Jack Blencowe — An Appreciation

I doubt if anyone has done more, and shown greater enthusiasm, for the Blencowe Family than Jack. Now well into his eighties, he rightly feels it is time for him to hand over some of the work involved to younger members of the Association. Hence it is great news that Anne Burton has agreed to take over the editorship of the newsletter. I shall become a signatory of the UK account, circulate the newsletter in the UK and hope to support Jack in other matters relating to the Association.

Jack's contribution has been immense. Before Helen Simpson retired, he managed the British side, being completely in charge since early 1990. During these last 16 years, we have seen the publication of the “The Blencowe Families: the Descendants of the Blencowe Families of Cumbria and Northamptonshire” which he edited. Recognised as an outstanding family history and awarded the highest accolade of 5 ‘trees’ by the ‘Journal of One Name Studies’, it would never have been published without Jack's enthusiasm, drive and expertise.

Arranging reunions in England and visits from Blencowe ‘cousins’ from around the world was another contribution that was much appreciated. Jack arranged a Blencowe dinner for over 100 at Oriel College, Oxford followed by a 10 day tour for more than 40 members of the family which incorporated Stratford, Chester, Blencowe Hall, York, Durham and Marston St Lawrence. A truly brilliant piece of organisation! There was also a visit to Weston Hall in 1997 and a return visit the following year to Marston Church for the re-dedication of the bells. All of which owe much to Jack.

As well as all this, he has edited and distributed the family newsletter since 2001, answered innumerable queries from around the world both via the magazine and via e-mail, and developed a Blencowe DNA study, tracing family relationships from male line Blencowes.

Over the years many people have collected information on the Blencowes (& variant spellings) from parish records, wills, indexes of birth, marriages and deaths, military & legal records etc, etc. What Jack has done is to put the basic information of each individual (who is given a unique reference number) into a database which enables one to see the family relationships and lineages of all individuals. Of course, this is an ongoing project as more information comes in and the database is updated frequently. Jack developed the Database using the program Cardbox which is DOS based, but can still be run on Windows based computers. Efforts are underway to convert the database to a Windows based format and eventually it may be available online for Blencowe enquirers to search through.

He also helped in the organization of a collection of Blencowe documents in conjunction with Mike Walton and Jill Dudbridge. Jill Dudbridge had scoured record offices and amassed a large collection of photocopies of wills, legal transactions etc, dating back to 1436 which were nearly all handwritten and some were in Latin. Mike Walton deciphered the handwriting, transcribed them and put them into word processing format. Jack printed out the documents, assigned any individuals to reference numbers from the Blencowe Database and then gave relevant copies to the record offices in Northampton and Carlisle.

May I, on behalf of the Association, thank you, Jack, for all you have done. I suspect there is more to come - helping out members with information, and keeping up the Database etc. May you enjoy a well earned semi-retirement.

Peter Blencowe
Walderton