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!

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!