Alternative Origin: Lennards of Chevening, Kent
The origins of the iron Leonards, James and Henry, and, indeed, all families surnamed Leonard and variations thereon, descend from a George Lennard born in 1422 and his ancestors, according to a book compiled by Fanny Leonard Koster in 1911. She traced back to another George Leonard born 1742, a Loyalist in the American Revolution who researched whether he had a valid claim on the title of Dacre. The previous title holder had recently died with no heir apparent, and the title was vacant. George and several other Leonards had suffered property confiscations and business losses as a result of being on the losing side in the Revolutionary War. A valid claim to the title would gain access to high social rank and rich estates in England.
George Leonard born in 1742 was a wealthy ship owner who had used his fleet of merchant ships to evacuate English soldiers and loyalists from Boston to Nova Scotia in 1776. This George was awarded land in Nova Scotia in 1783 and settled there with his family. He spent some time in England, during which he researched whether the Leonard family had a claim to the Lennard family fortune and title. He did correspond with other Leonards about the claim as evidenced by a letter in 1798. The likely recipient, another George Leonard, replied that he “preferred to be Lord of Acres in America, rather than Lord Dacre in England.”
Whether the claim was pursued to adjudication is unclear, although there is no evidence that it was. The title and estates passed to another claimant and remain occupied to this day.
Fanny’s hypothesis of the Dacre/Lennard was that the title and estates should have passed to descendants of James and Henry. The route would have been through Thomas Lennard 1577-1638, third son of Samson Lennard. By a grant by King James I, Samson Lennard had the place and precedence of the eldest son of the eldest son of a baron, in this case the 11th Lord Dacre. Samson’s son, Henry, became the 12th Lord Dacre from 1569 to his death in 1616, followed by Gregory Lennard 1573-1619, the next oldest still alive, became thirteen Lord Dacre. He was followed by Sir Richard Lennard 1596-1630, the 14th Lord Dacre and the second oldest of Samson’s sons.
Thomas Lennard 1577-1638 was Samson’s third oldest son. He married Lydia White. They had no children. He left his entire estate to his nephew, Francis Lennard 1596-1662, 15th Lord Dacre. No documentary evidence has come to light that supports an alternative conclusion or that George or other American Loyalists pursued the matter in the British court system.
Fanny has Thomas Lennard as the father of iron workers James and Henry.[1] See also the accompanying Chart 1 to the book entitled Ancestry of the Leonard Family which reads “Thomas Lennard of Pontypool, Wales, third son of Sampson Lennard and brother of Sir Henry, 12th Lord Dacre. Thomas Lennard was born May 28, 1577 and settled in Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1652.” [2][3] Note that Thomas died in 1638 and that there is no record of his coming to America nor ever having been in Taunton. Taunton was first settled about 1638-9, and there are no Leonards among them. Likewise, he couldn’t have settled at the ironworks of Taunton if he died in 1638. James and Henry Leonard and Ralph Russell weren’t invited to set up an ironworks in Taunton until 1652. James and Henry Leonard had a brother, Thomas, who died in New Jersey according to the declaration by Hannah Leonard Deane.
As members of the nobility, the Lennards were educated and expected to accept appointment to various government positions, such as chief clerks to courts and collectors of revenue. Land was distributed according to the will of the King, and monarchs kept track of who had been granted which lands and what taxes had been paid. The records of various manors, such as Chevening are now listed online. The Lords of the Manor administered justice through their courts.
Indeed, it seems unlikely that England’s class society would accept James and Henry as being of noble birth. Iron refining was manual labor. Ironmongers were rough and tumble, as evidenced by Henry’s many citations before Massachusetts courts. The leisure class disdained manual labor as beneath them., even for well-to-do merchant families like the Hanburys and the Foleys. As near as one can tell from early records, James and Henry were not taught to read and write, as would have occurred if they had been of noble birth.
For skilled occupations such as iron fyners, a substantial apprenticeship was required. It was not a job where one decided to become a practitioner one day and could start the next day. The usual apprenticeship was 7 years, followed by some years as a journeyman working at various forges under different masters to learn a variety of techniques. Some theorize that James and Henry served their apprenticeships in Pontypool.
Fanny thought of all Leonards being of the same family and descending from the same family. We now have tools like Y-DNA analysis to challenge this hypothesis. We find Leonard lines in a number of different haplogroups and subclades. Since Y-DNA remains almost constant for hundreds of years for subclades and thousands of years for haplogroups, we know that males in different haplogroups and subclades are not related or are related if they are in the same haplogroup and subclade. So, we know, for example, that the iron worker Leonards fall into haplogroup J and the descendants of Solomon Leonard are in haplogroup I. This tool wasn’t available to Fanny. In the case of the Lennards, we can’t get a Y-DNA reading because the direct male line of Leonards died out.
The existence of Leonards among the iron workers in Kent and Sussex is well documented in the denization rolls of 1544, subsidy rolls, and other records of taxes paid by workers at iron forges in the 1500s.[4]
Families need to match as well. James and Henry’s families are known and partially documented, as are the Lennards of Chevening. Not only is the tie between James Leonard and Thomas Lennard nonexistent, but so are their children. Hannah Leonard laid out five generations of James Leonard’s family, and it doesn’t tie at all to the Lennards. as laid out by the vicar of Chevening parish. The same is true of the research manuscripts of James Leonard and his descendants by Elisha Clark Leonard 1819-1894 and his grandson George Marston Leonard 1880-1959. Elisha Clark Leonard corresponded with the then holder of the title, Thomas Barrett Lennard. The latter denied that Henry and James were descendants of his branch of the Lennard family.
Dorothy Stansbury Leonard 1898-1989 had doubts about Fanny’s explanation of James’ origins with the Lennards and visited various sites in England in an extended trip in the 1930s. She hired a genealogist while there who could find no verification of the Lennard origin. Dorothy concluded that the likely origin was with the Sussex iron workers. Her research is in the stacks of the New England Historical Genealogical Society in Boston.
Donald Lines Jacobus and Lewis D. Cook summarize the arguments against a Dacre/Lennard origin in volumes 10 and 11 of The American Genealogist.
Carl Boyer, 3rd, in summarizing the case against a Dacre/Lennard origin for the Leonards, stated that “it is unfortunate that those interested in the Leonard ancestry did not concern themselves more with the tracing of the Leonard line back, rather than bringing the Lennard line forward.”
[1] See Fanny Leonard Koster, “English Ancestry of the Leonard Family,” privately published, 1911, p. 203.
Ibid., Chart !.English Ancestry of the Lennard Family. Looseleaf enclosure in the cover of Fanny’s “Annals of the Leonard Family.”.
Edward Hasted, “Parishes: Chevening, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, (Canterbury, 1797) Vol. 3, pp. 105-126.
GBRRS_KENT_P88_1_31_90.jpg. The list of the Rectors of Chevening. The family of in the Chevening Registeris that of Lennard, of whom Henry Lennard in 1611 became Baron. This is a handwritten transcription of about 6 pages
[2][2][2][2] Koster, p. 23.
[3]This George was the son of Nathaniel Leonard born 1700 who was the son of George Leonard born 1671, the son of Thomas Leonard born 1641, in turn the son of James Leonard born 1620.