Saturday, June 29, 2019

Sension / St. John #2

Matthias and Mary Tinker had six children, perhaps seven:

Matthias Jr. [or II]: bp. 30 Nov 1628 New Windsor - d. Dec 1728 Norwalk, CT
Thomas: bp. 24 Oct 1631 St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, London - d. 16 May 1639 Windsor, CT
Mark: bp.10 Jun 1633 same place - 12 Aug 1693 Norwalk, CT
Samuel: b. 1638-40 Dorchester, MA or Windsor, CT - d. 14 Jan 1685 Norwalk, CT
Mercy: b. 1643-45 prob. Windsor, CT - 1 Feb 1684 Norwalk, CT
James: b. c1648 Windsor or Wethersfield, CT - 9 May 1684 Norwalk, CT

The possible 7th child:
Sarah: b. c1636 prob. Dorchester, MA - d. 1647 Windsor, CT [A Sarah Senchon died in Windsor in 1647. Relationship to other Sensions not given.]

Now, what about Matthias Sension Sr.? We must turn to London records for his origin.

The records of St. Olave Silver Street, London offer the following:
baptisms:
Mathias, son of Christopher Sangins: 9 Aug 1601
Joane, daughter: 27 Feb 1602/3
Sarah, daughter: 28 Oct 1604
Katerine, daughter: 3 Nov 1605
Roger, son: 5 Nov 1607
James, son: 30 Oct 1608
Sara: daughter, ? Dec 1609
Thomas, son: 30 May 1613
Nicholas, son: 1 Jan 1617/8

Christopher is listed as Christofer & Xstofer
Surname: Sangins, Sangyne, Sengenes & St. John

burials:
Sarah: 3 Dec 1604
Jane: 29 Aug 1603
unbaptized child: 17 Jan 1610/11
Elizabeth: 11 Mar 1616/7
Humfrey: 8 July 1625 [mother Joane]
Sara: 19 July 1625
Christopher: 19 Jun 1629

Rent records for St. Olave Silver Street identify Joan Senchion as the widow of Christopher and a midwife by trade.

So we have Matthias' parents as Christopher and Joan. He was baptized on 9 Aug 1601.

[to be continued]

Thursday, June 27, 2019

St. John - Sension Family: What I know or think I know

The St. John - Sension story becomes more and more frustrating as I dig into it. Genealogy research can do that to you - constantly!! Were Mathias Sension, his uncle Matthew and cousin Mathias all in America? Was Samuel St. John's father Mathias II or Mathias, son of Matthew?

Here's what I know and think I know.

Robert Leigh Ward's  Two Contemporaries Named Mathias Sension was published in the Oct. 1977 issue of The American Genealogist, [Vol. 33, #4, p. 241-3]. In the article, Ward established that there were two Mathias Sension residing in London during the early 1600s.

One lived in the parish of St. Botolph's Bishopsgate, London, was a shoemaker and married a woman named Sarah. Mathias and Sarah had three children baptized at the parish church, William [23 Aug 1629], Elizabeth [1 Nov 1631] and Sara [1 Sep 1633].

The other Mathias resided in St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, London, was a chandler by trade and married a woman named Mary. Further research would reveal that she was Mary Tinker. The parish registers turned up a baptism for two sons, Thomas [24 Oct 1631] and Marke [10 Jun 1633]. There was also a James Sension in the same parish. He married Anne and they had 8 children. Like Mathias, James was a chandler.

Ward concluded that it was the second Mathis who settled in Massachusetts and later Connecticut.

Mathias' marriage record was located in New Windsor, Berkshire, England. On 1 Nov 1627, he married Mary Tinker, daughter of Robert Tinker and Mary Merwin. Their eldest son, Mathias was baptized at New Windsor on 30 Nov 1628.

The St. John Genealogy [1907] claims that Mathias and Mary were in Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay Colony by 1631/2. With sons born in London in 1631 and 1633, that was highly unlikely.

Dorchester records do place Mathias there in 1634, when he was made a freeman on 3 September of that year.

Mathias and Mary had at least three more children in America, possibly four. Samuel [c1639]. Mercy [c1645] and James [c11649] were probably born in Windsor, CT. A Sarah Senchon died in Windsor in 1647. Robert Charles Anderson's Great Migration 1634-1635 R-S article on "Matthew Sension" [p.232] suggests that the Sarah Sension who died in 1647 was the daughter of Mathias and Mary, born circa 1636.

The Sensions were in Dorchester from 1634 until 1640, then moved to Windsor, CT from 1640 until 1648, Wethersfield, CT from 1648 until 1654 and Norwalk, CT from 1655 until his death in 1669.

[to be continued]

Friday, June 7, 2019

St. John: Antwerp or Wales?

