| Blencowe Families’ Association Newsletter | Volume 20 Number 4, December 2005 |
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Letter from the Editor
Dear Cousins,
I should have been delivering this to the printers wearing a Santa Claus hat, but here I am in sackcloth and ashes struggling to get there when they reopen after the New Year! However it gives me the chance to thank all of you who sent me Xmas greetings and to wish you everything good for the year ahead.
One reason for the delay has been a short visit to Sydney to celebrate the 70th Birthday of Kee’s favourite cousin. I regretted being unable to meet-up with some of the ‘cousins’ in NSW but I couldn’t very well declare open house when the house wasn’t mine! We had a wonderful reunion with the Malaysian relatives but the jetlag after the return journey was awful; it seems to get worse and worse as I get older.
I have been enjoying quite a spate of new contacts generated by our website; some of the highlights are in the ‘letters’ section. I heard indirectly that Benn is currently busy sandbagging his Sacramento home against floods so he may be diverted from his website management for a while! Meanwhile Roger Blinko in NZ, has started up an interactive website which will allow you more person-to-person contacts for discussion and exchange of family history data. You can access it via <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blencowe-and-variations_family_history/>. If you have problems signing, in contact Roger directly at rogerblinko @ xtra.co.nz .
One thing you should be talking about is the 2007 Reunion, that’s next year now! I suggest you consider an 11 day period. Friday arriving, Monday disperse, chosen between the dates Friday 22nd June and Monday 15th July. This would allow two week ends when UK members, who cannot get away from work, could participate.
I’m still hoping for a volunteer to take over this newsletter. It is really getting more than I can handle. Replying to welcome internet contacts takes time and I have reams of data pilling up to enter into the database. We may end up having to drop the newsletter and rely entirely on our website, which would exclude those of you who do not have a computer.
Jack Blencowe
Oxford, January 2006
The Manor of Lowick and Lowick Church windows.
My great-grandfather John William Everard was born in Brandon, Suffolk and settled in Ulverston in the 1870’s. The Everard name appears on a grave, on a memorial, and on an heraldic window in Lowick Church. The bearers also came from Suffolk – Brome and Lowestoft – but some pre-date John William by at least a generation. I wanted to find out whether the ‘Ulverston’ Everards and the ‘Lowick’ Everards were linked.
In 1736, William Blencowe, of the Cumbrian family, married Elizabeth Latus of Millom, who had inherited the Manor of Lowick. William duly became Lord of the Manor and lived at Lowick Hall. Their second son, William Ferdinando (1742-1803), inherited the Manor of Lowick on the death of his father in 1769; William F. died in 1803 and having no children, he left the Manor to Elizabeth, the daughter of his cousin Henry Prescott Blencowe of Thoby Priory, Essex. (William F.’s uncle Henry had married Mary Prescott, a granddaughter of Sir John Blencowe of Marston St Lawrence thus re-uniting the northern and southern branches of the family).
In 1794 Elizabeth had married James Everard in 1794 at Lowestoft. Thus, James and Elizabeth became Lords of the Manor of Lowick in 1803 and remained so until their own deaths in 1846. I can find no Lowick gravestone for them, suggesting that they are buried in Suffolk.
Their daughter Mary Everard succeeded to the title, sharing the ownership of the Manor and its living with her sister Caroline and a Mrs Montagu.
The Heraldic Windows in Lowick Church.
The Church contains three windows concerning the Everard and Blencowe families. The East and West windows are in memory of Mary (Everard) Gaskarth (1798-1885) and of her husband, Rev Isaac Gaskarth (1810-1877).
The North window displays the heraldic and religious emblems of the Everard and Blencowe families. The window carries the Arms of two families, separately and intertwined.
The crests of the Arms identify them as belonging in principle to the Blencowe and Everard families. Both sets of Arms are in shield form, signifying that they are of male members of each family.
The Blencowe Arms are depicted with a crest comprising a pierced heart between two wings and is widely recorded as the crest of the Blencowe family. It sits on top of a helmet, the style of which signifies that the holder had the rank of esquire or gentleman (i.e. was the descendant of a knight).
The shield is divided into four quarters. The original Arms: ‘Gules, a quarter argent’, i.e. a red shield, one quarter silver. Later, for services rendered, Adam de Blencow was given the right to quarter the Arms with those of Baron Greystoke, so that by 1666 the shield is recorded as having two quarters as the original Arms and two quarters blue with a white diagonal stripe in which are three chaplets of roses (“Azure, on a bend argent three chaplets gules”).
