Letters

As you will have gathered, correspondence has been flashing back and forth about Blenco(w)es of NY and Wisconsin. Laura Pruden spotted it and sent a photo of William George Blencowe which she dated 1912. I copied it around and Joyce Gould replied that this was her grandfather WGB (1865-1940) and that it was actually taken much later, in 1937, when he had been helping her father build his first home, hence the claw hammer in his right hand!

Tony Benyon, a stained glass artist who is researching the history of mouth blown glass, contacted me for information about William Blenko, founder of the Blenko Glass Company. He commented that William was involved in historically important glass making in London before he his first trip to America.

Brian Shuckburgh had seen the mention of his family name in the Spring newsletter and contacted me - from Hawaii! This reminded me that I had not followed up the mention of John TownsonÅfs letter of 11 February. He had seen our website and wrote from Somerset:

I enclose a copy of a family tree that I did some years ago, which shows the connection between the Blencowe family of Marston St Lawrence and the Shuckburgh family of Bourton Hall, Warwickshire. I am descended from Elizabeth Blencowe (1796-1851) through her son Richard Henry Wood, later Shuckburgh. Although Richard and Ellen had five children, there were not many descendants and my Grandmother and Great Aunt, their grandchildren, were the last in the family to bear the Shuckburgh Name and Arms. The only surviving descendants today are my two Aunts and their families, my Sister and her family and myself.

Rev Charles Blencowe was Rector of Marston St Lawrence for ten years before inheriting Bourton and I have the silver bowl presented to him by the parishioners on his leaving the village. I also have a nice oil portrait of him by Henry Pickersgill RA. and his spoons and forks! On inheriting, Charles Blencowe added the name Shuckburgh and moved to Bourton. He shortly afterwards rebuilt the church there. He and his wife, Arabella, had no children and, on his death in 1875, he left Bourton to his second nephew, Richard Henry Wood, on the condition that he change his name to Shuckburgh. Due to the agricultural depression of the late l9thC, Richard could not afford to live at Bourton and let it for some years before selling it in 1906. The contents of the house eventually arrived at Hatch Court, Hatch Beauchamp, where our family lived until 2000.

I don’t know what became of Edward Blencowe Wood and Samuel Frederick Wood, the two younger sons of Richard and Elizabeth, but by a strange circumstance, I do know a bit about the elder son, Rev Charles Robert Wood. My grandmother always said that the Wood family had been somewhat put out that my g-g-grandfather had been the one to inherit Bourton and also that he had dropped the name Wood completely in favour of Shuckburgh. There had therefore been no contact between the families since the late 19thC. I visited Bourton Hall in the late 1980s and learnt of a Miss Mary Wood who had corresponded with the then owners. I wrote her and she told me that she was a descendant of Charles Robert Wood who hadn’t wanted to inherit Bourton as he was a bachelor parson at the time that these things were being discussed. After Charles Blencowe Shuckburgh’s death, he did marry and had numerous children! He lived in Suffolk where Mary Wood still lived. She was obviously proud of her Blencowe ancestry and the name had continued to be used as a family name up to recent times. Mary Wood died in 1991 and I was amazed to be contacted by her solicitor to tell me that, apart from leaving me a print of Marston St Lawrence and a silver salver with the Blencowe coat of arms on it, she had made me her residuary legatee. A week later, I was to be found in Suffolk as chief mourner to someone I had never met, in a church full of perfect strangers. I then had her cottage to sort out. Luckily everything I heard about Mary from her friends showed what a fun person she was and with a great sense of humour, so it wasn’t at all creepy. Family history has some strange results!

I seem to have written more than I meant to, but it shows that, although our connection to the Blencowes has become somewhat tenuous through time, we still have an interest in the family and our descent from it.

John Townson,
Hatch Beauchamp, February 2002

The Shuckburghs had descended in an unbroken male line since the 13thC, it was only in the 1700s that they started running out of male heirs! John Townson’s Blencowe ancestor Elizabeth was a daughter of Samuel Jackson Blencowe by his second wife Elizabeth Biker. ElizabethÅfs aunt, also Elizabeth, had married John Slowe, another man who took the Shuckburgh name (in 1762). Meanwhile Samuel Blencowe’s son John Jackson Blencowe had married Louisa Biker, Elizabeth’s half-sister. The family relationships were truly complicated! I will try to set out a family tree in the next issue to make things clearer!