Francis Jenness

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Jenness-7

Profile last modified 14 Jun 2020 | Created 27 Mar 2011

Francis Jenness

Born about 1634 in Hampton, England

Son of Richard Jenness and Elizabeth (Basselle) Jenness

[sibling%28s%29 unknown]

Husband of Hannah (Swaine) Jenness — married 15 Feb 1669 in Rye, Rockingham, New Hampshire

Father of Thomas Jenness, Hannah (Jenness) Locke, Hezekiah Jenness, John Jenness, Eleanor (Jenness) Berry, Mehitable (Jenness) Haines and Richard Jenness Sr

Died 27 Aug 1716 in Rye, Rockingham, New Hampshire

Biography

The History of the Town of Rye, New Hampshire has the following information:

Francis Jenness, born about 1634, came to Hampton [New Hampshire] as early as Feb 15, 1670. He married, in 1671, Hannah, daughter of William Swaine. He married, second, Feb 4, 1701, widow Salome White of Portsmouth. He died Aug 27, 1716. Hannah died in 1700. Children by his first wife [four are listed].[1] Sources

↑ “History of the town of Rye, New Hampshire : from its discovery and settlement to December 31, 1903” by Parsons, Langdon Brown. Rumford Print. Co., Concord, N.H. 1905. (Page: 381). Author: Edward Norris Wentworth, Jr. Title: The Genalogy of Edward Norris Wentworth Junior. Publication: Location: Chicago, Cook, Illinois, USA; Date: June 1928. NOTE:Special Project Submitted in Courses in Community Life and Advance Biology at the University High School, University of Chicago. Heritage Quest Stearns, Ezra S. Genealogical and Family History of the State of New Hampshire (Lewis Publishing Company, 1908) Vol. 2, Page 623 Acknowledgements

This person was created through the import of fitzmaster032511.ged on 27 March 2011.

Added by YankeeDoodleMark on 29 Mar 2008

For someone arriving so early to what would become the United States, Francis Jenness has a lot of information available about him. A very nice writeup can be found at [1].

His start in America has been recorded as follows [2, pp. 380-381]:

   The progenitor of the numerous and now widely scattered family of Jenness in this country was one Francis Jennings [sic], who at the age of 35 emigrated to New Hampshire from Rye in England, about the year 1665, and took up his abode at Great Island, now Newcastle.  The freeman's oath of fidelity was administered to him there, Oct. 2, 1666.  For about five years the young man, then unmarried, pursued in Great Island the vocation of a mariner and fisherman.  He married Hannah Swaine of Hampton and made his future home in that town.

Another story of Francis Jenness comes from [2, p. 63]:

   Francis Jennings or Jenness emigrated to this country from England in 1665 and took up his residence at Great Island, now Newcastle [NH], pursuing the avocation of mariner and fisherman.  In 1671 he moved to Rye, then a part of Hampton, and married Hannah Swaine.  He established an extensive bakery on his land.  The territory which he took up, and most of which was laid out to him by the town of Hampton in 1675, extended in a strip along the sea-coast from Joslyn's Neck to Locke's Neck in a southerly direction for three quarters of a mile, including good mill privileges.  He erected his dwelling house close by this mill stream, some forty rods to the eastward of the present bridge across it, and on the easterly side of the dwelling house now occupied by one of his descendants, Mr. J. Disco Jenness.  Francis also erected a saw mill and a grist-mill and put up buildings for a bakery.  The nearness of the latter to the sea was a great convenience in the carrying on of his business.  By means of ketches and small pinnaces, he distributed his bread and sea biscuits all along the coast from Saco to Boston.  He is said to have been a very large and strong man.  Upon one occasion when he had visited Boston with a cargo of his ship biscuits to sell, he was stopped in the street by a renowned bully from an English man-of-war, lying in the harbor, and bantered to a fight.  Francis in vain sought to pacify the man.  Neither argument nor persuasion would avail.  At last his patience gave out, and seizing the astonished gladiator by the collar of his jacket he tossed him with ease over the top of a six-foot fence into an adjoining lot, and then resumed his course unruffled and unimpeded.

More about the sawmill and its particulars can be found in [2, pp. 217-218] and [3, p. 540].

There was an Indian uprising in eastern Maine in the 1675-1676 timeframe [3, p. 220]. Francis Jenness was among the men from his town who served in the military campaign against the native Americans [3, p. 224].

Francis had a disagreement with the townspeople over lands that he had fenced in that others apparently felt were common to everyone. In 1706, he complained at a commoners meeting that a riotous group of men had taken down a fence erected by himself and three neighbors [3, p. 158].

This came to a head in 1707, as evidenced in the following story [2, p. 381]:

   He was denied his proper interest in the commonage, feedage, and sweepage (or the right of mowing grass), in the undivided town lands.  In 1707, when he attempted to insist upon these rights before a meeting of the commoners, he was "denied speaking at this meeting."  His sons after his death, in 1721, procured acknowledgment of these long-resisted rights.

