| Blencowe Families’ Association Newsletter | Volume 20 Number 2, June 2005 |
The Association Reunion
Walter Blenko wrote:
At the Blencowe Families Association meeting in Dayton, Ohio, on June 15-19, there was discussion of planning for the next family reunion, presumably in 2007. A number of thoughts were put forward.
Location: The overwhelming desire is for the next meeting to be held in England. In part, this is because of the wildly successful reunion which Jack ran in 1993 and also because of the family association with England as the home country. Visits to Marston St Lawrence, Blencowe Hall and Penrith would be welcome because they are significant in family history. The stay at Oriel College in 1993 was remembered with pleasure. A stay like that in Oxford, at Oriel or another college, would have to be scheduled out of term. It was mentioned sometime earlier that a stay in the Lake District would also be very enjoyable.
Time: Families with children in school in the United States tend to be limited to the second half of June, July and the first three weeks in August to avoid conflict with school schedules. It is also understood that prices are undoubtedly lower and that facilities are better available outside of the peak summer months, say in September.
Arrangements: It was recognized that a considerable amount of effort may be involved in planning and scheduling a family reunion. It was suggested that the burden could be considerably reduced by engaging a competent travel agent to make reservations for hotels, coach travel, and the like.
Daily Scheduling: Sufficient time should be allotted for discussions of genealogies and the printing out of various relationships from the existing data base. Hopefully, family members who are well rounded in the family genealogy would be available to participate and possibly lead discussions and questions. The results of DNA testing would be of particular interest.
Here are some thoughts on the above:
An English venue is long overdue and I’m sure it will be popular and that many UK members will wish to join in all or part of the event.
- Arrangements will have to be placed with a commercial tour agent; I will sound out Tappins, who did our coach trip to the north in 1993. Without any commitment I will enquire how much lead time they would need and how soon and how much deposit they would request.
- It will be necessary to decide soon whether we’re shooting for a week, 10 days, or a fortnight. If it is for one week I would suggest either north or south UK, not both.
- Blencow Hall is up for sale in September and we cannot rely on more than a drive-past visit there. Nearby Dalemain Hall has Blencowe connections and is open to the public.
- Accommodation in Oxford colleges is not all that comfortable and current traffic restrictions make collection/delivery of coach parties to the door difficult or impossible. A country hotel or motel with day visits to Oxford (and other centres) would be more practical. It would be easy to have laptop computers and a printer to back-up family history chats in the evenings.
- A visit to Whilton, Long Buckby, Brington, etc. would appeal to the Blincow part of the clan. There is a small local museum at Buckby.
- I would recommend a visit to Ironbridge, near Telford in Shropshire where there is an 18-19thC working museum on the lines of Colonial Georgetown.
Let’s have some feedback on ideas on this. Can Benn set up a page on the website for members to record opinions?
A Blincow Evacuee in Northampton 1939-1941
As a twelve year old schoolboy, my first visit to Northampton began at 9.00 a.m. on the morning of Friday 1st September 1939. Pupils of Kilburn Grammar School, (NW London) left by train and, after a very long journey around SE England, collecting other children from different areas, arrived at Northampton Castle Station some twelve hours later. I don’t remember it specifically but I suppose we were all equipped with those oblong boxes containing our gas masks and a luggage label tied to our lapels telling who we were! We were bussed from the station to the Town Hall where we were given food and tea and then taken by ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service to find our billets for the night. This was a somewhat traumatic experience as Northampton had decided to hold a ‘blackout’ trial that night and so it was all done by torchlight! Two friends and I were eventually settled with a dear old lady named Mrs Clarke, in Turner Street opposite Thomas Sears’ shoe factory. We three boys were settled into a large bedroom and quickly fell asleep after a very long day.
The next morning, Saturday, we were awakened quite early and served breakfast by Mrs Clarke, whom we now learned was a widow living on her own. What a brave lady she was to take three twelve-year-old strangers in so late at night! We were then told to sit down and write to our parents to let them know where we were. As far as I am aware, there was no official notice sent to parents as to the whereabouts of their children! Very few people had telephones in their homes in 1939 and my parents certainly had only my letter to inform them.
