THE BLACKMORE FAMILY HISTORY
This is how the site is structured:
1 - Home Page. CLICK HERE2 - Introduction - i.e. this page
3 - The Search for our Roots. CLICK HERE
4 - The early Devon Blackmores, Part 1 - brief details of the very early family members. CLICK HERE
5 - The early Devon Blackmores, Part 2 - later Devon Blackmores, in some detail. CLICK HERE
6 - "An interesting Sideline". CLICK HERE
7 - Newspaper items, Gravestones and Memorials. CLICK HERE
8 - INFO EXCHANGE messages seeking or giving further information about about Blackmore relations. CLICK HERE
PART 1 - INTRODUCTION
PRETTY DULL STUFF - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
An hour in a 20 ft sailing boat at Brixham in 1970 convinced me that I should acquire one. That autumn, I bought one just like it called Playmate, and we later had six or seven very enjoyable sailing holidays in her at St Mawes. Although it is said to be unlucky to change a boat's name, no self-respecting boat could survive long with a name like that, so she became CHAOS, a name that everyone said was most apt.
At the end of our first sailing holiday with Chaos in Salcombe in 1971 I booked a table for five at one of the two decent restaurants there. On arriving, we were shown to a table set for twelve. There were only two tables in the place and, by coincidence, both had been booked in the name of Blackmore. I had intended to ask our namesakes, when they arrived, if our two families were connected in any way. However, by the time they arrived our children were in no state to be introduced to anybody and, besides, we were rather put off by their toffee-nosed accents and obvious wealth! Supposing they may have been what my grandfather Harold Close Blackmore ("HCB") had described as the wealthy branch of the family who were, he said, on Lloyd's, and likely to have nothing in common with us, I did not make myself known to them. But it did set me wondering
I began to think about researching our family history five years ago. I found that I had some notes by my father and aunt, but I hadn't looked at them recently. I had forgotten most of what they said and what they and my grandfather had told me. I had also come by other odd bits of information along the way,which I had merely filed away without remembering what they were about, hoping to have the time (and the inclination!) one day to sort it out.
A start on this project was made in the autumn of 1989, when Caroline and I were planning a brief walking holiday with the dogs in North Devon. I had a vague idea that the Blackmores came from South Devon, and thought I had heard my father talking about Bovey Tracey, but it is amazing how much information is around, and a quick re-read of Alison Adburgham's fascinating book "Liberty's - a Biography of a Shop" pointed me towards Littleham, in South Devon, now a suburb of Exmouth and conveniently close to the M5 motorway.
I didn't even bother to dig out my grandfather's notes at that stage as I just wanted to have a look at the place if we found ourselves near it, but my recollection was that the story started with HCB's grandfather Henry, who was thought to have been born on 8.8.08. I therefore decided to make Henry my starting-point. My father Hilary ("HB") had told me he believed that Henry came from yeoman farming stock and that (possibly because, as the younger son, there was no room for him on the farm) he had been apprenticed to a tailor in Exeter. He had later moved to London, (Brook Street, my father had said) where he had prospered, and when his only daughter Emma Louise insisted on marrying an "arty" shopkeeper and could not be dissuaded, he had put up some of his own money and also backed a bill for more to help him set up Liberty's. Her brother Harry had died when his only child HCB was about four and Emma Louise, who had no children of her own, had been very fond of him.
I had been told that it was a family tradition that in each generation a boy's name should begin with 'H' - hence James Henry for my eldest son, and William Henry for his.
Littleham Parish Church
I have had more than my fair share of luck. First, an hour in the graveyard at Littleham parish church (St Margaret and St Andrew) provided many clues, to some extent confirmed by a later visit to the Exeter records office. On the vicar's advice we called on Mrs Nicholls who had been a Blackmore (the grand-daughter of another Henry Blackmore who I refer to below as "Henry ll" to avoid confusion). Henry ll's grave is by the path on the right, just after the lychgate, but as he died in 1928 it was obvious that he was not the Henry we were looking for. Mrs Nicholls told us that the sexton says there are 250 or more of us in there, mainly in the north eastern corner. We were literally struck dumb on seeing her come to the door - she was so like my Aunt Lois (Lois Pinsent Blackmore) who had died in 1971 (particularly the eyes, Caroline says) but with a lovely west-country accent.
