Letters

This correspondence with Brian Evans in Australia started in January but I held it over whilst we exchanged information.

Brian was seeking the parents of Harriet Ann Blencowe who married Graham Berry in England before they emigrated to Victoria. We found that Harriet was the daughter of James Blencowe and Harriet Ann Hennessy and was baptised at St Dunstan, Stepney in 1831.

Harriet’s father James was born about 1803 but we have not, so far, traced his parentage. He was apprenticed and ‘obtained his freedom’ of the Needlemakers’ Company in 1823. He married Harriet at Chipping Barnet in Hertfordshire in 1824.

Graham Berry, who was born at Twickenham in 1822, was apprenticed to a draper and mercer in Chelsea where he married Harriet Ann in 1848. After running a draper’s shop of his own nearby in the Kings Road for a few years, they emigrated to Australia on the Marlborough arriving in Melbourne in November 1852. It is highly likely that Graham had been apprenticed to his father-in-law. James and his wife also emigrated to Australia and both died in Victoria.

Harriet Ann bore Graham eleven children, dying in childbirth with the twelfth in 1868.

Graham Berry had a very remarkable career. He opened a general store after his arrival, but returned to England in 1856/7. On his return he bought a local newspaper; he entered politics. and was elected to the State Parliament in 1861.

After Harriet’s death he was back in London in 1872 where he was married again to Rebecca Madge Evans (who bore him another seven children). Back in Parliament in Melbourne, he was Premier in 1875. In 1876 he was made Agent-General for Victoria in London. During the that time he was appointed a Commander of the Legion of Honour (France), a Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy and was awarded a British KCMG. The latter was a very distinguished order: Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (a decoration known irreverently to juniors in the Colonial Service as Kindly Call Me God!).

Returning again to Melbourne he was twice Premier again, in 1880 and 1881; from 1894 to 1897 he was Speaker of the House. He died in 1904.

15 April - A letter from Judy Ludlow (in Australia) to Christine Clement (in New Zealand): ‘My research has taken me back to a Thomas Blencowe who married Elizabeth Williams in July 1815. My grandfather who, also was a Thomas Blencowe, came to Australia about 1914. Most of the Blencowes I’m interested in came from a little place called Souldern in Oxford... I believe most of them were farm labourers.’

I couldn’t give any positive information here but Thomas, a stonemason, appeared in the censuses of 1841 through 1871 and gave his birthplace as Brackley, c.1788. He was probably the son of Thomas & Mary Blencowe who baptised him there 16 April 1791. If this is correct then the line of descent can be traced from there back to the Marston St Lawrence family.

13 May: Pam Blinco wrote from Calstock in Devon to acknowledge receipt of her newsletter and told, “I was interested to see the picture of Isabel Blincow. ... I have several of her embroidered pictures which I started to buy even before I knew my husband — what a coincidence!”

Pam went on to tell of a recent visit of her husband’s two elder brothers, of whom Roy lives in Canada. Their father Vic, who died five years ago, was born in 1900 and orphaned when only a few years old. This would have been Victor George Blinco whose birth was registered 3rdQtr 1900 at Wycombe. A reasoned guess is that his parents were Sidney Blinko who died age 28 in 1907 and Alice who died age 25 in 1905. This Victor was probably a great-grandson of Moses Blinko, a baker of Wooburn, and his wife Mary Weyman. Moses was four generations down from William Blincko, farmer and Petty Constable of Hedgerley, who married Sarah Nash in St. George’s Chapel, New Windsor in 1692. I look forward to receiving some more details from Roy and his mother in Canada.

23 May: Alan Blencowe in Australia and Ray Weller in Southampton wrote to Christine Clement seeking information on their ancestor Sarah Elizabeth Blencowe born 1876 in Bicester.

Christine passed the query to me; it re-opens the problem of too many Blencowes living in one place! I don't know how many of you have visited Bicester; there are a number of small courtyards opening off the main street and Blencowes were often living close by one another in cottages around the courtyards. The main street is now closed to motor traffic and some of the courtyards have been converted to pleasant little shopping precincts.

I think most of the Blencowes were quite closely related and some children were baptised with the same forenames, even in the same year! When there are so many living cheek-by-jowl the Census data gives the best clue of family links, but even there I suspect that children sometimes moved in with an uncle next door when life got a bit crowded at home!

In addition to Christine, Jo Delaforce in Kent, Sue Gebbels in Abingdon and Keith Hazell in Tenerife have a special interest in Bicester. With their help I hope to give some more information in a future issue.

30 May: Another one via Christine: Ann Scanlan in Australia seeking nformation on Sarah Blencowe, wife of William Hutchings. William was a gardener, Sarah was born in Leasingham, Warwickshire about 1862. There is a problem here: there is a Leasingham near Spalding Lincs, and a Lessingham in north Norfolk; neither of these seem very likely ‘Blencowe’ locations. My guess would be Leamington Warws; there were Blencowes in that area, but I can’t find a Sarah.

8 June from Rob Tickle: ‘The story starts with Sarah Thomas, born 1806 in Buckinghamshire, daughter of John Thomas and Ann Taylor; in 1837 she married William Stannett with whom she had three, possibly four, children. Presumably Stannett died for in 1846 she married Joseph Blinco and in 1847 Maria Jones Blinco was born, my wife’s gg-grandmother. In 1856 Sarah arrived in Victoria with Sarah Ann Stannett, M. Stannet, Maria, Joseph and John Thomas Blinco. She moved around various towns in Victoria and died in East Melbourne in 1887 aged 77. I do not know if Joseph came to Australia. There are a couple of references to a Joseph Blinco in directories in 1868 and 1875 which place him in Victoria but it’s not known if he is the right Joseph. Family stories have him coming to Australia first, with Sarah and the family following. Joseph went back to England to sell his property and was never hear of again !!!’

This answered a query in my records here in Oxford. I had noted that Joseph, a fruiterer in Farnham Royal, emigrated in 1856 but ‘may have been back in Hedgerley in 1881’. It looks as if he was here then, but what happened next? I have no record of his death in England, did he die at sea, or was maybe even shipwrecked?

One thing is pretty clear, here is another whom we can trace back to William Blincko and Sarah Nash of Hedgerley.

17 June: Mick McMillan wrote from Australia to enquire for a book. If I’ve got it right he descends from John Thomas Blencowe, brother to George “the Inventor”, who emigrated to Melbourne in 1860.

20 June: Charles Blincow wrote from Dubai; it turns out that his wife Audrey works at the same organization as Marilyn Astle and learnt about us from her. Charles is one of the family of Blincows in Dunoon in south-western Scotland, a group I've hoped to hear from for a long time. There were no Blencowes of any spelling in the Scottish censuses of the nineteenth century and I was interested to learn how they got to be there.

Charles tells me that his grandfather Arthur was born in Lanarkshire and that his great-grandfather John Thomas Blincow was born in the Dudley area in the 1890s. The family were steel workers and moved to Scotland for work.

He says, “I have only come across three or four Blincow families in Scotland, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are all related. The family in Dunoon has expanded rapidly and has a large presence in this small town of only 10,000 population. Arthur has thirteen grand-children and 32 great-grandchildren, the majority of whom still live in Dunoon. Out of these, there are currently seven Blincow male children, so the family name looks likely to continue in that part of the world for some time to come.

With all these revelations about English ancestry, I may have to consider supporting England in the World Cup!”