I remember quite clearly the morning of Sunday 3rd September. We had been walking in the “Racecourse” Park and when we arrived back learned that War had been declared on Germany.
On Monday we reported to the Northampton Town and County School in Billing Road where we were to share with the local boys. The NTC boys attended in the mornings and KGS in the afternoons from 1.00 pm to 6.00 pm. This arrangement was fine in September but not so nice in Winter as my walk home in the dark (no street lights!) seemed an awful long way. I can remember some pleasant days at Turner Street before, eventually, it became too difficult for the elderly lady to cope with us three ‘tearaways’, and we were reallocated to other foster homes.
I moved to a family, Mr & Mrs Howkins at a Railway Cottage in Castle Grounds opposite the Railway Station. Mr Howkins was a road goods delivery driver with the LMS Railway and I clearly remember his uniform with gaitered boots and breeches. They were a most kindly family; I stayed with them until late in 1940 when their son married and there was no longer room for me. During this time, my mother and father visited occasionally and on one occasion we travelled to Long Buckby and visited my Great Aunt Sarah Blincow (I believe at Mill Hill) this was my ftrst ever visit to the place from where my paternal Grandfather had come to London.
Another memory from Castle Grounds is waking up one morning in the first week in June 1940 and seeing the Goods sidings of the station filled with Red Cross trains bringing troops from Dunkirk.
They were mostly French and Belgian soldiers and they were billeted in the Town Hall. I remember us schoolboys helping them, with our limited schoolboy French, to buy small items from Woolworths and other stores in Gold Street. On arrival many of them had little more than the clothes they wore and they had been given money to buy such items as razors etc. Eventually they were dispersed from Northampton and replaced by a large intake of Canadian troops. While living with the Howkins, I regularly attended St Peter’s Church at the bottom end of Gold Street, the Vicarage was just up the lane from my home and the vicar was well known to the family.
Another vivid memory is playing Rugby. At Kilburn there were no Rugby pitches, Soccer was the game. When we arrived at NTC sports field there were only Rugby pitches! By coincidence, our sports master was an ex-Welsh international player and he was of course delighted to instruct us boys in the fine art of Rugby Football! He was a ‘giant’ of a man and I well remember him charging down the pitch with the ball and screaming, “Take me, boy!!” Needless to say we were all rather puny at this time but we learned fast and soon succeeded by tackling him from two sides at once and in pairs!!
I remember the terrible air raids on Coventry and the glow in the sky from the fires, the empty Fire Station when all the appliances went to help. Also, the unfortunate jettisoned bombs that fell on Northampton, I do not recall whether there were casualties at that time. A happier memory is swimming in the pool at Beckett’s Meadow in the Summer and sliding on the ice on the island lake in the Winter. 1939-40 was a bitterly cold Winter and the walk to and from school was not at all enjoyable.
When I left the Howkins, I was billeted with a woman in Vernon Terrace, which was a very different atmosphere. This person was one of the few who made money from having evacuees. There were four boys with her and we had very poor food and were all in one room together and constantly hungry as only thirteen year old boys can be. I put up with this for a time but eventually told my parents of the problem and in the Spring of 1941 I returned home for Easter holiday and only went back to Northampton to collect the rest of my possessions. Thus ends this potted account of my wartime visit to Northampton. Mostly very happy memories and a token of my gratitude to the kind people who opened their homes to the evacuees.
Frank Blincow
Hailsham, East Sussex, 2005
An Author in the family
It was after Edward Blincoe wrote the chapter in our book about Robert, his famous foundling ancestor, that I learnt that his son Nicholas was a full-time author. His Acid Casuals is an out-right thriller; when I saw another book reviewed in the travel magazine Everything France (Jan 2005) I thought I’d pass it along to you all:
Burning Paris, Nicholas Blincoe
Sceptre, £16.99
Partly a depiction of 19th-Century Paris, but mostly a telling account of the modern day, Burning Paris is a message to all writers who get too close to their subject matter.
