| Blencowe Families' Association Newsletter | Vol. 19 No. 4 December 2004 |
Daphne Austin has turned up some more interesting stuff. Looking at a website <www.firstfamilies2001.net.au> she found the story of John Blencowe of Middleton Cheney, a manservant who had been convicted of theft from his employer and sentenced to transportation for 14 years to be served in Tasmania. He shipped out on the Lord Lyndoch and arrived at Hobart in 1841. On arrival his sentence was reduced to 18 months. During his probation period he worked as a baker for Mr Thomas Archer ar Woolmer's Estate. Mr Archer was known to have great compassion for convicts, not agreeing with the system of transportation, thus treating his workers well.
In 1846 John married Elizabeth Horner of Pontefract who had travelled to Tasmania with two sisters to work as domestic servants. They had arrived in Launceston on the Elizabeth and Jane in 1835.
John and Elizabeth moved to Victoria with their family circa 1835. The information has been provided by Vera Lay and lists six generations of descendants.
Daphne also sent me a long printout of hundreds of Blencowes (Blincos, etc) from the National Burial Index listed on a CD. This proved to be quite a gold mine. In addition of more than seventy ‘new’ individuals to the database it gave the burial date and location of more than a hundred individuals previously known only from the General Register of Births & Deaths (which mentions only the registration town). It was possible to identify the parentage or spouse of some individuals and revealed a number of towns and villages where Blencowes had not been known to be living. There were others (some of which I thought we has ‘dry’) where an un-expected numbers of ‘new’ records appeared:
Most Parish Registers will name the parent or spouse of the deceased and thus yield more detail of their relationships.
| Blencowe Families' Association | Vol. 19 No. 4 December 2004 | |
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