which is first seen on Alan's seal of 1390. To carry such arms John or his immediate ancestor will have performed significant service, probably military in nature, but how and when these arms were acquired is unknown. The three dolphins may perhaps indicate a connection with the sea.
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Blenerhaysets prospered at Carlisle a further 200 years, often serving as Mayor, Sheriff or Burgess for that city, until in 1547 they established themselves as gentry at Flemby Hall, Flemby (now called Flimby) on the Cumberland coast. From Cumberland departed sons who founded dynasties in the English counties Norfolk & Suffolk, also Irish counties Kerry, Limerick & Fermanagh. Ancestor of the Norfolk, Suffolk and Fermanagh lines was Ralph de Blenerhayset of Carlisle, who in 1423 married Joan de Lowdham of Loudham, a 14 year old heiress and already a widow. By this marriage Ralph gained the manors of Loudham, Toddenham & Halvergate in Suffolk, Frenze in Norfolk, Kelvedon in Essex, thus becoming Lord of the Manor for these places, a young man of property and some standing in East Anglia.
In 1430 Ralph travelled from England to France as one of the retinue of Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, one year before the boy king Henry VI of England was crowned King of France, a Plantagenet attempt to permanently unite the two crowns following Henry V's famous victory at Agincourt fifteen years earlier. His tomb of 1475 at Frenze in Co.Norfolk boasts a fine monumental brass, an effigy of "Ralph Blenerhayset Esquire" wearing armour typical of the early 15th century, the oldest surviving portrait of a Blennerhassett.
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Of these once flourishing branches only the Kerry and Limerick families survive, the others extinct in the male line, thus all living Blennerhassetts are of Irish descent. Their common ancestor is Robert Blennerhassett of Flimby, Cumberland, who settled in Ireland soon after his father Thomas, on 14th August 1590, was granted land (by Sir Edward Denny of Dennyvale & Tralee) as planter or undertaker in the Plantation of Munster. The plantation was established by Elizabeth I on the vast Munster estates forfeited by the rebel 15th Earl of Desmond, Gerald FitzGerald, who she had proclaimed traitor and outlawed in 1579 and who was murdered (at Glenageenty, Ballymacelligott) in 1581. Sir Edward Denny, as the principal planter, had previously been granted the Earl's chief castle of Tralee.
The grant to Thomas was contingent on him rendering one red rose at the festival of Saint John the Baptist and paying a rent of six pounds sterling per year. Robert established himself on adjoining townlands Ballycarty and Ballyseedy, near Tralee, and since that time the Blennerhassetts have been a prominent and well-respected family in both Kerry and Limerick.
A distant cousin, the Elizabethan writer and poet Thomas Blennerhassett of Norfolk, served as a soldier in Ireland c1600 and also in Guernsey, Channel Islands. A few years later this Thomas, with his brother Sir Edward Blennerhassett Knt, settled by beautiful Loch Erne in Fermanagh, having in 1610 been granted land in the Plantation of Ulster, on confiscated Maguire property in the western part of the Barony of Lurg. Their property stretched from Belleek to the river Bannagh and there they built Castle Hassett (now Crevenish Castle) at Hassettstown (now Ederney), also Hassett's Fort (now Castle Caldwell) and the new towns Belleek, Ederney & Kesh. Belleek is today famous for its pottery.
WHO WERE THEY?
Gentry, farmers, craftsmen, miners, engineers, medics, nurses, lawyers, teachers, clergy, soldiers, seafarers, police, writers, poets, painters, musicians, cottiers, farm labourers, servants, paupers...
Four were knighted, one made baronet of Blennerville in Co.Kerry. Thomas Blenerhayset was installed as Commendator (Rector) of Hardingham parish in Norfolk at the tender age of 11 years, by Bull of dispensation from Pope Leo X. Generations loyally served the family of the Duke of Norfolk, among these John Blennerhassett of Barsham Hall in Suffolk, who as Minister or Steward of the Household attended the 4th Duke during his imprisonment at the Tower of London, awaiting execution.
