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- BURIAL : see notes on tombstone inscriptions in family plot in the notes for Elizabeth Jennings, his first child.
MARRIAGE : Marriage Certificate No. 26, 2nd February 1840 (film 950450). He signed his name on the register.
OCCUPATION : Marriage certificate lists John Jennings (groom) as "Shoemaker" and his father as "Shepherd". He would seem to have spend most of his years in the Cape Colony as a "Milkman" and diary farmer.
RESIDENCES : For some years after 1852 the family lived in a house on Lawrence Street in Grahamstown (see photograph, the double storey section said by aged occupants in 1999 to have been part of the diary.) The Death Notice of Elizabeth in 1863, in the GRAHAMSTOWN JOURNAL, gave Lawrence Street as an address. The Death Notice of John Jennings stateds that he died "at his residence Klipdrift", a farm which, from his estate papers, he seems to have rented from W.P. Keaton - another farmer some distance away. The marriage of his eldest daughter to his nephew in 1861 took place "in the Farm House at Klipdrift", their residence at the time. On the other hand, John Jennings' tombstone inscription is that he died at "Woest Hill". Woest Hill is on the road out of Grahamstown, near the boundary of Klipdrift farm - see Readers Digest map 1984, and from documents from William Jervois under cover of letter dated 14th June, 1999.
The directories (which include Grahamstown) list John Jennings as "milkman" living in Lawrence Street in the editions between 1852 and 1855. Before 1852, these directories list only those persons who were registered as municipal voters : to qualify for registration one had to be a substantial householder. When he was registered as a voter, it was as "a Farmer, of Lawrence Street. This street was on the perimeter of the town at that time and it is plausible that he should have kept a few diary cows on his plot, confirming the oral record of current occupants of the Lawrence Street House. (Information from William Jervois)
ORAL HISTORY : G S CLACK 1974 Did not know his first name. Married in England and died young after coming to South Africa. Came from the South of England to Grahamstown. A farmer, and died before 1890. Edison Garfield Clack remembered that he had been told by Harriet Emily Jennings that her pareents had sailed to the Cape on the Harlequin, Captain Garwood, and spoke well of their treatment on board ship.
ESTATE PAPERS AND WILL : See copy of documeents obtained from William Jervois, October, 1999.
He was married to Adelaide Brooks (daughter of Thomas Brooks and Elizabeth Mason) on 2nd February 1840 in Exning, Suffolk, England. Adelaide Brooks' [3]
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