Surname Saturday: Edgcombe

EDGCOMBE has probably the highest number of variants in my family tree.  I never discount any EDGCOMBE I find, since the spelling varied so hugely. The family legend was that we were descended from the Earls of Mount Edgcumbe.  I have never dare tell my family that that was wishful thinking, and we are in fact descended from the peasants who worked the land belonging to the Earl... although, if you go far enough back, I suppose we might well interlink somehow...

The closest EDGCOMBE to me was my maternal grandma, Minda Mary Edgcombe BALL, born in 1894 and christened in Ringmore, Devon.

Here she is as a young married woman.  I can see my mother in her (my mother, Audrey BALL, was the youngest of seven).  In a photo I have of Minda before she changed from EDGCOMBE to BALL, I can see myself in her.  I have already posted this photo on this blog, but I have yet to learn how to link from one post to another.  If I find out, I will come back here and do the linking.  Minda lived until 1985, and to me she was the epitome of what it means to be 'a lady'.

Minda's mother was Annie Marian BUCKINGHAM (1873-1961).  Both Minda's parents (Annie Marian and John Samuel EDGCOMBE) died in Australia; several of her brothers and sisters emigrated from the UK to Australia, and several years ago I was sent details of over 600 EDGCOMBEs of our family who live there.  Some of the older generation still liked to be sent traditional Christmas cards with snow and robins, because they remembered them from childhood, and Australia seems rather devoid of snow and robins.  I wonder if the EDGCOMBEs in Australia think of themselves as Australian through-and-through?