They were politicians, elected as Councillors, Mayors and Members of Parliament in England and Ireland. They sat on Grand Juries, served as magistrates, as judges... and appeared before them. They were imprisoned. They fought duels. In Ireland they campaigned for Home Rule, and against Home Rule. Henry Blennerhassett M.D. was an active supporter of The Liberator Daniel O'Connell, signing the Protestant Petition in favour of Catholic Emancipation and presiding over a number of public meetings where the people of Tralee proclaimed support & sympathy for O'Connell. | They patrolled the western marches watching for invading Scots, served in Cromwell's army in the English Civil War and with the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. They were present at Trafalgar, Waterloo, the Indian Mutiny, the Crimea, on the Western Front, in North Africa, in Bomber Command. During the American War of Independence James Blennerhassett was a young Lieutenant serving on HMS "Serapis" (44 guns), present during the infamous naval duel with American privateer Bonhomme Richard, whose commander John Paul Jones was afterwards to write "...no action before was ever, in all respects, so bloody, so severe and so lasting...".
Brothers fought in the American Civil War on opposite sides, while John Blennerhassett attempted to raise his own Union regiment at New York. During the Great War Giles Blennerhassett was an "ace" with the Royal Flying Corps; Arthur Blennerhassett scoured the USA, Australia & New Zealand for army remounts while the ladies of Ballyseedy nursed wounded from Gallipoli on hospital ships in the Mediterranean; William Lewis Blennerhassett was in Military Intelligence (MI1), undercover in France, after the war serving in Finland, in Northern Russia, and as British delegate to the League of Nations.
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In the Royal Navy during WWII Alec Blennerhassett Haden-Morris, R.N. died when battle cruiser H.M.S. "Hood" exploded and sank during her duel with German battleship "Bismark", suffering the loss of her entire crew save three. Sir Marmaduke Blennerhassett, Bart. was lieutenant on HMS "Greyhound" when he died, on the day of the birth of his only child, assisting the 1940 evacuation of Dunkerque. |
In the R.A.F. Richard "Dick" Blennerhassett personally piloted Sir Winston Churchill on several occasions. While taking Churchill to the Casablanca conference they encountered a Messerschmitt squadron, escaping by cloud hopping, for which service Churchill arranged a medal be struck especially for him.
A few were among the fashionable taking houses for the season at Georgian Bath, while in the side streets another manufactured stays for their ladies' undergarments. Lucy Blennerhassett and her husband John Sapsford were administrators for and personal assistants to philantropist Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts of London, who in the mid-nineteenth century devoted herself selflessly to providing housing for the poor of London's east-end and giving large-scale help to the south-west of Ireland, where during the famine she fed and clothed whole districts, lent money to restore the fishing industry and assisted large scale emigration.
They laboured long and hard farming the land in North Kerry. Some always owned their own farms, others worked the land as tenant until the 1885 and 1903 land acts enabled tenants to purchase the land they worked from their landlord. They mined lead in Cornwall or produced flour at Blennerville Windmill, built in 1801 by Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, the first Baronet. Several sought their fortune in the gold rushes of California and Australia. They sailed from Liverpool, Queenstown or Blennerville to become pioneer settlers and farmers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States of America. Richard Blennerhassett M.D. was for several years ship's doctor on board the barque "Jeanie Johnston" , regularly sailing from Blennerville Quay in Co.Kerry to Quebec, sometimes to New York or Baltimore, full of hopeful emigrants escaping the effects of famine in Ireland for a new life in North America. The ship returned from these voyages laden with Canadian timber. During his service not a single passenger or crew member was lost to disease or injury, an almost unique record for shipping of the period. |
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Harman Blennerhassett and his young bride fled scandal to create an island paradise in the Ohio River, only to be drawn into the grand designs of ex-vice president Aaron Burr and be charged with high treason against the United States. James Blennerhassett steamed to a new life in Australia on board Brunel's S.S. "Great Britain", the first large ship constructed of iron and using a screw propellor. William Ledman Blennerhassett was locomotive engineer with the infant Canadian Pacific Railway when, in 1885, he drove the first steam engine to cross the final bridge built to complete the C.P.R. and thus unite Canada east to west by rail. Another locomotive was named for him, "William Blennerhassett".
