A Study In "Jennettics"

I'm from an Ohio branch of this family, and we spell it "Jeanette," like the girls name. My maternal grandfather was Joseph Benjamin Jeanette, Jr. Joe was the first of seven children born to Joseph Benjamin Jeanette, Sr. and Sally Ida Booker Jeanette. Joe was born in Tennessee, but the other siblings were all born in Ohio.

Brothers Joe, Richard, Donald, and Robert Jeanette
with their mother Sally (Booker) Jeanette ca. 1927

For some reason, they dropped an "n" from the name in the 1930's or so. Why'd they do it? Who's to say? Maybe they just liked it better that way. Anyway, Joe graduated from Bettsville High School in Seneca County, Ohio in 1933. Here's his senior yearbook picture with the "Jeannette" spelling.

Bettsville yearbook photo from 1933

Joe's parents, who were known as Ben and Sally Jeanette, came from a small town south of Nashville, Tennessee called Thompson's Station in Williamson County. Ben worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad there. A friend taught him Morse code and a bit about how a telegraph works, and these skills launched Ben's career with the railroad. They moved to Ohio, and over the next couple decades, they alternated between several small towns along the railroad between Columbus and Toledo.

From Joe Jeanett's memoirs. Click photo
to read about his dad, Ben Jeanette.

Ben's father, Richard Hezekiah Jeannette, lived his entire life in middle Tennessee. He was known as Dick Jeannette, and he was from a family of blacksmiths there. Dick Jeannette was married three times; the first wife was Ophelia Hargrove. Ben was born of this union in 1890, and he had six sisters. After Ophelia died in 1895, Dick married her sister, Sallie Belle Hargrove, but she also died. Dick married Nettie Angeline Johnson in 1897, and they had six children together.

About the time our Ohio Jeannettes were becoming Jeanettes, the same phenomenon was happening with the Tennessee branches of the family, seemingly by sheer coincidence. Again, none of those descendants can say for sure why it changed, but it did. The name change seems to affect all the Jeanette lines who descended from Richard Hezekiah Jeannette, whose name also changed from Jeannette to Jeanette.

Dick and Nettie Jeanette with grandson George Atkinson

Not far north of Williamson County, in the counties surrounding Bowling Green, Kentucky, we discover another branch of this family. But that branch and the generations to follow spell the name "Jennett."

The Tennessee cousins of present day, a few of them anyway, have gotten their hands on the original birth records of their parents and grandparents to find the original spelling, "Jennett." That's right! The name was actually Jennett, and we kept changing it to get it how we wanted it over all those decades.

Once these revelations came to light, there was some chatter between near and distant cousins via our Facebook group, "Jeanette Family Ancestry," about whose idea it was to change the spelling and whether or not it should be put back the way it was.
"Aunt Irene or Aunt Gertie had it changed, is what I was told."
"Can Aunt Jeanetta change it back for us?"
"After all these years, why? If the Ohio Jeanettes and the rest of the Jeanettes are happy with it why change it now?"

Richard Hezekiah Jeanette's given name was actually Joseph Hezekiah Jennett. He was the son of Joseph W. Jennett and Elizabeth Nickens Jennett. Over the course of his life, sometime before 1900, Joseph Hezekiah Jennett became Richard Hezekiah Jeanette, but not consistently. What a nightmare for genealogy researchers!

We know that Joseph W. Jennett was born in North Carolina about 1818, and we know this from studying the Census for Williamson County, Tennessee in the years when everyone's place of birth is recorded. In my line of the Jeanette/Jennett surname, Joseph W. Jennett is our earliest known forefather. Prior to this person, everything is speculative and not supported by records with any degree of certainty. My hope is to connect this family to a large "Jennette" family located on Hatteras Island in North Carolina's Outer Banks. I wrote about this family in a previous blog, Jennette Family of Lightkeeper Lore.

I believe that Joseph W. Jennett's father was Hezekiah Jennett, born in North Carolina about 1772. It seems that Hezekiah relocated to Kentucky around or just before 1820. Prior to 1850, the Federal Census did not include everyone's name, just the head of each household. But close inspection of the 1820 and 1830 Census for Simpson County, Kentucky shows Hezekiah near the town of Franklin, just 75 miles north of the town of Thompson's Station where my Grandpa Joe Jeanette was born.

I believe that Hezekiah brought several family members along, including no fewer than three sons. One son, John Jennett, was born in 1805. He married Mary Barr across the state line in neighboring Sumner County, Tennessee in 1825, and they were the progenitors of that Kentucky branch of the family that never changed the spelling from the original Jennett variation. John and Mary Jennett appear on the 1830 Census for Simpson County, Kentucky near the town of Franklin with two young daughters, and they had at least four sons during the 1830's.

