| Blencowe Families’ Association Newsletter | Vol. 16 No. 3 Autumn 2001 |
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A Change of Venue, a Change of Format
In the last issue Helen Simpson signed off after writing,
editing and publishing our quarterly
Newsletter for fifteen years.
She has seen the Families’ Association grow from a group of
American Blincoes descended from ‘the Immigrant James’
to embrace a broader membership
spelling our names in other ways and living in other parts of the world.
I am sure that all of
you who have enjoyed reading the Newsletter
in past years will wish to join me in thanking Helen
and ~ of course ~ her husband Bob for all their work.
Helen’s decision to take a rest from editing the Newsletter
coincided with a sharp rise in the cost
of its production.
Meanwhile, here in England costs have fallen and it is possible to produce a
small booklet with better picture reproduction at a lower cost.
We hope to be able to maintain
the annual subscription at $8.00 a year in North America.
Lower mailing cost within U.K. should
allow a reduced subscription of £3.00 and,
as an experiment, we will try A$15.00 in Australia.
Jack Blencowe,
Oxford U.K.
September 2001
Contents
An African Slave buried in an English Churchyard
During a visit to Blencowe memorials in the village Church at Culworth
in Northamptonshire
Peter and Jack Blencowe discovered the gravestone of Charles Bacchus
‘an African’ who had died in 1762.
Located in a place of honour alongside the Church entrance,
the memorial
recorded his passing with affection;
he had probably served the D’Anvers family,
the most prominent in the village at that time.
The Ellises of Virginia re-establish links with cousins in Chicago and
Minnesota
Gary Ellis descends from James Blincoe,
the first recorded member of our clan who lived in
Maryland around 1670.
Gary and his Ellis and Kloman
cousins in Virgnia had lost touch with
relatives they knew had moved to Chicago one or two generations ago.
He recounts how he
tracked down Steinhuaer and O’Donnell cousins in Chicago;
meanwhile a Blincoe cousin
in Minnesota found him by way of this web site.
Family members met up in person at the
Association’s Reuinion at Williamsburg VA last June.
Another Recipe from Lady Anne Blencowe’s 18thC Cookbook
Daphne Austin has found another recipe from the cookbook
that could be tried out today.
Bombard Apples are made by taking the core out of the apples,
stuffing them with dried apricots,
cooking them inside puff pastry then coating all with sugar icing.
Something for the kids to enjoy at Christmas?
Book News
A pallet-load of the ‘Blencowe Book’
weighing half-a-tonne went by air freight to Bill Blenko
in West Virginia and he is handling the chore of distributing them within North America.
A large number of packages has been mailed in UK,
including some to Australia.
Meanwhile a more
pleasant way of distributing them has been by way of several family gatherings.
Thelargest was at
the Village Hall at Marston St. Lawrence,
another at a pub near Gloucester, and yet another in
the East Midlands where we meet at a pub run by one of our members.
This was good fun and a
number of folks who had only communicated by mail
or over the Internet enjoyed meeting face-
to-face.
Milestones
Nola Olson reported that her father Oscar Blencoe
had died peacefully at his Wisconsin
home, in his ninety-fifth year.
Oscar was the oldest surviving member of Wisconsin branch of our
family who emigrated there from the village of Gawcott near Buckingham in England.
The family
is probably unique in North America in its use of the ‘Blencoe’ spelling variant.
Letters
John Blenko, who lives in Kent, UK,
wrote telling how, until he had made contact with the
Association, he had thought his name with the ‘enko’ ending might be Ukrainian!
Now he finds he has a number of relatives in the States!
Blencowe Families’ Association Home Page
updated: 13 November 2001