| Vol. 17 No. 4 December 2002 |
Table of Contents |
Some ‘spin-off’ from the 1901 Census of England & Wales
It seems that the data from the Census became available on the Internet a month or so back and Christine Clement in New Zealand sent me the first batch of records for Bicester, the Oxfordshire town in which she has a special interest. She commented that apparently the transcription work had been contracted out to the English Prison Service. Daphne Austin (of whom more below) told me later that the work had in fact been completed in India; either way, it could explain some of the more extreme spelling errors!
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| Richard Blencowe (left) with members of his unit during World War I. |
The first records that Christine sent me were listed by name, did not link the persons living under one roof, and thus did not show the family relationships that make the Census records are so valuable. However, Daphne has managed to download the data into a spreadsheet that allowed her to sort the individuals into family groups. She has sent me a first list of about 800 persons comprising the spelling variants Blenco, Blencoe, Blencow, Blencowe, Blinco, Blincoe, Blincow, Blincowe, Blinker & Blinko for the whole country. There are one or two other spellings to search for — plus all those mis-spellings — but there’s plenty to be going on with! Some interesting discoveries have already been made.
Ancestors of Andrew Blencowe of Toowoomba, Queensland
Andrew’s grandfather had served in the infantry in the First World War and emigrated to Australia in 1923. He had lived in Rotherhithe (near Greenwich). Andrew believed the family was originally from Banbury but I could not find a likely link. The 1901 Census showed the family, headed by Thomas William (1857-?) with his birthplace given as Bicester. That allows us to go back five generations: Thomas (1827-1876) and Jane née King, James (1787-1875) and Judith née Mortimore, Thomas (1761-1803) and Mary née Walker — all in Bicester — then William (1735-1806) who had been born in nearby Launton and Sarah née Morse. William’s parents William and Hannah were both buried in Launton. Working forwards from the earliest the family name had been recorded successively as Blincow, Blinco, Blincowe, Blinker, Blinco, Blincowe and Blencowe! Andrew’s e-mail address had changed but I was soon able to contact him: John Malings (another new contact thanks to Benn’s web-site) was driving through Toowoomba en route to Sydney the following day and gave him a phone call. Meanwhile, I had realised that Andrew was a cousin of Alan Blencowe of Wanneroo in West Australia and that Alan probably already knew all this! By the way, it is Alan who runs that attractive website — take a look at it!
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| Thomas William Blencowe |
Next came e-mails from Christine Robertson who lives in Wolviston, near Middlesbrough in N, Yorkshire; one thing lead to another and here we have three photos. Above is one of her grandfather Richard, brother of Andrew’s grandfather Thomas.
Capt. Frederick John Blencowe
Jill Dudbridge found the records of this Merchant Navy captain in the Lloyd’s Captains’ Register at the Guildhall Library in London. He was awarded Master’s Certificate No.03599 in London in 1909 and made many voyages to the East Indies, Australia and America. In 1939 he retired to Australia, arriving in the Largs Bay. Presumably, he was called back to wartime service for he returned to Australia in 1949 by the Arawa.
The story might have ended there, but at the Runnymede Memorial to the many thousands of men of the Royal Air Force who were killed in action and have no known grave, I noticed the name of John Dawson Blencowe who had lost his life in 1944, aged 27 years. He was the son of Frederick John Blencowe and Ethel Helen [?]Dawson. There appears to have been another son Guy (1910-1979) of whom nothing more is known.
Turning to the 1901 Census I spotted Frederick John living with his parents John Ebenezer & Isabel Blencowe in Lambeth where John was a commercial clerk. John was the son of Thomas Blencowe (1807-1885) and Ann [?]Feather. Born in Brackley, Thomas was a master shoemaker who was already established in Camberwell by 1851; so, that linked the family closely to the main southern line of the family.
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| Maria née Green, wife of Thomas William Blencowe |
There was another surprise: Thomas had another son Francis (1845-1917) who was a hosiery merchant in Peckham. He and his wife Minnie Jane christened a son Francis Drake Blencowe (1880-1958), a fine patriotic name! Francis and his wife Helena had a son Arthur Frank (1909-1942) and his name too is to be found in the same memorial at Runnymede.
Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed, is a well-known tourist destination, a few miles down river from Windsor Castle. Close by is a memorial to Winston Churchill erected by the American Law Society and up a wooded footpath is a peacefully-located memorial to John F Kennedy. The RAF memorial is also close by but, perched on a cliff looking northwards towards London Airport, it is a few miles by road. It is well worth a visit and not a morbid place at all; there are beautiful rose gardens and a spectacular view. Watching the steady stream of aircraft moving in to land at Heath Row one can remember all those young airmen and their hazardous flights some sixty years ago.
A final twist to this part of the tale! Mary Hodges, one of my neighbours, had told me that in the ‘thirties she had been taught Latin at Carlisle High School by a Miss Blencowe. I had found her death in the records: Elsie Isabel Blencowe had died in Carlisle in 1980 aged 95 years; was she perhaps a member of the northern branch of our family — thought to have come to an end in the ‘twenties with the death in Tunis of Henry Prescott Blencowe in 1927?
Not so! There she was in 1901, in Lambeth with her brother Frederick John and their parents, the self-same John and Isabel! Mary Hodges remembers her as quite a formidable personality and she must indeed have been clever as well, it was very difficult for women to gain a university education in England before the first World War.
Joan Blencowe of Northampton
Joan had asked me to trace her forebears; she had told me previously that she believed her grandfather Alfred to have been a shoemaker in Badby. I had spotted an Alfred who, in 1881, had been a bricklayer in Scaldwell lodging with William Wise, a stonemason. This was confirmed in 1901 Census; Alfred (1858-1949) was to be found in Church Brampton, a stonemason, along with his wife Emily, Joan’s father Howard Pembroke Blencowe (1887-1972), and two other children. Alfred’s father and mother, Charles (1837-1906) and Eliza were also in Brampton. Charles was the son of Benjamin (1812-1880) and Sarah Lester — and that takes us back neatly to the bottom of the tree in Fig.13.3 of our book and from there leads us back to John Blencowe, the Parish Clerk of Whilton in the 17th Century, ancestor of many other of our members.
Australian War Veterans
Daphne Austin pointed me towards another source of information: the service records of Australians who served in World War II are now available on the Internet. There were 35 Blencowes and 26 Blincos listed; there are a couple of duplications — Robert Oliver Blencowe moved to a different unit and Trevor Crawford Blencowe switched from the Royal Australian Air Force to the Army. The records provide dates and places of birth, recruitment and discharge, as well as rank, unit and next-of-kin. The latter is not very explicit, there is no indication if the relation is parent or spouse.
There were only two deaths in service: Maurice George Blencowe died 2 October 1943 whilst serving with the 2/23 Australian Infantry Division and Geoffrey Frederick Blinco was lost on 1 March 1942 with HMAS Perth. Several men were discharged early in the war, presumably as a result of wounds or sickness.
Clyde Robert Blencowe, who was born in Wagga Wagga NSW in 1918, was the only prisoner-of-war; he survived working on the infamous Siam Railway. Clyde descends from Benjamin Robert Blencowe (and through him from the 14thC Adam de Blencow) who emigrated to Australia from Buckingham in the 1850s — the same family as the Blencowes of Armidale. I believe Clyde is living in Tumbarumba in S.W. New South Wales, his son Christopher, one of our members, lives not too far away in Cooma.
The Blinco’s of Toowoomba and Crows Nest in Queensland were well-represented, as were the Blencowes of Leeton NSW. Not surprisingly, a number received their discharge in Papua New Guinea but John Percival Blencowe enlisted in Rabaul and John Clarence Howard Blencowe was born in Papua. The latter served on HMAS Lonsdale, his wife Valda Ruby was the only lady in the list, she served in the RAAF.
A Malayan connection
There was an unexpected personal surprise: we found the record of my wife Kee’s uncle Yaik-Foo Loke. Who had enlisted in the RAAF in Melbourne in 1942. I printed copies of his service certificate and mailed them to sons, back came quite a story!
A widower, he had sent his three children to spend their school holidays with their grandmother in Kuala Lumpur. When the Japanese invaded he made his way from Penang to Singapore and escaped to Australia via the Dutch East Indies. An amateur flyer in the 1930s, he signed on as a pilot with the RAAF. They flew him to Ceylon in a PBY (’Catalina’) flying boat — about as a long a flight as was possible in those days — where he volunteered to join Force 136 a unit being formed to be dropped behind the Japanese lines. At the age of 46 he was turned down but took part in the training programmes of air-drops and jungle survival. Force 136 went on to do in Malaya what Errol Flynn allegedly did for Burma and an acquaintance of mine actually accepted the surrender of the general commanding Japanese forces in northern Malaya, but that’s another tale.
