Henry Eva and Sidwell Bennets

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Parents   James Eva  and Jane Eva       Christopher Bennett and Rose Michell 

Henry Eva (b Camborne Cornwall 1764, m Sidwell Bennett 1793 Camborne, d 1831 Condurrow)
    Jenefer Eva (b 1794 Camborne, d 1794 Camborne)
    William Eva (b 1795 Camborne, d 1795 Camborne)
    Jenefer Eva (b 1794 Camborne)
    Catherine Eva (b Camborne 1798, m Stephen Vine (Snr) 1818 Camborne, d 1839 Camborne)        
        Stephen Vine (Jnr) (b Camborne 1827 m Lavinia Ford 1855 Beechworth Vic, d 1894 Williamstown Vic)
            Hannah Vine (b 1866 Spring Creek, m Richard Reid Roach 1890 Flemington Vic, d 1915 Kew Vic)
                Liela Muriel Roach (b 1893 North Sydney, m Ernest Harold Mitchell 1914 Kew, d 1972 Wodonga)  
    Anne Eva (b 1801 Camborne, d 1801 Camborne)
    Henry Eva (b 1802 Camborne)
    William Eva (b 1804 Camborne)
    Sidwell Eva (b 1806, m Richard Rule 1826 Camborne)

Rose's will (see below) suggests that three children of Henry and Eva were alive in 1802. This would be Jenefer, Catherine and Henry.

Email re Sidwell Bennets parents from Tony Bennett (April 2009)

    I had Christopher Bennett and Margaret Hary as Sidwell's parents, based on information in the LDS. However, while the LDS is a wonderful recource, occasionally it is innaccurate, as Tony points out. It is best to quote his email.
    You've probably seen the various Christophers around who might have been the father of Sidwell.  The LDS submission has Christopher and Margaret Harry as her parents.  But the children attributed to them don't all appear to belong to them.  There is only one marriage in the Camborne and surrounding area of a Christopher Bennetts and a Margaret at the right time - that's the 1762 marriage you have.  The LDS submission has their children as:
 Ann 11 Sep 1763
Christopher 30 Jan 1766
Sidwell 1 Nov 1768 - this is an error as the actual baptism is 10 Jan 1768
Ann 16 Mar 1771
Elizabeth 25 Sep 1774. 
All perfectly plausible - the gaps are ok.  Looking at the Camborne OPC trancsriptions online we can start unravelling it though.
Ann 11 Sep 1763 - fine.  The register gives her mother's name as Margaret.
Christopher 30 Jan 1766 - the register doesn't give the mother's name, but young Christopher is buried aged 5 in 1771 and on that occasion his mother is named.  So he's fine too.
The other three - no mother's name given.  There is no burial recorded for Ann (b 1763) which indicates that the later Ann (1771) belongs to another couple.
 
Then I found there are other children of Christopher and Margaret, baptised away from Camborne.  As I mentioned before, there is only the one possible marriage so this must be the same couple.  The children are: 
Elizabeth 4 Apr 1768 Phillack
Francis 26 Oct 1770 Phillack
(unnamed son) 28 Nov 1773 Phillack
Christopher 5 Apr 1777 Crowan.
If these are the children of Christopher Bennetts and Margaret Harry - and I think they must be - then the last three attributed to them in Camborne (with the possible exception of Elizabeth) cannot be.  And I discount Elizabeth as she is too close to the unnamed son in 1773 (besides, she fits somewhere else). (Comment LR: Phillack is 5 miles west of Cambourne and Crowan 3 miles south, so the geography fits)
 
    This means that Sidwell belongs to a different Christopher.  The question is, which one?  As you say, Sidwell is a very unusual name.  A Sidwell Bennetts is baptised in 1823 to Christopher Bennetts and Ann Carthew.  This Christopher is one of another very difficult group of contemporary Christophers, but I think he is the son of Christopher Bennetts and Rose Michell, who were married in Camborne on 3 May 1767.  He was baptised on 20 July 1777 in Camborne.  Christopher and Rose, his parents, had a number of children, not all of whom have the mother's name in the baptism register so we have that problem again.  However, the first child where the mother's name does appear in the register is Richard on 11 Jun 1769.  This is a long time after their marriage, and Sidwell (10 Jan 1768) fits into the gap perfectly.  And this would explain the 1823 Sidwell who would have been named by Christopher after his sister.
    Returning to "which Christopher" - I have changed my mind from time to time about this, but the appearance of Francis, son of Christopher and Margaret, helps me to conclude that that Christopher is the one (there is only one) who is the son of Francis (baptised 26 Dec 1730).  But that doesn't help you very much as you want the Christopher who is Sidwell's father.  This is very difficult!  You mentioned on your webpage that there are a lot of candidates.  By elimination I have worked out that the most likely one from the Christophers baptised in Camborne is Christopher son of Richard, baptised 13 Aug 1720.  This makes him rather old to be marrying in 1767!  But it isn't impossible and I've tied off most of the other Christophers.  He is also the only one in Camborne whose father is Richard (and his eldest son is Richard).
    But this is - obviously! - a bit speculative.  I fear that most of 18thC genealogy involves a fair amount of guesswork.  One thing that puzzles me still is that there is a burial of a Sidwell Bennats, widow, in Camborne on 3 Mar 1759.  Could this be Christopher's mother??  But try as I might, I can find no marriage to a Sidwell by any male Bennetts in Cornwall.  So that's a mystery.  Even the identity of Richard, father of the 1720 Christopher, is elusive - if Sidwell isn't his mother, then the most likely candidate married in 1723, three years after Christopher was baptised and no other marriage appears in the records.  The more I think about this the more I dislike it!  An older Richard (baptised 1 Jan 1686/87, buried 20 Jan 1734/35) could be our man and may well have married Sidwell - an unrecorded marriage, or maybe one in a nearby parish whose marriage records have not survived, eg, Redruth which is very patchy before 1717.
    One final thing, I am like all Camborne Bennetts descended from Edward, born about 1607.  If you look at my Ancestry database you can see where they connect - well, most of them anyway!

As a conclusion, we can put down Tony's suggestion of Christopher (b 1720, father Richard) as a 50% chance. But it is time to call a halt at that point? No.
An email from Ross Williams in 2021 confirms Tony Bennett's work. Quoting
(Tony Bennet) comes down on the side of Christopher Bennetts, son of Christopher and Rose, probably being Sidwell’s parents.

I think I have proof of that in Rose’s Will .

Rose died in July 1803 and mentions bequests to Sidwell, and to Sidwell and Henry’s children, in her Will viz.

"First I give to my Son Richard and to my Daughter Sidwel the Wife of Henry Eva One Shilling each and also to my three Grand Children the children of my said Son Richard and to my three Grandchildren the Children of the said Henry Eva the sum of Twenty Shillings each..

More stuff from Ross is on Christopher and Rose's Page

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