Economy is a much-overlooked asset in writing, and one that Nicholas Blincoe turns on to his advantage. His tale — which marries a story within a story, set in 1870, and the main plot, fictional author James Beddoes composing his own tale — could be overly complicated. Thankfully, readers are spared a trip into one author’s ego, with Blincoe’s moulding of words offering little distraction from the story.
At points, the lives of the novelist in the book and his own subject matter no longer run parallel, but cross — readers might wonder if Blincoe himself had the same problems.
Keep an eye open for it in the bookstalls!
Some original Blencowe documents
Douglas Bain (who has re-located from Canada back to New Zealand) spotted an advertisement of the sale of some Indentures relating to land purchases in Buckingham by the Blencowe family. He bought them and kindly donated them to the Association.
Three handsome documents arrived, beautifully inscribed on vellum. I had assumed they would have concerned Benjamin Robert Blencowe who was born in Brackley in 1807, and became a wine merchant in Buckingham before emigrating to Australia where he died in 1895 — the forefather of the Blencowes of Armidale NSW.
The documents were Deeds to property near Castle Hill in Buckingham: an 1801 feoffment, an 1837 lease and release, and an 1843 release, documents concerning the ‘local brewer’ William Blencowe .
Though these three adjoining properties can’t be identified just from their location ‘near the Castle Hill’, it should be possible to identify them from the succession of occupiers ‘for many years in the tenure or occupation of Job Wilson … and late of Abraham Wheeler, a messuage or tenement some time since in the occupation of John Jones, late of Geo Elborough and now of Robt Holt …’
It turned out to be quite a different Blencowe connection: it is clear that William was a brewer, not of Buckingham but of Brackley, where there were three of that name who lived: 1783-1866, 1827-1896 and 1857-1888. The youngest William died unmarried; his younger brother Robert 1858-?1900 continued in the business but is believed to have died unmarried in Australia. The family brewery interests continued in the Midlands well into the 1920s. (One of their breweries was on the Castle Mill Stream in Oxford less than half a mile from my home; it has been converted to residential apartments). It is not clear who carried on the business after the death of William Snr in 1896.
Daphne Austin has taken over the care of our archives and I have mailed the documents to her for eventual transcription and placement at the Northampton County Records Office. However, just the transcription at Northants would suffice. Would Marcia Hatfield, one of that branch of the family, like to have the originals and perhaps tell us more of the Blencowe brewers?
More about DNA:
A Proposal to use Association Funds to Extend the DNA Survey
The Association has some £800 in its English bank account and something near $1,000 in USA. The current membership subscriptions cover the cost of producing and mailing the newsletter and financing our website. Indeed, excepting the American local mailing costs, the English account has paid for all newsletter costs without need for dollar transfers from America.
The surplus funds in UK have arisen because, even with a mark-up of only 10%, we have recovered the cost of publishing the Blencowe book and current sales add £13.50 per copy to our account. Additionally, I received 25 copies of the cookbook as ‘editor’s perks’ and most of these are being sold for the profit of the Association.
I propose that we use some of our surplus funds to extend our DNA survey.
Results so far have shown that the Blincoe descendants of the ‘Immigrant James’ share identical male chromosomes with the Blencowes of Virginia whose descent from Adam de Blencow can be traced ‘on paper’. The same goes for the Sussex Blencowes and we have recently found that the latter are of the same family as ‘George the Inventor’ whose Essex family links back through London to Marston St Lawrence. The large Blinco group that was located originally around Slough and Windsor also descend in unbroken male line from Adam de B.
The Blencowes and Blincows of Northants and Nebraska, who descend from John Blencowe the Parish Clerk of Whilton, have a different male chromosome indicating a birth out-of-wedlock some time before 1660. Similarly the Blencoes who emigrated from Gawcott to New York State and Wisconsin have a break in the male line. Descendants of the Foundling Robert Blincoe are different again.
I would propose that we seek samples from, and pay for the test of, a member of some or all of the following groups:
- Blencowes of Bicester
- Blincoes of Ontario who emigrated from Mixbury
- Blencowes of Kings Sutton
- Blencowes of Carolina whose descent can be traced back to Marston St L but not linked to the main family
I would also like Velda Blencowe to persuade her brother to submit a sample; their grandfather David emigrated to the Caribbean from Scotland and might be a descendant of the original northern line of the family.