Milestones
Our condolences to Allen Blincoe and his brothers on the death of their father Clifton Robert Blincoe on 6 September 2002; Allen Writes:
‘Dad was born in Odessa, Missouri on 21 November 1926. After finishing school in Odessa he attended the University of Missouri in Columbia. He met his future wife Bertha (Betty) Alice Fisher, a native of St. Louis, Missouri. Mom preceded Dad in death on 14 Jun 1999. They were married January 15, 1949 in St. Louis, returning to Columbia where they settled down to finish school and start a family.
While Dad was still in Graduate School he attended the first Atoms For Peace Conference in Bern, Switzerland, quite an honour. After completing Graduate School Dr Blincoe and family moved to Reno in 1956 to begin his tenure as Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Nevada.
In Reno, the Blincoe’s raised their three sons; who had three sons; who have six daughters.
Dad belonged to several scientific associations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, and the Nuclear Response Team. In 1969-70 the Blincoes went to Dublin, Ireland, where Dad was on sabbatical at Trinity College. He was also on sabbatical at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in the late 70’s.
He retired from the University of Nevada in 1985 and kept busy consulting and continuing his scientific publishing to the very end. Because of his association memberships, dad and mom travelled a lot. Dad going to the meetings, and mom sightseeing.
They are both missed by their family and their many friends.
Our condolences also to Elizabeth Blincow Brennecke whose husband Otto passed away in August. Otto Brennecke served in the German Army in World War II and came to Britain as a prisoner-of-war. He stayed on in England and worked as a design engineer for the company that makes Corgi toys; it was there that he met Elizabeth. Those of us who are young enough (or have children!) will remember those beautifully detailed scale models of cars and trucks. For the benefit of their two sons, Otto had assembled a large and unique collection, including some prototypes of models that never went into production.
Elizabeth continues to live in ‘The White House’ the centuries-old Blincow family home in Long Buckby and keeps in touch with descendants of William Blincow, who emigrated to Nebraska in 1871.
Letters
Another Australian connection
John Malings wrote: ‘My grandfather Urban Malings had a brother Christopher who married a Rebecca Jane [May] Blencowe in Banbury in 1912.’
Rebecca Jane May Blencowe was born 11 March 1885 in Banbury and christened 11 July at the Grimsbury Baptist Church. May’s father was James B, a baker & confectioner [those Banbury Cakes?] who had moved there from Bicester. James family had been five generations in Bicester and had come there from Launton where William Blincow had been buried 29 September 1761. This is the same family origin as that of Andrew Blencowe of Toowoomba.
A South African connection
Another Andrew Blencowe wrote: ‘My father Joseph was in the R.A.F. and was posted to South Africa during the war where he met and married my mother Joan Clarke. My six brothers and sisters are still living in Cape Town and one of them is a grandmother. I left South Africa in 1987 and after a couple of years in Bristol moved to Sydney where I met and married Alyson Todd; we have two daughters.’
Andrew was trying to trace his father’s family tree, and it is an interesting one. Joseph’s grandparents were Reuben Blencowe (1873-?) and Ellen Parker (c.1875-1915) of Banbury. Reuben’s parents were Thomas Blencowe (1829-1907) and Mary Ann Powell (1834-1900). Thomas had moved to Banbury from Bishops Itchington and he was the son of Thomas Blencowe (1803-?) and Mary Ann Morgan. Thomas, who descended from the Blencowes of Kings Sutton, was a blacksmith who had got into trouble and was transported to Australia where descendants of Blencowe children born there are believed to live.
More news from down on the farm:
17 Aug 2002: … Here we’re into a drought with 90 percent of New South Wales short of rain. As usual we have been feeding some stock since the end of April but now we’re really into feeding everything, have even run out of our own maize, and are hoping there will be a semi-trailer load arriving this week. The cattle are being fed cotton seed along with our own baled hay. We are luckier than many folk who are out of water; I saw a mob of cattle on the road north of us, I’d guess about 1,000 head; they were almost walking skeletons, probably walked all the way from western NSW. We did have 2mm last week & will maybe ‘have the chance of showers’ in a few days!
