Bennett fatherhood revision

Profile manager: Philip Broughton-Mills [send private message]

Bennett fatherhood revision

Recent DNA evidence has cast doubt on Ted Bennett being the father of Janice Mills. In attempting to prove/disprove this, I'm encountering other problems with my tree.

I'm using this page for my notes. These sections are being amended constantly.

The diagrams below are simplified and not shown to temporal scale.

Mills existing father and family

Not shown: Mills has a separate second connection to Bennett 1840.

The tree above is predicated on Ralph Bennett's dying declaration that his father Ted Bennett was also the father of Mills. This was not suspicious because Ted already seemed to have one illegitimate child, Inscoe, to whom he left his inheritance. With the precedent established, Chester fitted as a further illegitimate child of Ted.

Mills and Chester are predicted 1st cousins, and based on their predicted 4th cousin DNA matches to numerous living Huckvales, Huckvale was placed in the only fitting vacant spot in that generation in Mills's tree, as the father of illegitimate Bennett 1840.

But there are problems with the tree above, discovered in 2022:

• Mills should be 5th cousin once-removed of Dale (via Orpe), but they have no DNA match, though at this distance we would only expect a match in around 10% of cases.^[1] However, Mills should be 3rd cousin of Penrose (also descended from Orpe), but they have no DNA match either. This makes it seem like Mills cannot be descended from Orpe, and therefore cannot be descended from Ted Bennett.
• Mills and Chester are DNA matches to Huckvale, but Smith is not. Therefore Bennett 1840 cannot be descended from Huckvale. Therefore Mills & Chester have some common ancestor other than Bennett 1840.
• Inscoe has now been determined to be someone Ted likely met later in life, not his daughter, therefore doubt is shed upon Ted fathering any illegitimate children.

However, in support of the existing tree:

• Mills and Smith are known half 1st cousins once-removed so would be expected to share an average of 212cM of DNA.^[1] However, if Ted is Mills's father, then Mills & Smith would also be 3rd cousins once-removed (via Bennett 1840) sharing an additional average 27cM^[1] for a total of approximately 239cM, and sure enough, they have a match of 246cM. So the Smith-Mills DNA matches supports the claim that Ted is the father of Mills.
• Somewhat contrivedly: Mills's step siblings were the children of a man also named Bennett, but who was not related to the others here. At the time of Mills's birth in 1944, her mother was legally divorced and her former husband had remarried in 1938, so she had no right to name her daughter Bennett, though of course she may have wanted her children to all have the same name. However, perhaps the last name Bennett did not come from the former husband, but from Ted, and it was serendipity that the name matched the other children. This could imply that Mills's mother herself believed that Ted was the father.

On 07 August 2022 I sent Facebook messages to Mills's living half brother and another half-brother's widow, asking if they can confirm that Ted Bennett was the father of Mills, which they have been unwilling to do in the past.

Mills proposed revised father and family

The proposed tree above fixes the problems with the former tree by replacing Ted Bennett with Donald Davidson as the father of Mills. This is based on Chester claiming to be a 2nd cousin of Jenner via John Davidson. However, this is doubted for two reasons:

• 2nd cousins typically share 212cM.^[1] Chester's claimed 14cM match, 15 times less than typical, places him below the 47cM extreme threshold for 2nd cousins, proving that Chester and Jenner are not 2nd cousins, and therefore that Chester was not the daughter of Donald Davidson.
• Mills is not a DNA match to Jenner, when they should appear as 2nd cousins.

This means that Mills's father may be a third, unidentified man, neither Ted Bennett nor Donald Davidson, but that would require that both Mills and Chester's families gave false accounts, which seems a bit of a stretch. However, the next candidate in line would be a "Mr Wiseman" that Mills's mother was said to be fond of, presumably one of the five sons of Henry Wiseman, her 1st cousins. This would still fit with the claim that Mills's mother had a child with one of her 1st cousins. It's also possible that Wiseman could be a descendant of Huckvale.

This carousel of potential partners for Mills's mother is possible based on her renting rooms in her house to soldiers during World War II, and the possibly that either she may have been taken advantage of, or even that she turned to prostitution to feed her four fatherless children during the war.

One advantage of the Davidson tree is that several Mills DNA matches with illegitimate ancestors (Albert Portman, Thomas Alford, Miss Lawson) who were previously placed to fit as illegitimate children of Ted Bennett's coachman father, perhaps now have the possibility of being traced back as legitimate descendants of Davidson instead.

Note that Mills would still be a DNA match to Ted Bennett, but as 1st cousins once-removed instead of parent/child.

Next Steps

• Try tracing Davidson back to Huckvale.
• Try tracing Henry Wiseman back to Huckvale.
• Find a living Davidson relative, then test if they are a DNA match to Mills or Chester.

The only direct Davidson-Huckvale record on FamilySearch.org is the unlikely James Huckvale of Eastbourne with his children's nurse, Margaret Davidson of Northumberland in 1891. ^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} International Society of Genetic Genealogy, Autosomal DNA statistics, https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics

   known second cousins on average share 212.5 centiMorgans (cMs), but in extreme cases can actually share as little as 47 cMs or as much as 760 cMs.

2. ↑ "England and Wales Census, 1891," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:48SX-NPZ : 22 February 2021), James A Huckvale, Eastbourne, Sussex, England, United Kingdom; from "1891 England, Scotland and Wales census," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d.); citing PRO RG 12, Sussex county, subdistrict, The National Archives of the UK, Kew, Surrey.