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From: saki 
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles.moderated,rec.music.beatles
Subject: Re: Jack Lennon of the kentucky Minstrels
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Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 18:08:07 +0000 (UTC)
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"Kelly Norman"  wrote in
news:DqKdnbKgk4gcrJrfRVn-vg{at}comcast.com: 

> So, I've been poking around some of the Irish Lennon (Linnean) and
> McCartney geneology pages and a lot of them discuss John "Jack"
> Lennon, who would have been Freddy's father.  He is said to have left
> Ireland in the 1830's (which I think would make him quite old) to find
> a life in the States.

That date doesn't work; perhaps they have the name confused with Jack's 
father John, who was born in the 1820s.

The fellow who allegedly travelled with the Kentucky Minstrels was Fred's 
father Jack, not Fred's grandfather John.

> He ended up traveling with a group called
> Andrew Robertson's Kentucky Minstrel's....but some web sources say
> this happened  in the 1890's. which would make more sense.  Also, some
> say he met his wife Mary "Polly" mcGuire in Kentucky and took her back
> with them, and that they had 3 children; some that Polly was from
> County Fermnagh, just like himself (and the McCartneys, I believe) and
> travelled with him to his jurneys to the US.  These stories say they
> had 8 shcildren, but 5 died in childbirth.

Sounds like a conflict of info here as well. According to the information 
at www.lennon.net (where the family genealogy seems mostly substantive), 
Fred's father was married twice, first time to an unnamed American lady 
with whom he returned to Liverpool; she died in childbirth. Second wife was 
his housekeeper Mary "Polly" McGuire, with whom he had seven children in 
Liverpool, one of whom was Alfred (Freddie). It doesn't look to me as if 
Polly was ever in the States, assuming the story of Jack's travels to  the 
USA are true, and looking at the oldest birthdate of their seven children 
I'd guess that Jack and Polly were married around 1903-04. so their 
children would have been born there too.

> Here are some of the sites I looked at.  Can anyone help me sort the
> wheat from the chaffe?  I'm not only interested in this because of the
> obvious Beatle reasons, but because of the flow of Appalachian and
> Irish music back and forth over the ocean, as welll as its
> influence...intended or un! ...on the Boys.

Good reasons, and it's interesting that music was apparently a long-time 
Lennon trait if the story is true.

Documenting who emigrated when should be fairly simple if the family left 
good paper trails (marriage resistries, birth registries---these may be 
civil or could be in Liverpool or Irish churches---and passenger 
immigration lists; there might even be a Liverpool death record for the 
first Mrs. Jack Lennon). The big question involves whether those records 
exist.

For instance, if John and Elizabeth Lennon (Beatle John's great-
grandparents) came to the USA with their two sons (Jack and unnamed sibling 
who later became a priest), you should be able to find their names in the 
immigration lists for the appropriate year, assuming you know the year and 
the port of entry. The trouble would be verifying whether this John Lennon 
is the right one. While looking through passenger lists this past weekend I 
ran across a John Lennon emigrating from Liverpool in 1840 , but his birth 
year was earlier than that of great-grandfather John Lennon and he was 
travelling alone. Looking for the right pattern of people, approximate age 
ranges and counties of origin would seem the best solution.

I always wondered whether the Kentucky Minstrels story was apocryphal or 
not; the Liverpool Lennons seemed pretty convinced of it.

Rather than doing the research yourself, you might want to contact the 
webmaster at www.lennon.net and ask whether you can be put in touch with 
someone who provided the Lennon family genealogy for their website. Perhaps 
they have documentation that would clear up your questions. Or if you like 
doing this sort of research yourself, I can recommend ancestry.com or 
genealogy.com (both require subscriptions) or familysearch.org (a free 
site).

----
saki{at}ucla.edu

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