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| Some 2,500 sheep ‘getting their heads down’ to fresh grazing after the welcome rains. A fine view of the open pastoral country looking northwest from Acaire (it’s just as nice looking the other way!) |
We are three weeks into shearing and everything is looking good. The best thing about drought at shearing time is losing no time with wet sheep. Winter has been very cold with continuous frosts so the family decided to use snow combs on the shears so that there is still some wool left on. Lyn is very happy with the wool this year and the only complaint is that there is some dust in it; Frank can’t keep the yards damp to stop dust rising. Last week our agent brought out a Korean manufacturer to have a look and he was most impressed (except for the dust!).
24 August: Talk about Murphy’s law — shearing finished yesterday; rain started on Wednesday, we were into shearing last year’s lambs (hoggets) and as they didn’t have a year’s wool it would have been too short to use snow combs. The poor things were put into what we always consider to be a sheltered paddock but about sixty died from cold.
Shearing stopped at 11.30 and the whole team of ten arrived for the “Cut-out party”, a bit of a tradition on “Acaire”. As a rule there is lots of beer drunk but for first time it’s been at mid-day, so it really ended up being lunch which all enjoyed while waiting for Robbie to do the paper-work.
Ian still has some wool-pressing to finish before takes the bales to Newcastle for the September auction. Prices have gone up, so we will keep fingers crossed. The computerised grading we did last year seems to have paid off.
It’s a crazy season! The first daffodils are out and the birds in our yard are all very busy nest building, but the mulberry tree has been cut by frost. A black red-belly snake has taken up residence under the front verandah. It’s been there all winter; I chased it off when it was sunning itself on the front step and blocked its entry hole, now it’s found another way in just below the top verandah. I might call the University of New England snake catcher to relocate it, even though they are said to kill Tiger snakes!
In June I had a letter from Anne Burton of Deniliquin, NSW. It was good to be in touch.
Pat McClenaaghan, Armidale NSW
P.S. Pat wrote again in November and enclosed the picture on p.12:
… we have had some good rain this week — on our place it varied between 30 & 68 mm — enough to wreck the flood gates on Baker’s Creek, but nobody complained here, we were lucky because our property just happened to be under the storm, the first since February.
An e-mail from Salt Lake City
Mary Ellen Smoot wrote enquiring about the ancestry of her great-grandmother Jane Blencowe, daughter of Elias Blencowe and Jane Deeley. Elias was easy to trace; he descended from the Blencowes of Helmdon in Northamptonshire of whom the earliest we know was Nathaniel, the stonemason who cut the stone that built Lord Chobham’s mansion at Stowe. (It’s my belief that this was also the ancestral family of the Blencoes of Wisconsin.)
Mary Ellen’s great-grandfather William Edward Smith was born in Corby, Lincolnshire, the son of William Smith and Mary Zillah Crocket. He and his mother sailed from Liverpool on the Colorado in 1869; they headed for Utah. As soon as he was able he sent for his sweetheart Jane who left England on 24 January 1871; they were married soon after and settled in Kaysville , Davis Co. UT.
A connection with George ‘the Inventor’
Donna Devine wrote from Delft in the Netherlands:
‘I’m trying to locate details of my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Rivers Blencowe. Her daughter Margaret Blencowe, was born in Great Wakering, Rochford, Essex in 1847. It’s possible that Elizabeth married a Samuel Oliver. I note that in the 1851 Essex census, a John Blencowe, 58, is listed, along with a Mary Ann Blencowe, 62, who is possibly his wife. Perhaps John is Elizabeth’s father.’
The only Blencowes in that part of Essex were the descendants of Thomas Blencowe, Surgeon’s Mate on H.M.S. Dragon, who died in Stock, near Chelmsford in 1741. His grandson George claimed the invention of the screw propeller, a diving bell, a cure for blackwater fever and an electric rocket! In addition to Donna, there are descendants of his in Essex and Australia.
Donna tells me that she herself is Canadian but spent many years in Perth, W Australia, where her two children were born. Her daughter is married and living in Perth; her son is a journalist in Vancouver. We Blencowes certainly do get around!