This is how the upper two quarters of the shield are shown in the window. One of these also contains a crescent. This is ‘cadence’ mark, signifying that the Arms are those of a second son.
In summary, the Blencowe shield depicts the Arms of the second son of an aristocratic family of long standing. The Everard Arms tell a rather different story. The crest of the Arms comprises a bearded man’s head in profile on a striped cushion and wearing a red cap. There is no helmet, meaning that the holder was not of a knightly or higher family.
The shield is divided vertically in two halves. This signifies that a man entitled to Arms has married a Lady entitled to Arms in her own right (i.e. an aristocratic woman).
The Arms on the left of the shield are three five-pointed stars on silver background, divided by a red band (“Argent, a fesse between three mullets gules”). These are Arms ascribed in references to ‘Everards of Kent and Suffolk’. In other words, for use by those of that name but not of noble birth. That this lefthand emblem is not subdivided (‘quartered’) suggests either that the bearer was the first generation to have them or that his male predecessors had wives who were commoners. The absence of a helmet shows that the bearer and his predecessors were also commoners.
The righthand half shows the Arms of the woman who married into the Everard family. The two variations with the above Blencowe Arms are the absence of the crescent (to be expected because Elizabeth was female, and also because her father was the eldest, not second, son) and in the lower righthand quarter the change of three sheaves of corn to three owls. This is recorded as a device used by a branch of the Blencowe family (of Thornaby Park, Herts).
These Arms are therefore almost certainly those of Elizabeth’s father – Henry Prescott Blencowe, first son of the above Henry Blencowe.
Everard Ulverston-Lowick links
I still do not know whether the two Everard groups were linked but I now have a much better knowledge of James, his brothers and sisters and parents and the Lowick connection. The answer almost certainly lies in Suffolk, not Lowick.
Brian Everard
Barrow in Furness, October 2005
The article above is part of a much longer piece Brian has written on the Lowick Everards and their descendants. I am sure he is right in ending that the Everard links lie in Suffolk rather than Cumbria and the Blencowe-Everard links lie there or in Norfolk. Blencowes and Everards were important citizens of Kings Lynn. Brian has also found some heraldic references that are new to us and may throw light on the origins of the earliest Blencowe arms. We’ll aim to give you more in the next Newsletter.
The Blinkcos leave Swaffham Prior and settle in OZ
Joy Johnson had corresponded with me by email and offered to send me a copy of her family history book. I suggested that it would save postage if she mailed it to me c/o Kee’s cousin in Wahroonga NSW where we would be visiting. It turned out that she lived almost within a ‘cooee’ (that’s ‘hollering distance’ to you Americans!) and it was a delightful surprise when Joy and her husband Glenn turned up to present me with the book in person!
Joy and Glenn have produced a book that could serve as a model project for all of us to leave for the generations to come. The book is spiral-bound and consists of 186 A4 (letter-size) pages containing photostats and transcripts of Wills and other documents, family trees and more than a hundred historic family photos.
She starts with an historic background of the East Anglian Fenland and the ancestral Swaffham village and its churches and then goes on to detail the family emigrations to several states in Australia. The history of each pioneer Blinkco is then given, along with that of the families with which they became linked by marriage.
There are interesting accounts of the places where the family members settled and of how they made a living. I realise now that I should have included much more of that background detail in the Blencowe book. Things like the type of agriculture around the ancestral villages influenced the pattern of family life: the shepherds of Swaffham would have ‘signed on’ for a year’s service at a hiring fair and thus perhaps had children born in different parishes.
Producing and printing a book of this size is fairly expensive; I wonder would it be practicable to put it all onto a CD? It could then be made available to perhaps numerous distant relatives without breaking the bank!
Well done Joy and Glenn! I hope more of our members will think about emulating your effort
State sues genealogy company
YEARBOOKS’ CALLED A SCAM
Ed Blincoe sent me this item from the Denver Post of 23 November. It reported that a company Morphcorp of Denver was accused of swindling some 150,000 people when they bought a book with fake family histories. Priced at US$49.95 the book purported to contain ‘2,000 years of family history, a family coat of arms, family recipes’, and so on. Some buyers complained that the contents were the same if the name was Smith or Jones. If proven, this could be one of the worst scams perpetrated against family history buffs.
This case reminded me of the mailshots I and others had received promoting The Great Book of Blencowes or Blincows or similar title. In fairness, some buyers were satisfied with their purchase: they received a book with a correct coat of arms, and a brief history of the early days of the clan. However, the main text comprised family names extracted from international telephone directories.