We were lucky again on another hurried visit to Devon in 1991. We had been to Bovey Tracey to find the Pinsent connection, arriving at the church long after dusk, and just about tripped over the Joseph Pinsent gravestone. The really astonishing piece of luck came next evening, when we passed Holy Trinity Church at Exmouth (built 1834, and added to in 1856). As the two parishes of Littleham and Exmouth are combined, I decided to have a look. I got into conversation with Mr Alan G Tuckett who runs the news-agents and tobacconists in the High Street and is warden of Holy Trinity. He was waiting for his wife and, had she not been five minutes late, I would never have met him. [1]
To my surprise, Mr Tuckett told me he had some papers formerly belonging to Gus Blackmore and his father Henry ll, which he very kindly dug out and forwarded to me. These included a letter from my grandfather HCB to Henry ll seeking information, and a rather snooty note from Arthur Liberty in 1912 demanding of the church wardens to know what became of the window given by his wife Emma's father Henry.
Later, I came across a letter from HCB (dated 30 April 1933 - three weeks after I was born) and some longhand notes by him dated 1945. Alison Adburgham very kindly lent me her own longhand notes for her book, which were most helpful. I was also greatly helped by my step-mother Jean Blackmore who found HCB's 1947 notes which HB had passed to Mrs Adburgham to help her with her book. Inevitably, HCB's various letters and notes repeat themselves. They also add confusion as well as light. I cannot necessarily accept all he says as accurate, being based largely on his conversation in 1926 with Henry Blackmore ("Henry ll") who was then over 80 and may have become a little confused, but at least HCB writes what he remembered his aunt Emma telling him, where I am guessing, so his version must always be preferred to mine.
Fortunately I had, long ago, asked Aunt Lois to write a thumb-nail sketch of my grandfather for me. This, together, the notes left by my grandfatherHCB and my father HB have been most helpful in putting a human face on bare dates and family details relating to the later Blackmores, and some of the earlier Devon family too. Without these, it would have been difficult to get very far with this story.
Obviously, I am now re-tracing the steps of my grandfather in 1926, his aunt Emma Louise and her husband in 1912 and also (it seems from HCB's 1933 note) her father Henry probably 120 or more years ago. It is a strange feeling to find traces of their ancestor-hunting activities after all this time! If only they had kept detailed notes, as much of the trail has naturally gone cold since then and, of course, Hitler's bombing of the records in Exeter has destroyed some of the evidence.
What a pity I did not start this project 25 years ago, as so many people were then living who could have been of great help in filling in the blanks and fleshing out the story with anecdotes and details. The gravestones at Littleham, now so badly weathered and worn, might have been quite legible then.
There are many things we shall never be able to prove. For example, it was said that there was a Blackmore (Henry's uncle, perhaps) who went to sea as captain of a cross-channel ship and went on deck in his carpet-slippers. I had a feeling he was called Samuel and that my grandfather had said he was 'lower deck' - not an officer. It was also said by my father that a Blackmore (perhaps the same uncle) was captured by the French during the raid on Toulon.
When HB was a boy there existed a Victory mug which, it was said, had belonged to a relation who had fought on board HMS Victory at Trafalgar. The mug disappeared (probably at Lee Manor, The Lee, near Gt Missenden, where the Liberty family lived) after the death of his great aunt Emma - Lady Emma Louise Liberty - but HB's investigations into the muster roll of the Victory do not reveal a Blackmore. At least, no Blackmore was on Victory at Trafalgar. Did he serve under Nelson on some other man-o'-war, or at some other historic battle - possibly the siege of Toulon? Quite likely, as living in a coastal town the family must have included several sailors (I've seen entries for Blackmore sailors in the Littleham parish registers, but do not know if they are related) and only "landsmen" were exempt from the dreaded press-gangs (and, in times of extreme emergency, not even then) without which the Royal Navy could not man its ships. But HB did find proof of a little-known piece of history - there were three women (they feature in a picture in the House of Lords) and two babies [2] on Victory at Trafalgar!