I have asked those attending the Dayton Reunion to talk this over and let me opinions.
I would also welcome comments and suggestions from readers.
Milestones
Congratulations to Clive and Angela Blencowe of Worcester who celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary on 18 June. A celebratory dinner on 19 June was planned by their six children and spouses and included their sixteen grandchildren.
Congratulations also to Peter and Anna Blencowe, their daughter Emily and her husband Martin Warren on the safe arrival on 1 July of Nicholas James Rowan, a seventh grandchild for Peter and Anna.
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Letters
Paul Chapman wrote from Cornwall seeking further information: his ancestor Penelope Blencowe, baptised in Mixbury in 1795, had married Thomas Summers there in 1816. I was able to take him back two more generations to William and Ann Blencowe who had baptised six children in Mixbury. The late James Blencowe of Painted Post NY had suggested that William had moved to Gawcott and died there in 1819. This would have linked the Mixbury family to the Blencowes of NY State and the Blencowes of Wisconsin. I told Paul that this was most unlikely and that William probably came from the same branch of the family as the Blincoes who emigrated from Mixbury to Elora in Ontario. I also told him that he certainly shared ancestors with Frank Whelans of Melbourne, Australia.
Bridget Fisher has been making progress with her researches into the Blincos of Suffolk. In correspondence with Joy Johnson in Australia they have traced male descendants of the line “down under”.
This is important; the first records of Suffolk family had no obvious connections with either the Cumbrian or Marston St Lawrence lines, and they were located at a distance from other family branches. There is a possibility that they started as nick-named ‘Blinkers’ and metamorphosed into Blincos. The line has ‘daughtered out’ in England; a DNA test of an Australian male might show a direct link.
I have had interesting correspondence with Thomas Grindley in Maryland; he and Robin Kirk in the Netherlands are researching the Tolson family. John and Dorothy Tolson were mentioned as ‘nephew’ and ‘niece’ in Anthony Blencowe’s will ( John Tolson followed Anthony as Provost of Oriel College a year or so after Anthony’s death in 1618). Jill Dudbridge and I had assumed that the Tolson connection was through Anthony’s sister-in-law Apollonia Tolson who had married his brother Richard and that John and Dorothy were her actual nephew and niece. Thomas suggested that John and Dorothy’s father Henry had married a sister of Anthony named Joan. He has also come up with further records of Christopher Blencowe, another son of Anthony Blencowe and Winifred Dudley, whom we had thought to have been unmarried. Christopher had been settled in Bromfield (Cumbria) with a wife Magdaline; of their five children Chirstopher, Leonard, Janet, Elizabeth and Thomas, the last four had already appeared in apprentice records and will documents in London. Margaret Rampston had also mentioned Tolsons and Blencowes as her nephews and nieces; Thomas points out that one of the witnesses of her will was a Barwys a prominent family in Bromfield. This is all very complicated and I don’t expect you to follow it all! Take a look at the family trees in your copies of our Blencowe Book and see if you can puzzle it out!
Lady Ann’s Cookbook
The Librarian of Oriel College, Marjory Szurko, was delighted when I presented the College with a copy of the cookbook. In her thankyou note she wrote:
‘I am in the habit of putting on an Edible Exhibition in December each year in the Senior Common Room using sweet recipes, with an exhibition of books relating to the century above in the Senior Library. These are taken from original recipes and made by the staff, Fellows and myself. Last year, the exhibition covered the 15th century; this year we are to have 16th century recipes, and now I shall be able to have a 17th century exhibition based on The Receipt Book of Lady Ann Blencowe. What an unexpected treat!’
When I visited the College I was shown the magnificent old main library (pictured on the cover); we didn’t get to see that in 1993 — maybe something to put on our ‘wish list’ for 2007? I have also been promised a photo of the fine portrait of Anthony Blencowe that hangs in the Provost’s Dining Room. The pictures we took in 1993 were not successful due to reflections of flash on glass. I may also be able to get a videotape of a College ‘Son et Lumière’ in which Anthony is mentioned.
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