PART 5 - AN INTERESTING SIDELINEACTUALLY, IT IS NOT AT ALL INTERESTING This is how the site is structured:1 - Home Page. CLICK HERE 2 - Introduction. CLICK HERE 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" - i.e. this page. 7 - Newspaper items, Gravestones and Memorials. CLICK HERE 8 - INFO EXCHANGE messages seeking or giving further information about Blackmore relations. CLICK HERE "HENRY ll" - HENRY BLACKMORE(1842 - 1928)b. 22 August 1842 (family bible) "A son of the late Mr James Blackmore" [1] m. Ann who died 15 Oct 1915 aged 74 d. 9 April 1928 aged 86 (buried at Littleham 13 April 1928) Children, according to his obituary in the local papers, were:- Wallace - "of Hounslow" (Wallace William Henry B) Harold Augustus ("Gus") Mr A E Blackmore "of London" (Albert Edwin Blackmore) His father was 1st cousin of "our" Henry and George. So he would have been 2nd cousin to Emma Louise (Lady Emma Liberty) and Harry, HCB's father. Henry ll was Parish Clerk for 47 years (appointed 17 March 1881) and chorister for 60 years. His Uncle George was secretary to the "old" water company. Henry was a director. He was also chairman of the Exmouth Urban District Council. Gus, his son, was married but had no children. Wallace, another son, was father of Rosie (Mrs Nicholls) and her sister Jessie (real names Gladys May). Jessie Blackmore, Mrs Nicholls's sister, died a spinster. She left �250,000, including �1,000 for not just one but a pair of stained glass windows in the church at Exmouth in memory of the Blackmore family, but it wasn't enough so her sister made up the difference. But which Blackmores did she wish to be remembered - if her grandfather was right, and if we were only distantly related - his side of the family, or ours? Our side were at least parish clerks for over 100 years (even without reckoning with Henry ll's 47 years) whereas Henry ll and his son Gus were both Chairman of the Exmouth Council. A pity I never met Jessie - Mr Tuckett says she knew all about the family history. Perhaps Jessie knew we were, in fact, all one big family! Mrs Nicholls told me that Henry ll, like his son Gus who took over the business, "used to do a box job" - ie in addition to being carpenter and furniture maker he did a neat line in coffins, and filling them! The business was carried on by Gus Blackmore until his death in the 1950s, I think, and for a time after that as Mr Tuckett tells me that the firm made the arrangements for his own father's funeral in 1964. If Mrs Nicholls was granddaughter of Henry ll, then she and Aunt Lois Pinsent Blackmore (who died in August 1971) would have been 4th cousins. In spite of the distance of the relationship it is interesting to note the striking facial resemblance of Mrs Nicholls, aged about 86 in 1989, to Aunt Lois - particularly the eyes, Caroline says. Exmouth now boasts a Blackmore Theatre - the gift, I believe, by Mrs Nicholls' or Gus Blackmore's family, of the premises from which their family used to conduct its business. THE CONUNDRUM.When HCB went down to Littleham with my Aunt Lois, presumably shortly before he wrote the 1933 letter, they "went to service at Littleham...and saw there in the choir an old gentleman who bore an extraordinary family resemblance to Auntie [ie Emma Louise Liberty]....We found he was the Parish Clerk a Mr. Henry Blackmore and called on him at his house in Exmouth as I found my grandfather had done before me". [Italics are mine - EAB] He was obviously as much struck with the particularly strong family likeness as Caroline and I were, half a century later and on the same mission, on seeing Henry ll's grand-daughter Mrs Nicholls. Henry ll, then over 80, thought that he and "our" Henry were only "some very remote cousins and had not been able to trace out their exact relationship." And yet, according to his obituary, he had an "Uncle" called George. It seems odd to me that the Parish Clerk who had all the records, which he had 'inherited' from his "Uncle" George, did not know that he was the second cousin of Harry and Emma Louise. He had met Henry some time before; I suspect Henry may have been down to Littleham after his wife died in 1872 to arrange for the stained glass window. He must have known at that time who Henry was - i.e. his "Uncle" George's brother. Henry ll told HCB that; "When George Blackmore, the Parish clerk, was dying he sent for [Henry 11] and asked him to take on the Parish Clerkship because it had been in the family for over 100 years and though Mr. Henry was only a remote relation it would keep the name associated with Littleham. Henry agreed and took it on after George's death somewhere back about 1879". [HCB's 1933 letter]. Wouldn't George have known that young Henry Blackmore (Henry ll) was his 'nephew' if he was, indeed, his 'uncle' - even though we would, nowadays, say 