What I want to know is who the early Blackmores really were. Is it true that they were yeoman farmers - ie owning their own land, as opposed to being tenant farmers or "husbandmen"? If they were, where was their land? I should love to walk over it - or is it now the site of a holiday camp or housing estate? Were they wealthy? The occasional clue suggests otherwise. I have George Blackmore's silver mug, for example, left to me by my father. It proudly sports the initials "GB" in Victorian-style characters, but he must have bought it second-hand as it still clearly bears the initials "MI 1723" on the handle! We also have a little silver cream jug which I had believed to be Henry's christening present but, to my surprise, it plainly has "GB" on it, but the hall-mark date is 1808, not 1806. HB thought he and Henry had been christened on the same day (29 August 1808) so maybe this is proof.
There is one thing I am often asked about, and that is are we related to the R D Blackmore who wrote 'Lorna Doone'? I have found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that we are. HCB told me that on a visit to Devon (no doubt one of those recorded below) he had met 'an old boy', a distant relation, (probably Henry ll) who thought we were very distantly related to RDB, but I am quite certain that he was wrong.
A small pierced silver spoon with heavily patterned bowl (are they called "berry" spoons?) which Aunt Mary (HCB's second wife) gave us provides a conundrum on hall-marks. She thought it came from Henry. The hall-mark date seems to be 1846. It is the only bit of silver we have with an Exeter mark; everything else is marked in London. So who bought a spoon in Devon around 1846? And why? Was it picked up second hand on a visit to Devon by, perhaps, Emma Louise or her father Henry as a souvenir? Emma Louise was born in 1846, and the spoon was far more likely to have been a christening present to her from a Devon relation; George Blackmore, or his sister Elizabeth, perhaps?
What sort of person would have been a parish clerk in those days? ("Brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk" - Kipling.) In Little Ouseburn around 1815 it was alleged that the parish clerk drank too much. By way of defence he said that, to his knowledge, there hadn't been a sober clerk within living memory. It was a job giving some status, as the clerk would have been clerk to the "vestry" meetings - the fore-runners of local government with responsibility for a variety of things, even including vermin control and not just church matters.
The parish clerk was in charge of recording all births, baptisms, calling of marriage banns, marriages, deaths and burials. The handwriting of our forefathers on the parish registers was dreadful! (But the, so were the pens!) Some parish clerks were also sextans, were responsible for looking after the church-yard and even led the singing. William Blackmore, Henry's grandfather and John, Henry's father, witnessed just about every wedding in the village for many years.
I doubt if they would have been particularly wealthy, or even very well educated. Some entries in the register of marriages of Blackmores (but I cannot prove if they were related) are signed with an 'X'. The annual stipend for being parish clerk seems from the parish records to have been only a pound or two, and yet, as my grandfather had told me, the Parish Clerkship ran in the family for over 150 years and it was something of which they were plainly very proud.
So who were the early Blackmores? I want to finish my work before I, too, am gathered to join them!
ANTHONY BLACKMORE
December 1993
FOOTNOTES
1. Research at Aston University shows that most of us do not understand the laws of chance, and therefore put down to coincidence or even the supernatural what is statistically predictable. For example, for there to be a fifty-fifty chance of finding in a group of people that two have the same zodiac sign, the group need be no greater than five. For there to be a one-in-two chance of finding two people with the same birthday, the group need be only 23. With about 5,000 elementary schools, the group need only be 85 for there to be an evens chance that two of them went to the same school. The name of the researcher? Dr Susan Blackmore.
BACK TO TEXT2. It seems that to be able to draw rations they had to be entered on the ship's muster roll as "A B Baby". In the army, too, there were usually about six wives ("officers' ladies, NCOs' wives, other ranks' women") per company of 100 or so men, who drew lots to take their wives on campaign.
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