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.