The Farm Lad Who Became Bishop (23 July 1976)
Two or three weeks ago the Sunday morning service on the wireless came from Washington. As I happened to be washing-up at the time, I thought this quite appropriate and I enjoyed the first hymn, which was to the tune of Glory, Glory, Hallelujah. Then the preacher explained that the service was not from the capital of the USA, but from a little old place in the north of England, which was called Washington and which had given its name to the forebears of George Washington, the first American president.
BLATCHLEY
it reminded me of a day in the early 1950s when two smartly-dressed and very personable young men turned up at the Gazette office. They were chaplains with the US forces over here. One of them was named Blatchley. Back home one of those agencies that purvey pedigrees had suggested his name had a Welsh origin, but he had not been able to find any confirmation of it over here and so had come along to Bletchley, which had a similar sound. I told him it was a hundred to one that his name was not Welsh, but Anglo Saxon, though a connection with Bletchley would probably be impossible to prove or disprove at this date.
They couldn’t expect all connections to be as clear as Abraham’s with Lincoln! However, I told him I knew a Blatchley family at Leeds and gave him an idea of their exact location. This pleased him very much, though whether he followed it up or not I never knew.
Incidentally, the tea tray came round just then. I suggested that being American they might prefer coffee (we hadn’t any) but they said oh no, they came from Boston and a lot of people round there preferred tea. Which made me wonder why they had chucked so much of it overboard at that celebrated tea party.
EMIGRATED
At about the same time Fenny Stratford had a visitor from the USA. whose name was Mr Edwin Lucas. He was aged over 90 and had come over for the 100th birthday of one of his brothers, William, who was living at Middleton Cheney. Most of the family were said to have been born in Fenny and to have emigrated together in 1885. But there were now several families in this district named Lucas – or had been in the intervening years – and we could find only one person, an old woman, who thought she could remember a Lucas family going off to America so many years before.
Anyway, a great nephew brought the nonagenarian by car to Fenny, ostensibly to have a look at the old place and I joined the party. We toured the High Street, Aylesbury Street and Simpson Road, stopping here and there so that the old man could have good look-see. But alas for our hopes, he didn’t recognise a thing, not even St. Martin’s church tower. He knew that they were a Fenny family and that was all.
DEPRESSION
A great many people from North Bucks villages emigrated to the US in the later 1800s because of the agricultural depression here – a depression caused in large part by the cheap wheat that flooded in from over there. Sometimes they went not just as single families, but in batches. As early as 1829 one Great Brickhill parish overseer wrote of escorting 20 at a time to the docks at Liverpool.
But did you hear of the Shenley Brook End lad who went to America as a farm hand and returned as a Bishop?
His name was Thomas Jenkins. Born in 1870, he was one of the eight children of Mr and Mrs John Jenkins. After attending the Shenley village school, he worked on a local farm until he was 18, followed by a further year at Smethwick.
In 1890 he emigrated to the US. There he went to college, earning his way from year to year. He graduated in 1900 and became a priest in 1901.
CONFERENCE
Eventually, he held some important posts, including one in Alaska, and in 1920 became Bishop of Nevada, returning to this country for the first time in 1930 for the Lambeth Conference. After 14 years as Bishop of Nevada, he retired, but in 1946 he was appointed Assistant Bishop of Long Island, New York. As such, he attended the Lambeth Conference of 1948, and he and his wife stayed with his sister, Mrs Frank Nutt, of Shenley Brook End. They had two nephews in Bletchley, Mr Stuart White and Mr Reginald White.
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