The 1825 marriage of John and Mary Jennett, witnessed by Hezekiah Jennett

I believe Hezekiah Jennett also had two younger sons, Robinson (born about 1813) and Joseph W. (born about 1818). These two brother moved to Nashville during the 1830's. They worked as blacksmiths there and married sisters Hester and Elizabeth Nickens. Joseph's family moved 40 miles south to Thompson's Station. Robinson's family remained in Nashville, and here's a funny thing... the name changed to Gennett, only for Robinson and his descendants, sometime after 1860. Go figure!

And here's a little side note about that "Gennett" spelling. There was another Gennett family residing in Nashville during that same time. They were not related to Robinson, but I think this made things confusing for several generations. Those Gennetts descended from a family that immigrated from Italy. When I researched them to rule out any possible bloodline link to us, one thing grabbed my attention.

You see, my grandfather always thought the Jeanette's immigrated to the United States from France and French Canada. He wrote that they went from Canada to New York to Kentucky and finally settled in Tennessee. He said that they worked in logging camps. However, my research tracks his forefathers to North Carolina, a family of blacksmiths, not loggers. Grandpa Joe's Tennessee cousins apparently shared this same tale of French ancestry with their descendants as well. I always wondered if there could possibly be some degree of truth behind these hand-me-down stories about French Canadian loggers.

Grandpa Joe Jeanette's inaccurate account of our heritage

It turns out that those unrelated Gennetts in Nashville actually did become very prominent in the logging industry. Two brothers, Andrew and Nathaniel Gennett, grandsons of the Italian immigrants, organized the Gennett Lumber Company in 1901 in Nashville. They bought a mill and some land in the southern Appalachian Mountains, and for most of the 20th Century, the Gennett brothers and their heirs speculated in land and lumber in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The business expanded to 25 mills, a rail system, and even a company town in Tennesse named Gennett. The brothers relocated to Ashville, North Carolina, but it's possible that stories of these successful lumbermen somehow got infused into our own Jennett/Jeanette legacy. It makes sense to me anyway. By the way, the Gennett Lumber Company still operates out of Ashville, North Carolina today, and here is their website with some history: Gennett Lumber Company

Andrew Gennett's memoirs, published in 2002

While that might explain the origin of the logging myth, it does not explain why everybody thought we were French Canadian. There were similar surnames, families that came into the northern tier states, Michigan, Wisconson, Vermont, and New York. Lots of French Canadians migrated to those areas of the U.S. particularly from the 1830's through the 1850's. I have discovered immigrants named Gennett, Jannet, and the like, who claim Canada as their birthplace, some with French parentage. None of them have any connection to us, so far as I can determine. Perhaps a genealogy enthusiast in our family more than a century ago, someone without access to all the records we have today, made some incorrect assumptions and then passed them on to everyone else.

Did I mention that I've been trying to connect our Tennessee Jennett/Jeanette line to that Jennette family on Hatteras Island? Well it turns out I'm not alone. In fact, the Jennett name has been associated with numerous research projects connected to Sir Walter Raleigh's so called "Lost Colony," dating back to the 1500's. If you don't know anything about that story, look into it. It's quite intriguing, and to think our bloodline could be a part of that story has excited me since I first stumbled upon the possibility. Here's a link to a quick review of the Lost Colony story: The Story of Roanoke, Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony

Researchers of the Lost Colony's families of interest have now turned to science for assistance in connecting the dots and to see if the forefathers became intertwined with the native tribes. In one such investigation, DNA samples have been collected from the male line of the Jennett surname. In other words, if you are a male Jennett/Jennette/Jeanette, then you could participate and potentially connect your lineage to the first Jennetts to settle in eastern North Carolina a dozen generations ago. The paper trail indicates that the Jennett line in the U.S. originated on the mainland along the waterways feeding the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, well before the appearance of the Hatteras branch or the others who migrated further west. There are recorded wills and land grants in Tyrell and Hyde Counties from the early 1700's to support this notion.

John Jennett Land Grant 1773 as surveyed

Location of John Jennett's land in Hyde (now Dare) County, NC

At last check, only three Jennett males have participated in that study. Two have recorded their lineage to the Hatteras Jennettes, and one other is from our line of the Tennessee Jeanettes. The two Hatteras males turned out to be a DNA match to one another, confirming a common direct ancestor. Unfortunately, the sample of the Tennessee descendant did not match the Hatteras samples. It did however match up with two other Hatteras samples from other family surnames, Carawan and Calloway. There could be many explanations for this, perhaps an undocumented adoption or an illegitimate birth in the generations prior. As more participants join the study, our story should become more clear.

Update: We have joined the DNA project! Follow this link for the latest Jeanette DNA results.

All Jennett descendants are invited to join our Facebook group. Just follow this link: Jeanette Family Ancestry