My Ancestry Journey : John Lennon (11th cousin, 3 x removed) I can say I was surprised as anyone to discover I was related to him. I had always had ‘a thing’ about the sixties counterculture. I even studied it as part of my Cultural (American Studies degree). Still it was an utter revelation.
John’s immediate family came from Liverpool where said John Winston Lennon was born on Oct 9 1940. I am by coincidence a Lancashire lass which is not far away from Liverpool. Born in sunny Blackpool where Lennon visited as a child. ( I will explore this further)
His mother Julia Stanley was born in Liverpool on 12 March 1914 and his father Alfred Lennon known as Freddie or Alf was born on 14 December 1912 also in Liverpool.
Alfred was a merchant seaman and away from home for long lengths of time. He was reportedly a ‘good time Charlie’ who frequented the vaudeville theatres of Liverpool at the time and knew all the usherettes by name at the cinema.
He had not had the easiest of upbringings and spent much of his childhood in an orphanage with his sister Edith (after the death of his father) and had worn leg callipers, which hampered his height (around 5ft 4). He himself recorded a song which was released in 1965.
Julia Lennon was vivacious, lively, and impulsive. John would take his friends to meet her in school time and she taught him to play the banjo and ukulele.
While Freddie Lennon was away at sea Julia Lennon had an affair and got pregnant he offered to bring the child up as his own but it was not to be. Julia moved in with her boyfriend Bobby Dykins and had two children with him Julia and Jackie.
Julia’s sister Mimi offered to bring John up at her house in Menlove St . Known as ‘Mendips.’ This was a happy time for John although Mimi was strict in many ways, and she most importantly bought him his first guitar after some persuasion.
Maternal Genealogy. Myth and Legend
Lennon’s maternal family descend from Wales via his Grandmother Annie Milward (her parents were from North Wales) Her husband was a solicitors clerk at St Asaphs, Flintshire, John Milward and she a farmers daughter from Llysfaen.
Thomas Milward Lennon’s Great Great Grandfather was head gardener to Sir John Hay Williams ( he of Bodelwyddan Castle renovation) and born in the stately surroundings of Dolben Hall in the mid 1830’s. According to an article in nation,cymru and a book by Richard Edmunds who spent ten years researching the family tree. Link below
There was no shortage of scandal down Lennons’ family line.
John Milward (Lennon’s Great Grandfather lost an arm in an accident with a shot gun. Mary Morris his wife had a child out of wedlock to a neighbour. The couple met when John was recovering from his accident and fell in love, shortly after they gave birth to Annie Milward Lennons’ Grandmother at The Bear and Billet Inn Chester in 1871. The relationship did not last and tragically John ended up dying alone and in poverty.
Paternal Genealogy: ireland
On his Grandfathers side John descendants are from Omagh in Tyrone. Gildea (pronounced Gilday) is a surname and the Maguires.
Polly Maguire (married to John ‘Jack’ Lennon) could not read or write but is said she had psychic abilities. Her side of the family descended from Dublin. John is named after her husband who also played in a band that travelled in the US.
This psychic ability is hinted at again when Freddie Lennon visits John and Yoko at Tittenhurst Park where he described ‘it being like a mausoleum’ with an eerie feeling perhaps prophetic feeling something is not right.
Through my research into the Stanleys I discovered a marriage took place in the ‘Fleetwood family,’ who came from Heskin in Lancashire.
Elizabeth Fleetwood marries Charles Thurston Stanley on 23 August 1770 in St Leonards Church, Shoreditch. Interesting fact, the crypt beneath the church is the final resting place for many actors from the Tudor period.
Sir Thomas Fleetwood (1518-1570) was master of the Royal Mint and several other Fleetwoods were MP’s they also married into the Denny family who were entertwined with Henry VIII. Sir Anthony Denny being the covetable ‘groom of the stool,’ for Henry VIII. Did Lennon know of his stately past?
The link to my ancestry is a woman called Bridget Eversfield who marries into the Shelley’s of Sussex (John Shelley of Fen Place) (my 10th Great Grandfather) who were also Members of Parliament and related to Percy Bysshe Shelley. This is where little ole me comes in.
My mothers family were from Crowborough East Sussex (my Grandfather Ted). He was a market gardener who hot footed it up to the North of England to marry my Grandmother Clara. I never met him as he died before I was born sadly but he was a lovely man I heard. Clara I met when I was age 3 but have little memory. My own parents have passed also.