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Welcome to The Fenning - Fennings Family
Website.
Research into Genealogy
and Family History.
Introduction
The cave men of France and Spain were probably
the earliest
people to have left a record of themselves. They did this through
the graphic images that they painted
onto the walls of the caves in
which they lived.
The Bible is full of accounts of 'who begat
who', making the bible not
only a history book, but a Genealogical record of those people
whose
names appear in it.
The ancient Greeks left records of their antecedents in order to convince
later
generations that they were descended from gods.
The Assyrians, the ancient Egyptians, and the ancient Chinese
all left
extensive family records for later generations to read, presumably so
they would not be forgotten.
So, Genealogy is not a new thing
Today in the United Kingdom people are becoming more aware
and interested
in family history and Genealogy, but because of the
complexity and research costs involved, only occasionally delve
into these subjects.
The English Oxford Dictionary defines 'Genealogy'
as follows; •
noun (pl. genealogies)
1
a line of descent traced continuously from an ancestor.
2 the study of lines of descent. — DERIVATIVES genealogical/jeeni lojik’l/ adjective genealogist noun. — ORIGINGreek genealogia, from genea
‘race, generation’ + logos ‘account’.
My name is Rod Fennings, and about four
years ago I got it into my head that I was
going to try and find out as much as possible about the history
of my surname, and
also uncover something of the ancestry of my family, which at the outset I knew little
about.
The surname 'Fennings' has, to the best of my knowledge never been that common,
which might
make you think perhaps that tracing my ancestry was an easy task, but
unfortunately this was not the case.
From analysis taken during the 1891 Census Ancestry.co.uk reported that the
surname was not in the top 100 most common
surnames in Great Britain.
One of the initial problems I discovered was that our present
day surname 'Fennings' was
orginally 'Fenning', the additional 'S' having been
added some time at the beginning of the
nineteeth century. Unfortunately, I didn't know this when I first
started searching the
records.
It is surprising just how much extra time and effort was added to the
job of trawling
through thousands and thousands of official records, by this seemingly insignificant
alteration,
and of course that does not take into account the plethora of transcription
errors that I found in the various official Census
and BDM records. I found amongst
these, 'Fenning', 'Fennings', 'Fening', 'Jenning',
'Jennings', 'Femming', 'Femings',
Femmings', 'Finning', 'Finnnings,' and
on one occasion 'Semming', and so it went on
and on.
It would appear on the face of it that either
the original transcribers could not spell,
or maybe they could not understand the various dialects that they encountered
and
just entered what they thought they heard!!
In spite of all this, I do consider myself quite fortunate
to have uncovered previously
unknown family history, and have located a total of over 500 ancestors and missing
living relatives to date, which is not bad when you take into account the fact that I
started in 2006 with
only 5 people on the list.
One very positive benefit that came out of my work was that I discovered several
living
relatives that I previously had no knowledge of, and who are now accepted not only as
close relatives,
but also as close friends.
The purpose of this Fenning and Fennings family website is to offer
all members of this
family, however distant, an opportunity to be aware of their Ancestral Family, to locate
missing relatives and ancestors in the UK, and to ultimately give all family members that
sense of unity and
'belonging', which seems to be absent from today's society.
This Genealogy and Family History website is entirely
for your benefit and is made
available to you completely free of charge. It is strictly non-commercial and no
donations
or financial contributions of any kind towards it's construction or running
costs will normally ever be asked of
you or accepted from you. The only exception
to this rule is where you have asked for assistance and we are unable to communicate
with you electronically using the Internet, in which case you would be responsible for
any postage or telephone
costs involved.
All of the details appearing on this website and on our Family Tree are factual
(unless stated
otherwise) and have been taken from official records that have been
found at; The National Archives, Ancestry.com,
Findmypast.com, The Genealogist,
Genes Reunited, Suffolk County Council Records Office, The Suffolk Family History
Society, Felixtowe Family History Society, Free BDM, FamilySearch.com, genuki.org,
RootsWeb.com and the
Cosford Database.
Because of it's very nature direct access to our Family Tree is restricted
to members
of this family only, however once it has been established that you have a genetic link
with the family
then full access will be given to you.
This
website and all of the contents contained in it are copyright to the Fenning -
Fennings Family Website and the
Fenning - Fennings Family Tree and may not be
copied from this source or reproduced in part or in full without our
prior written
consent.
All trading names and trading styles used herein remain the intellectual property
of and
copyright to their respective owners.
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