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Guild of One-Name Studies

One-name studies, Genealogy

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    • 2,539 members
    • 2,327 studies
    • 8,244 surnames

Sennett One-Name Study

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Study details

Study: Sennett

Variants: Sennitt, Sineath, Sinnatt, Sinnett, Sinnott, Synnott

Category:  3 - A study where research using core genealogical datasets and transcriptions is well under way on a global basis.

Website: sennett.one-name.net

DNA website: www.familytreedna.com/public/Sennett

Contact: Ms Corinne Curtis


About the study

My one name study started, like many others, with my own personal research into my maternal grandmother's ancestry. She was a SENNETT, born in Normanton, West Yorkshire. My mother remembered visiting her relatives in Normanton as a child, and being aware of the large numbers of relatives in Normanton. I quickly became aware that most of the SENNETTs in Yorkshire appeared to be related and started collecting all references to the surname there. As well as the Yorkshire SENNETTs, I noticed that several other areas of England also had significant numbers of people with the same surname, and I wondered if they would be able to be linked at some point. It also interested me that the family in Yorkshire were miners who had come from Avoca in Co Wicklow, Ireland, and I wondered if they would connect to the much larger group of SINNOTT of County Wexford.

In 2011 I registered the SENNETT one name study and began to more formally collect up further references and reconstruct families starting with English records.

By 2015 I had also made significant progress with North American, Welsh, and Australian records and identified some instances of the name in other countries (New Zealand, South America).

Currently the main focus of the study is on Irish records and, in liaison with other researchers, the early history and origins of the name from its 12th century arrival in Co Wexford.  

Variant names

The registered surname for this one name study is SENNETT, however all variant spellings in the form S-NN-TT (and some S-NN-T or S-N-TT) are included. Where family lines can be traced back to Ireland the spelling is usually SINNOTT or SYNNOTT, with spelling changes coming about in emigrant families. 
 
Having made good progress on my original aim of collecting references to SENNETT and SENNITT, the study has now progressed to including SINNOTT, SINNETT, SYNNOTT and SINNATT as well as a few less common variants with either one N, one T, or a final E.
 
There are also a small but significant number of people currently using a variant of the study name, where it is a result of an earlier generation anglicising another name (for example SENOWITZ, SINAISKY, SINITZKY, etc).   These families are traced back only as far as the first generation to use a S-NN-TT spelling.

Name origin

SINNOTT/SYNNOTT families with Irish ancestry all appear to originate from a first arrival in Co Wexford in the 12th century.   A small team of dedicated historical researchers are continuing to seek out and review historical records to piece together lineages and origins and verify (or challenge) previous work.   

The Y-DNA (male line) surname study is also becoming interesting with latest BigY test results indicating much earlier Balkan origins.

SENNETTS of Cornwall have now been shown to have genetic links to Irish SINNOTT/SYNNOTT, though a common ancestor has not yet been identified.    SENNITTs have been in Cambridgeshire since at least the early 1500's (no DNA testing done yet) and appear to be a completely separate origin.   SINNETTs have a long established presence in Wales (particularly Pembrokeshire) but again, no DNA testing has been done to establish whether they share the same origins as the Irish SINNOTTs.

Historical occurrences of the name

Col David Sinnott - Governer of Wexford (c1649); 'The Synnot Children, 1781' painted by Joseph Wright of Derby. These were Maria, Marcus and Walter, children of Sir Walter Synnot (1742-1821) and his wife Jane of Ballymoyer, Co Armagh;

Mack Sennett (silent movie producer) - originally born Michael Sinnott in 1880 in Canada (of Irish ancestry);

Lieutenant John Sinnott, author of 'A Military Catechism' (Portsmouth 1841);

Colonel Edward Stockley Sinnott (1868-1969), civil engineer;

Maude Arncliffe Sennett (1862-1936) - suffragette and anti-vivisection campaigner;

Sir Richard Sennett (1852-1947) - sheriff of the City of London 1923-34;

Hilary Nicholas Hugh Synnott, CMG (b1945) - diplomat;

brothers Frederick (1830-66) and Alfred Percy Sinnett (1840-1921) who were both journalists; Frederick also carried out extensive surveys of the northern Flinders Ranges, and Sinnett Peak is named after him;

The town of Sennett, New York was named after Daniel Sennett, a prominent citizen and circuit judge.