One promotion sticks in my memory: it promised me biographies of distinguished family members such as well-known businessman Ardis Blenko – Ardis was the much-loved mother of Walt and Don Blenko who died in 1996 at the age of ninety-seven! It’s the old story, let buyer beware!
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Milestones
I had a poignant email from Angela Blincoe Nixon: “My father was Robert Blincoe, he was born in 1932 and was murdered in Dec 1967 in Evansville Ind. I was presumed to be the only child but was introduced to someone about 15 years ago saying he was my brother. I was sheltered from a lot of the details about a lot of the things that happened and it has brought a lot of misery in my life because I was, of course, ‘Daddy’s li’I girl’”. Angela had an uncle Donald Blincoe who was reluctant to tell her the story of her ancestors. She continued, “1 love my name and will carry it with me always as my middle name. I have no children, so my ancestors are all I have. I would greatly appreciate any information”
I was able to trace Angela’s father Robert, the son of Lema Florence Blincoe born in Brooklyn in 1932. The history was complicated because Angela’s parents were divorced and then remarried one another. Angela’s was only three when her father was killed in Evansville. No one has ever given her a clear idea of what happened. One possible version was that he was shot when he entered a house he had once occupied and to which he still had a key.
A most interesting letter came from Bob Blencowe in Columbia SC, it related to Fran Blencowe’s chapter in our book about Thomas Henry Blencowe who emigrated (eventually) to Lynchburg VA. Bob wrote: “The oral tradition of our family history says that our ancestor (not positive about the name) came over to the America’s in 1851, possibly through Canada. We’ve never been able to track down the ship despite searching through many boarding records. We know that Thomas Charles’ father was a one-time successful pharmacist in Berryville who later moved to Washington, DC after one of the economic collapses in the late 19th century. He is buried in Arlington (city, not cemetery) and he was also a Thomas. The fact that Thomas Henry was also a ‘pharmacist’ lends a little credence to your thought that this is our line if one assume that a son took after the father in business.
Thomas Charles’ claim to fame was as a pilot for the RCAF in WW I. Although he did not become an ‘Ace’, we have a newspaper article that reports his having flown a member of the Paris Peace delegation from England to France in 1919. We have a wonderful collection of photographs that he took during the war of planes and his pilot friends. Several of the pictures are of crashed planes listing the pilot who died. He later married my grandmother (Isabel Chapman from Charlotte, NC) in 1922 and they had two sons. They were divorced in 1932 (quite a scandalous thing back then!) and their first son Thomas Charles, Jr. (my uncle) died in 1942 at 18. Thomas Charles later remarried after settling in Maryland and had a daughter by his second wife. My father pretty much lost touch with Thomas Charles after the divorce (my father was only six at the time), so that is a huge reason why our information is so scant.
Of the present day South Carolina Blencowes, we all live here in Columbia. My two brothers are both married and have two daughters and one son between them. So, it looks like there will only be one male heir to carry on the name unless something unforeseen happens. Hopefully, the name will not die out as we’ve all had quite a few chuckles throughout our lives trying to spell it for people.”
Bob Blencowe
Question is, which lot does Thomas Charles hook on to? Bob seemed unconvinced, but I think it must have been Thomas Henry Blencowe for, although we know most of his descendants, his settlement in Lynchburg was not his first visit to USA, he had been there for some years before. When he returned temporarily to England I believe one or more of his children stayed behind. It seems beyond belief that there were two different pharmacist Blencowes in Virginia in the 19thC. I asked Bob to send us some of the aeroplane pictures and must remind him!
I had a long letter from Martin Taylor who has done some extensive research of documents relating to the Blinco families of Hedgerley, Slough and Windsor. He pointed out that my reference to the beer house run by William Blinco (B.1814) as at ‘The George Green’, Langley Marish was incorrect. George Green is in fact a hamlet within the parish of Langley Marish (it has a street called Blinco Lane today). The Buckinghamshire Petty Session Records for 1872 record Mary Blinco (presumably William’s widow, born Mary Fox) as landlady of a beer house called ‘The Windsor Castle’ in George Green. It was first licensed in 1832.
The Langley Marish tithe map of 1843 marks a house and garden in George Green as occupied by William Blinco. I assume this is ‘The Windsor Castle’. The site now lies somewhere underneath the A412, the main Slough to Uxbridge road. The entire northwest side of the village street seems to have been swept away when the road became a dual carriageway at some point in the 20th century.
I have yet to complete my study of the Petty Sessions licensing records (which in any case are incomplete). I hope I may be able to find out a bit more about Moses Blinco II and The French Horn pub. So far I have learned that the Duke of Somerset sold it complete with lease to Weller’s brewery of Amersham, and that the tenants from 1821 onwards were not Blinco’s.
