We've called this page 'Our Bennett Family' because if you're here because you figure we may be related, you're tracing your family tree, or you're a genealogist, you'll already know there are thousands of Bennett families! It makes it difficult, and while we've had dozens of requests over the last few years, I don't think we've ever found any other Bennetts to whom we're related. (Let alone the millionaire who died without known relatives leaving his fortune to be collected…!)
We (David and Marie and our two children, Françoise and Remi)) live in the New Forest, which is in Hampshire on the South Coast of England having arrived here some four years ago, after ten years living in Dorset, during which time we were married. Before that Marie Bennett was brought up in Guernsey (nee Le Billon, born 1964)), while David Bennett's (born 1960) history is more varied. He was brought up variously in Cyprus, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi and in England near Watford, in Oxford, and in the New Forest.
His father (Herbert Ernest Bennett, born Colchester 1919) was a Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force and served throughout the world, meeting his mother in Hong Kong in 1956. Herbert Ernest (pictured left) died in 1991. David's mother Kay (nee Burrows) was born in 1922, and spent her childhood in India, and later in Retford in Nottinghamshire. Herbert and Kay settled in retirement in the New Forest.
Prior to that, the family hailed from the East Anglia region of the United Kingdom. Herbert Ernest's father was Herbert Frederick, a coal merchant born in 1881 in Colchester, and his father was Hezekiah, a shepherd (pictured right). He was born in Thelnetham, on the Norfolk/Suffolk border in 1860 and was one of eight brothers and sisters.
The furthest we can trace our branch of the family back is 1824 to Hezekiah's father. He was James, an agricultural labourer.
If you would like to see a family tree, please click here - this tree follows the paternal line back to 1824. Or you can click here to download it in Word format. If you do use this, and find related links or family members, please, please let us know!