Name frequency

(please see http://www.britishsurnames.co.uk/surnames/SENNETT/ for up to date data).

Frequency of the SENNETT surname from the above website was about 8 per million people in 1881 in the UK, and about 11 per million in the UK now. In the US, current frequency is about 7 per million, with about 3 per million in Australia. In spite of the Irish origins of most of these, there are very few people in Ireland using this spelling.

Frequency of the SINNOTT/SINNETT surnames appears to be slightly higher than SENNETT, and SYNNOTT slightly lower.

Distribution of the name

The main countries this surname group is associated with are England, Wales, Ireland and North America (United States and Canada).   There are also Irish and English emigrant populations in South America, Australia and other countries. There are currently just under 500 people with the Sennett surname in the UK and just over 1800 in the US. There are smaller numbers in many other countries, most of whom have English or Irish origins. In Canada, it appears that most of the Irish Sinnott or Synnott immigrants retained those spellings rather than it being changed to Sennett (as in the UK or US). Some of the american Sennett lines appear to have begun with germanic migrants who may have anglicised their original name to Sennett.  While current numbers are relatively small in Ireland, a very large number of British and North American S-nn-t families claim Irish descent, with the dominant county of origin being Co Wexford.

Data

The main study database is a family tree database (Legacy) containing over 70,000 records, most of which are linked into multi-generation trees.

This database (with details of living people hidden) is published in its entirety on the Surname Study Website http://sennett.one-name.net/index.php.   This should be considered a "working" database, so if you have information about your own S-NN-T family, corrections, additions and other contributions will be greatly appreciated.

Visit my blog at https://sennettfamilytree.wordpress.com/

Information has been extracted from a large number of (mostly online) databases and includes: Census; civil and parish birth marriage and death records; cemetery records; newspaper records; immigration documents; military and occupation records, etc. 

Data is collected from all geographic regions where the study surname is known to be found.

DNA

The  DNA project for the SENNETT/SINNOTT/SYNNOTT (and variants)  surname group  is now progressing in its aim of seeing if any of the main family lines, particularly those with Irish origins, do connect further back.  One relatively rare (for Ireland) haplogroup is now appearing to be the genetic signature for S-NN-TT of Co Wexford origin, with all project members showing this particular E haplogroup being genetic matches to each other.   As more people join the project it is hoped that a genetic tree can be constructed giving more information about how the families represented branch off from the main tree.   There are several other haplogroups represented in the project (none with matches to others within the surname project), but at this stage it is unclear whether these represent separate surname origins (which may include a surname that was changed to S-NN-TT at some stage), lines descended from female S-NN-TTs or other not-expected-paternity events.
 
UPDATE: November 2019 - some partly or fully subsidised Y-DNA (male line) tests now available, please contact me to find out more.
 
I'd be keen to hear from anyone interested more in their own Sennett origins and connections, and who would like to be tested or help manage a Sennett/Sinnott/Synnott DNA study. You can find the Sennett (and Sennitt/Sinnott) DNA study at familytreeDNA http://www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?Group=Sennett.   
 

Links

For more historical background and information about the origins of the surname in Ireland (note that new research evidence has slightly altered some of the older published versions of the Sinnott origins and history):
 
- http://www.synnott.org/index.html   (Sennett Surname Origins)
 
- And for interested researchers, fully updated and downloadable versions of the above Sennett Surname Origins documents are at:   https://tcd.academia.edu/aidansynnottBBS1976
 
The following site also provides the most up to date versions of the earliest generations from the first known arrival of the surname in Co Wexford
https://www.sinnottnz.com/
 

Contact Details

Ms Corinne Curtis

General Search Results

Occurrences of the surname Sennett in the Guild Indexes
(Click on the number to view the search results in each index. Indexes marked by * are only accessible by logged in Guild members.)
  • Global Marriages (public)  1849
  • Global Marriages (members)* 1865
  • Modern Newspaper Index  1
  • Marriage Index 1837-1945* 38
  • BMD Index* 25
  • Members' Data Stores in which the name Sennett appears 2

Other Guild Websites

You may find our other Guild websites of interest:

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