Rose Blennerhassett was one of three brave and enterprising nursing sisters who in 1891 left Beria on the East African Coast to travel inland, 70 miles by river then 190 miles on foot, to Penhalonga in Manicaland, where they established the first hospital in what is now Zimbabwe. They are thought to be the first European women to enter Africa from the east coast.
William H. Blennerhassett, licensed to sell an early document copying system "The Electric Pen" devised by prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison, was in his leisure time pitcher for the first Baseball club at Port Huron, Michigan.
They were royalist and republican; anglican, non-conformist & roman catholic; landlord and tenant; master and servant; rich and poor; genteel and scandalous...
SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
John Blennerhassett of Castle Conway was author of an early genealogy of his family in Ireland, commenced while held prisoner at Galway in 1689-1690 during the 'Williamite' wars, completed shortly before he died c1738. Two of his original manuscripts survive, the later and more extensive, known as "Black Jack's Book", having been transcribed twice, by Kerry historians Arthur Blennerhassett Rowan in 1855 and by Mary Agnes Hickson c1870.
Edward Francis Browne, whose grandmother Frances Browne was granddaughter of "The Great Colonel John" Blennerhassett of Ballyseedy, inherited a quantity of original documents relating to the family. From these and other sources he compiled a beautiful leather-bound manuscript pedigree, completed 1911.
An outline family tree was published in earlier editions of "Burke's Landed Gentry" but disappeared from that work after 1912. Reinstated in 1976 for "Burke's Irish Family Records", the Blennerhassett entry was wonderfully enlarged and rewritten by genealogist Brian Fitzelle. Despite this advance, many branches remained incomplete, undocumented or hidden, much history yet to be discovered.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Information has been drawn from published work, public records and manuscripts in private archives. Many individuals have made important contributions and continue to do so, kindly sharing their own research material, for which assistance and support I am grateful - this site would not be possible without such help. I shall not list names, you know who you are, but among you is one so outstanding she has be publicly acknowledged. Beatty Blennerhassett of Bengworden, for many years organizer of family reunions, enthusiastic collector and guardian of a treasure-trove of papers relating to Blennerhassett and other families in Australia, New Zealand & elsewhere, is known and appreciated by everybody with an interest in this subject. Thank you Beatty, and thank you everyone else who has contributed.
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FORTES FORTUNA JUVAT
THE BLENNERHASSETT PEDIGREE | |
PUBLICATION
Earlier paper versions were titled The Blennerhassett Pedigree. Printed on request in small quantities (in 1994, 1998, 2000 & 2001), they had limited distribution and the method of publication proved too expensive to maintain. These are obsolete, superseded by this website.
That there is a growing interest among members of the family, other Blennerhassett descendants and local historians is shown by the size of the postbag. Many people have requested information on earlier generations be made more widely available, this website being a response to such requests, but the site is in its early stages and much information is presently filed waiting to be added. Personal data about living people is not placed on the site except by choice of the individual concerned, hence the empty rectangles that appear along the right-hand edge of many family tree pages. If you wish to see your own particular branch in more detail, do get in touch.
To permit larger quantities of family tree data to be viewed as single documents, each branch has been created as a flat spreadsheet, displayed here as a searchable PDF document. This method does not require use of a specialised genealogy program, therefore no GEDCOM format output is available. The site being new some pages are incomplete, those not yet functional are marked UC (Under Construction). Thank you for your patience. |
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Suitable photographs of people, places, and inscriptions are welcomed, as are individual pieces of research.
Please report factual errors or omissions, items to be added or removed, spelling mistakes, duplications on the same page, broken links, suggestions of any kind. There are many page cross-reference errors resulting from the move to the website, these will take a while to correct.
If you believe any text, image or photograph used on this site infringes your copyright, do tell me, in order that permission to use may be requested and copyright acknowledged, or the offending material removed.
If you have your own genealogy or local history website, and an interest in or connection with the Blennerhassett family, please consider adding a link to this site.
Donations towards the costs of continuing research and of maintaining this website are appreciated.
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Bill Jehan
14 November 2008
this site last edited July 2010 |
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