'cousin-once-removed'? He must have known. But let's look at another possibility. Old George is lying on his death-bed. George, knowing that he had himself inherited the parish clerkship from his father John and was third in line as his grandfather, William, had also been Parish Clerk, was concerned that he had no son to whom he could pass on the job in the direct line. He therefore decides on the next best, which is to ask his 'nephew' Henry (the son of his 1st cousin James) to take it on. So he sends for young Henry, (who was named after his uncle Henry, the one who "made good" and went to London to set a tailoring business there, had gone up in the world and had failed to keep in touch with his family back in sleepy old Devon), explaining that he wants to keep the family connection going for another generation. But did young Henry, (ie Henry ll) in later life (and he was over 80 at the time) forget that George was his 'uncle'? Hardly likely. Besides, we know that the London Blackmores did keep in touch. George was HCB's godfather and remembered him in his will. The Rev Edwin Blackmore, the missionary (Henry ll's brother) went to stay with Henry in London before sailing for China in 1879. Henry left him a legacy and a signet ring in his will. Emma Louise coveted Elizabeth's silver, and must therefore have been to Devon to have seen it. Her father Henry (HCB says) went to Littleham, met Henry ll there and gave a window in the Littleham church. All the family stories that HCB knew must have been passed down to him by Emma Louise. And what about that facial resemblance? Auto-suggestion? All four of us - Caroline, me, HCB and Lois, and with a gap of 55 years? It was the last thing Caroline and I were expecting to see when we called on old Mrs Nicholls, which is why we were, both of us, struck dumb when she opened the door, and it was only after we left her that we crossed notes about it. At first I thought Henry ll must have been "our" Henry's nephew, but even if Henry ll and my grandfather were only rather more remotely related than I at first thought, does it matter? Not in the least, as Henry ll was not on our direct line of descent, anyway, but it was rather intriguing to think Caroline and I had found a distant cousin still living in Littleham. If I had hoped to prove Henry ll incompetent to comment on our possible relationship I must, in the interests of true scholarship, quote from his obituary in the Devon and Exeter Gazette; "He was a regular mine of local information. [To raise funds for the restoration of the church in 1887] Mr. Blackmore even searched the churchyard in order that he might make appeal to those who had relatives buried there...". He must have known that we were related, even if he became confused in his old age. The formal card addressed to the vicar and church wardens in 1912 by Emma Louise Liberty and her husband, "My wife...the daughter of the late Mr. Henry Blackmore would like to know what has become of window given by her father". was hardly couched in terms such as one would write to one's cousin, so the under-standing that there was no known close relationship must have been mutual. But this was because Henry ll said so. Why? I suspect that there had been an almighty family row - a monumental bust-up - possibly about money. Mrs Nicholl's executor tells me that her father and his two brothers had common interests in property, and never saw eye-to-eye about it and were always falling out with each-other; maybe the same had happened before, and Henry ll preferred not to recognise HCB as his father's cousin's grandson. Following Mrs Nicholls' death in February 1994 I went to her house at the kind invitation of her executor Graham Helson, who inherited the house, to look through her family papers. I came across her family bible (originally given to the Rev Edwin Blackmore by the Church Missionary Society) listing dates of births and deaths in the traditional manner. Equally interesting was a portrait which I found there of Arthur Liberty (called "Sir Lazenby Liberty" on the back) - yet more proof that the two branches of the family did keep in touch. Families, in the Victorian era, were, at least by modern standards, very close - much closer than we may appreciate. Duncan Furner's aunt confirmed to him, as he was surprised that Emma Louise Liberty and her second cousin (his great grandmother) had apparently been so close to each-other, that the Blackmore family were, indeed, a very close family; close, that is, even by her own standards. So it would have been surprising if the early Blackmores had not kept in touch with each other.
***************************************************************************** FOOTNOTES*****************************************************************************1. Devon & Exeter Gazette, Wed 11 Ap 1928 BACK TO TEXT |