Benjamin H Henneberry (abt. 1863 - 1951)

Born about 1863 in Devils Island, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Ancestors

Husband of Johanna DeYoung — married 12 Nov 1913 (to after 1928) in Halifax, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Keenan Sutherland [send private message]

Biography

Census

Benjamin (38) appears on the 1901 Census with his wife Priscilla (28) and their family Bertha (10), Hilda (8), Alexander (6), Stella (4), Edmund (2) and Violet (infant).

Benjamin (52) appears without his wife Priscilla on the 1911 Census, there is no record online, but it's likely she passed giving birth to Ralph (1904) or shortly thereafter. Ben's children here are Hilda (18), Stella (14), Edmund (12), Violet (10), Alice (8), and Ralph (6).

Ben Henneberry: Folk Singer

One of Helen Creighton’s primary informants, Benjamin Henneberry (1863-1951), Devil’s Island, Nova Scotia, has contributed significantly to the Canadian published resource of folk ballads. Of the more than 150 ballads he sang for Creighton, approximately eighty appear in her Traditional Songs from Nova Scotia and Songs and Bal­lads from Nova Scotia. Several of his ballads, performed by his son Edmund, form the basis of Folk Music of Nova Scotia, Folkways record­ing FM 4006.

Later in Creighton's life (after Ben had passed) she was working on a television broadcast of Folk Music and was under extreme stress, she fainted and afterwards said she was visited by Ben's spirit "Then in some extraordinary way that I can’t explain, I got a message from my old singer, Ben Henneberry who had died some years before. He was saying, ‘You’re doing very well; just keep it up.’"

When he died at the age of eighty-eight, Ben Hen­neberry had thirty-two grandchildren and sixty-two great grandchildren. Creighton comments, “He was greatly revered by family and friends alike down to the youngest great grandchild.” She remarks, “When Mr. Ben Henneberry sings, his children, grandchildren, and friends all gather about him with the same fascination their fathers felt towards the ballad singers of their day.”

Sources

• Helen Creighton, “Fiddles, Folk-Songs and Fishermen’s Yarns,” Canadian Geographi­cal Journal 51 (1959): 212-21
• Helen Creighton, “Folk-Singers of Nova Scotia,” Canadian Forum 32 (1952): 86
• Helen Creighton, A Life in Folklore (Toronto: McGraw 1975)
• Retrospective Repertoire Analysis: The Case Study of Ben Henneberry, Ballad Singer of Devil's Island, Nova Scotia - Diane Tye, Journal of Canadian Society for Traditional Music, Volume 16 (1988)
• 1901 Census, Eastern Passage, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• 1911 Census Eastern Passage, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Marriage Registration https://www.novascotiagenealogy.com/ItemView.aspx?ImageFile=1821-214&Event=marriage&ID=72137