Visitors from Canada

Fern and Ron Gibbard made a return visit to their ancestral villages during March. Fern descends from the Blincoes who emigrated from Mixbury on The Sea in 1844 to Elora, Ontario. They stayed with Ron's cousin in the picturesque village of Padbury (near Buckingham) where Gibbards have lived for thirteen generations. We met up for lunch in Padbury and afterwards visited churchyards in Helmdon, Stoke Lyne and Gawcott. The weather was bitterly cold but the bright sunshine made the photo opportunity of Thomas Blencowe's gravestone at Gawcott too good to miss. Thomas was not one of Fern's family but one of the stone masons (probably from Helmdon) who gave rise to the Blencoes of Wisconsin. The late James Blencowe of Painted Post NY reported that Thomas had carved his own gravestone. I'm sure the picture will remind Mary Van Gorden of her visit there last year.

Fern and Ron live in Naramata near Kamloops in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. When he was over here in 1993 Ron told me that, as an honorary game warden, he occasionally had to trap and relocate badly behaved bears!