Finally, there is a branch of the Blinco’s living in Langley Marish in the 1840’s/50’s and earlier that are no obvious connection to my own line. They have substantial landholdings in the tithe apportionment and are listed under gentry in the trade directories. They are not tabulated in the book but some of the individuals are listed in the appendices. Any ideas? I also have a will of a Thomas Blincow of Chesham who died 1816 which came from the PCC section of the National Archives. I’ve never been able to place him either. [I can’t identify Thomas’s origins but he died in 1813 aged 79 yrs and was buried at Chesham on 23 July; he may have been a carrier. He left £I,000 to his wife in trust to go to the children of his daughter Betty. Betty was married to Robert Armstrong of Baldwins Garden, Leather Lane, Holborn. Jack B]
Martin Taylor
John Hunter wrote from Australia; ‘My GG Grandparents are the Thomas and Eliza Blencowe’s mentioned on your website newsletter under the “Death of a Mountie” story. It turns out that their daughter Emily Blencowe (b.1870) is my Great Grandmother. All the names tied in perfectly as well as some of the history. My father (Hector Hunter, originally from Lismore) was telling me a few months back that he can recall the Blencowe’s coming from Perth (where Ernest Blencowe the Mountie died) and that a street was named after the Blencowe’s over in Perth, Western Australia.
My research so far has led me to Gawcott, Buckingham, where both Thomas Blencowe (b. 1836) and wife Eliza Bennett (b. 1835) were both born. From the 1851 UK census records it appears they lived in the same street (High Street, Gawcott) just a few doors apart. I’m fairly certain that Thomas Blencowe’s father was a Thomas Blencowe (aka Blenkow) (b.1810, Gawcott). His parents are listed as William Blenkow and Hannah.’
Letters
Betty Blencowe (1916- 2005)
Miss Elizabeth (Betty) Blencowe died earlier this year at the age of 89. She was the great-grand-daughter of the Rev’d Thomas Blencowe, second son of John Jackson Blencowe and Louisa Ann Biker of Culworth. While his elder brother, John Jackson Blencowe II, inherited Marston House, Thomas became vicar of Marston St Lawrence and later married Ellen Bathurst. Betty, who was very proud of her Blencowe ancestry, was the last of her line, as her brother, John, was tragically killed in 1939 in a motor cycle accident while in the Army, while her sister, Margaret, or Muffle, also never married. Muffie was ill for many years and Betty spent the prime of her life caring for her sister in Weston-super-Mare.
Betty’s great love was music. She was a generous patron of the Bath Philharmonia Orchestra and the Bath Music Festival, and until poor health prevented her getting around, she regularly attended their concerts.
As an example of the affection with which she was held in the musical world of her home county, Somerset, I quote these extracts from an article from the Weston Mercury of the 3rd June 2005.
“A spectacular seafront show is being dedicated to one of Weston’s longest standing arts supporters, Betty Blencowe, who died earlier this year at the age of 89. The Seaside Proms, part of ‘Party on the Prom’, will be staged in her memory.
‘Party on the Prom’ will feature two concerts, supported by the Weston and Somerset Mercury, held on the Beach Lawns on August 6 and 7, Betty held the record for attending the most shows at The Playhouse, Weston, and was a patron of Bath Philharmonia.
She supported live music, opera, musicals, plays and variety shows alike.
She was a wonderfully shy and quiet person who never courted publicity about her support for the many arts projects in the town and she will be sadly missed by many.”
I can’t quite agree with her being ‘shy and quiet’, for whenever we visited her she seemed to bubble over with interest in all that was happening in the world, and I know she was much loved in the retirement home where her life ended. She will indeed be sadly missed.
Peter Blencowe,
Walderton, October 2005.
a name=”congrats”;Congratulations !
Helen Blincow Simpson and her husband Bob celebrated their Diamond Wedding Anniversary with a trip to Hawaii with all the members (four generations!) of their family. Helen and her family were founders of the Association about twenty years ago and she and Bob ran this Newsletter for fifteen years!
Don and Kitty Blenko celebrated their 52nd Wedding Anniversary in the breezier surroundings of the Pacific Coast. Don is a grandson of William John Blenko who founded the Blenko Glass Company of Milton WV. (Pictures of these family groups were not clear enough for the website).
This is a ‘Stop Press!’ item. Joan Harrison wrote from St Albans telling that she may have solved the identity of ‘the missing heir’ in our book. Details in the next issue!