I’d like to introduce…

Edward George "Ted" Turner

Edward George Turner, known affectionately to his family and friends as Ted, was a kind hearted, gregarious, right jolly English gent, loved by all who knew him. He was born on the 27th of June 1911 at Blake Cottage, Horn Street in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, where his father was employed as head groom to Mr Gosling of Blake House.

And His Lovely Wife…

phyllis

Miss Phyllis Mary Collins, daughter of William Collins, publican of the George Inn in Winslow, which is where Ted met her one fateful day in the 1930s

Early British Military Research From My Desk in Northwest Pennsylvania: Can It Be Done?

British_Military2

And will it help my Denchfield problem?

Having exhausted parish registers and probate records, and followed the land records as far as they could take me, I’ve got a much better sense of who was who among the many Denchfields of North Marston and surrounding villages; however, there are still some holes. As active in the community as this family was, with lives quite well documented, there are still a couple of elusive characters who seem to have mysteriously fallen from the face of the earth, or at least Buckinghamshire’s corner of it:

Richard Denchfield, baptized in North Marston on 13 February 1637, eldest son of Mathew. Richard was alive in 1660, when Mathew wrote his will, by which Richard stood to inherit half of the family’s homestead. He is mentioned again at the probate of brother John’s estate in 1689, having been asked by his brother to help (…more)

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The Thing About Family Lore....

frederick turner ruptured spleen

Family tradition holds that Frederick Turner, my British Great-Grandfather Leonard’s only brother, was killed in action in India during World War I. Adding charm to the story that I heard frequently as a child was the idea that Leonard, distraught over his brother’s death and wishing to honor his memory, decided to drop his own given name and assume his dead brother’s, both in day to day living as well as on legal documents. Although my Grandfather and his sisters never knew their Uncle, they did know the story of his heroic death and grew up thinking of their father as “Frederick” L. Turner.

The notes from my earliest attempts at recording my British genealogy reflect this family lore, however as my own research began to reveal more of the details of the Turner brothers’ lives, the accuracy of the story came into question.

I knew from my grandfather’s (…more)

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