About us
Many Bennett families that trace back to early colonial Virginia look for origins in Wiveliscombe, Somerset, England. The wish to do so is understandable. An early colonial governor of Virginia, Richard Bennett (1608-1676), was born there. However, no male progeny existed beyond his single grandson, Richard Bennett 3rd. As a result, a large number of mythologies have developed in the last hundred years, including attempts to tie Richard to the aristocratic earldoms of Tankerville and Arlington. He might have been related in some way, but no known genealogical connection has been found. This project is an attempt to straighten all of this out through sequencing the Y-DNA of collateral lineages. To date, the only promising target is that of Richard's uncle, Edward Bennett. So far, nothing has come up. Nevertheless, Edward came from a large family and had a lot of brothers. Something may well come up.
Because of the lack of genealogical and genetic evidence, I'm interested in looking at any Bennett Y-DNA results, especially the Big Y, as well the kit's lineage. (This is, after all, genetic genealogy.) But keep in mind, this is a Y-DNA project, not an autosomal project. Autosomal researchers gain no advantage in joining.
Big Y and Y-111 results for the groups are uploaded to the following pages. Other group pages are likely forthcoming.
Several groups, all unrelated to one another, have joined. They're listed here on the results page, and I have included several of them at my Haplogroup Studies pages at http://dna.ancestraldata.com/groups/ under Bennett. A discussion group has been started at https://www.facebook.com/groups/bennett.dna