REFERENCES

[1] See a story about Francis Jenness at http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/ViewStory.aspx?tid=768143&pid=-1511082...

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[2] Parsons, Langdon B.. History of the town of Rye, New Hampshire : from its discovery and settlement to December 31, 1903. Concord, N.H.: Rumford Print. Co., 1905, text online at Ancestry.com.

[3] Dow, Joseph,. History of the town of Hampton, New Hampshire : from its settlement in 1638, to the autumn of 1892. unknown: L.E. Dow, 1893, c1894, text online at Ancestry.com.

Francis Jenness

Added by shuttle19 on 13 Feb 2008

Hopefully, all of you who have a JENNESS connection will find the following worthwhile. Laura Elizabeth Ingalls is a 4th great-granddaughter of Hannah Jenness daughter of Francis Jenness) who married Edward Locke. The source of this material is found at the end.

In Francis's time his surname was spelled in many different ways, never by himself because, like many of the other persons sent to America, he couldn't read or write. Our earliest knowledge of his name in print was on the embarkation document that signed him aboard ship at Bristol, England on August 10, 1662 when he left for America.

As far as I've been able to learn there was no Richard Shipway in New Hampshire, but I found a merchant named Richard Shipway at Bristol, England at the time Francis Jenness left that country. Records show that Francis sailed from Bristol on August 10, 1662. He was listed on the embarkation document as an indentured servant bound to Richard Shipway.
I have discovered a John Shipway living on Great Island, who might have been Richard's brother or his nephew, who possibly became Francis's employer. I've got no evidence of this but it sounds plausible. It also might explain why Francis apparently received rather considerate treatment, i.e., he was assigned interesting and beneficial work "as a seaman and a mariner" instead of back-breaking work clearing land. Anyway, Francis completed four years of service and then was released from his contract. He then took the Freeman's Oath of Fidelity [see below] and began fending for himself. His seamanship skills came in handy, almost immediately because they enabled him to sell products from a home bakery [at Rye NH] to customers up and down the coast. The small ketch-like boats he used were a Portsmouth NH invention, called gundalows, which besides being seaworthy could be used to sail on the local Piscataqua River.

Francis had all of his seven children [Thomas, Hannah, Hezekiah, John, Elinor, Mehitabel and Richard] during his marriage to Hannah. She died about 1700 when Francis was in his mid-fifties. He subsequently married twice-widowed Salome (Jackson)(Wyatt) White of Portsmouth but they had no further children. Salome had two sons - one each by her earlier husbands - before she married Francis but they were grown and on their own by the time of the wedding. They don't seem to figure at all in the Francis Jenness story.

(7) his first-known residence at Hampton was in the home of John Cox and his recently married second wife Priscilla (Marston) Swain; (8) he married Hannah Swain, Priscilla's daughter by her first marriage to William Swain on the 15th, 12th month 1669 [old calendar]. They made their first home together in the John and Priscilla Cox home

10) when Francis and Hannah were expecting their 2nd child, i.e., in 1672 or 1673, they moved into a home of their own and soon afterwards acquired the property in Rye NH, where they spent the rest of their lives. Rye was a new overflow area adjoining Hampton and Francis and Hannah were among it's earliest settlers.

Individuals, like Francis Jenness, didn't gain their freedom until they had been in America for some time. They were subjected to a "publically-held Freeman's Oath of Fidelity" ceremony. It's intent was to satisfy colonial leaders that (a) their laws and orders would be obeyed and that (b) the recipient of freedom would likewise remain faithful, in spirit and practice, to the reigning monarch in England. This was the "Freeman's Oath". It's swearing-in feature was to make the sworn person guilty under the law if he broke his promise. Punishment for infractions could be as severe as public lashings, banishment from the colony, or even death if the charged person was deemed to have been a traitor. The severity of the sentence varied according to the deemed severity of the offence, but it's probably safe to say it was always more severe than punishments meted out today.

Francis earned the right to take the "Freeman's Oath" and acquire his freedom after he had satisfactorily completed his Shipway contract. I can't account for the year's delay he incurred in obtaining his freedom, but assume it was caused by slowness of colonial leaders, in convening the necessary ceremonial event on Great Island. Even today, Governments at all levels have a way of taking longer to carry out public duties than most of us can comprehend.

Francis Jenness became a "Freeman" on October 2, 1666. To start him off in his new life, community leaders granted him a tiny parcel of land located beside the waterfront at New Castle. The property contained about one acre; it was just large enough for a home, a small boat launching site, and an area where he might do a little subsistence gardening. It's main value probably lay in it's location, which gave Francis ready access to the water.

He and Salome (Jackson)(Wyatt) White married a few days less than a year after Hannah's death. Salome was a Portsmouth woman, probably of about Francis's age, that he may have met [my conjecture] during his bakery travels. She had been twice widowed, but obviously, like Francis, she didn't relish the prospect of spending her last years alone. The date of their marriage was February 04, 1701

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