I think the jury is in on the St. John ancestry. Wales appears to be the homeland for the family, rather than Antwerp of the Spanish Netherlands.

It seems that some of the findings in the London records were misinterpreted and some incorrect assumptions were made.

There were other factors involved that do not warrant inclusion here. Suffice it to say, I'm rather disappointed, for several reasons.

1) I spent a week in Salt Lake verifying misinterpreted research.

2) I did not catch the fact that what I was thinking were Dutch church records were not and the consultant did not catch on either.

3) I could have spent the week on another project.

4) I've lost 5 years on updating the St. John family.

I will outline the St. John lineage in the next post.

Note: St. John, for whatever reason, is pronounces Sin-jin in England. That accounts for some early spelling such as Sention, Sension and Senshon.

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Cruising delays Posts

We returned from a cruise on Memorial Day Monday. In addition to souvenirs, I brought back a cough and have been under the weather ever since.

Cruise recap: We flew from Indy to Chicago to Dublin, Ireland on May 13 and checked into the Arlington Hotel near the O'Connell Street Bridge. The afternoon was spent wandering Dublin. Various souvenir shops and Marks & Spencer Department Store were among the stops.

On the 14th we took a bus trip to Galway. The primary purpose of the trip was that it stopped in the village of Cong. Cong doubled for Innisfree in John Ford's 1951 classic "The Quiet Man" [John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Victor McLaglan, Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald, etc.]. It is one of our all time favorites. Cong was the lunch stop, so we picked up sandwiches, chips and drinks at a rest stop and ate on the bus. Cong is the stereotypical perfect Irish village, even if it is a tourist stop courtesy of the film. Galway was OK, but focused on a younger generation. We hooked up with Miriam's sister and brother-in-law back in Dublin and had dinner at the Brazen Head, Ireland's oldest pub, established in 1198.

[Genealogy note: Miriam's Murphy & Malone families were Dubliners.]

We boarded the Celebrity Reflection on the 15th.

May 16 - 1ST PORT: Greenock, Scotland, near Galway. Excursion: Stirling Castle. William Wallace "Braveheart" and Robert the Bruce waged war near the castle. The views of the Scottish countryside from the castle were magnificent. Our guide informed us that Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" renewed interest among the Scots. Scotland's emphasis on history in the classroom was sorely lacking. Sound familiar? Stirling Castle was one of the top excursions!

[Genealogy note: I wandered through a section of the cemetery on the castle grounds. A researcher's dream! The maiden name of the wife was given on nearly every tombstone! ]

May 17th: at sea.

May 18-19 - 2nd PORT: Reykjavik, Iceland: Day 1 - we hopped the shuttle bus into town and walked around Reykjavik. We visited with a local cat and dog, hit numerous shops and visited the main church, an architectural marvel! There was a statue of Leif Erikson out front. On the way into town, the shuttle driver was a bit taciturn to say the least. Our driver back to the ship was great and full of information. He pointed out the house where Churchill stayed during WWII and where President Reagan met with Gorbachev Day 2 saw an excursion to a couple of geothermal plants and a restaurant for geothermal baked bread and tea. Stops were either too short or too long. Probably the weak link of the excursions.

May 20 - 3RD PORT: Akureyri, Iceland: The excursion was to more geothermal sites, Sulphur fields, volcanoes, mountains and a water fall. Descriptions cannot do this excursion justice! The scenery was magnificent! We also crossed one of the places where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. #1 excursion!!

May 21-22: at sea

May 23: 4th PORT - Belfast, Northern Ireland: We toured the historic Crumlin Road Gaol, which closed in the mid-1990s. Our guide was a former guard. The tour included a visit to neighborhoods impacted by the "Troubles" between the Unionist/Loyalists [protestants] and the Nationalist/Republicans [Catholics] beginning in the 1960s.

May 24 - 5th PORT - Cobh [Cove/Queenstown], Cork: Excursion - Blarney Castle. The line to kiss the Blarney Sone was 90 min. and we had two hours on site, so no smooching the rock. I'm eloquent enough, I guess. The Cork countryside was beautiful. We also wandered around Cobh a bit.

[Genealogy note: My 3rd great-grandmother, Catherine O'Neil was a native of County Cork. She may have sailed from Cobh for England where she worked for passage to America.]

May 25 - back to Dublin and the Arlington Hotel. We did a tour of Dublin that included the Book of Kells at Trinity College and Dublin Castle. We took in a dinner show at the hotel as well.

May 26: Home. A 7+ hour flight took 10+ hours thanks to snafus at the Dublin airport and storms in Chicago. We rented a car and drove back to Indy, rather than waiting on the delayed flight that arrived about the time we went to bed.

Somewhere along the line, I picked up a cough and Miriam caught a bug on the flight home. We have been uner the weather since!! Bleah!

Coming up: St. John update.