Introduction

        I started this website some time in the late 1990's after a trip to London, Ontario to atttend my cousin June's wedding. My father was born and raised in a very small town in southern Ontario called Glencoe. My father died in 1971 after living in California since 1926 and never becoming an American citizen. He used to explain that by saying that he could never renounce the country of his birth.

        My parents were married in 1940 and divorced in 1952. My mother had never been to Canada and never met any of my father's relatives though my Mother had kept up a correspondence with cousin June for years, including after the divorce. I had never been to Canada prior to the wedding trip, and had never met any of my Canadian relatives until June came to the San Francisco area where I was living on a business trip.

        The trip to June's wedding ended up being joyful for the opportunity to celebrate June and Stuart's wedding, but was also an immersion in family history. There were, of course, named relatives that I remember my Father speaking of, most by then dead. And there were places, mostly little towns in the Ontario countryside. Then there were the living relatives, most younger than myself, but some older who were the repositories of family history. A most memorable event was a visit to the "pioneer farm," the home of the first Luckham to take up residence in North America.

       By the end of the trip I had received more exposure to my family history than I'd had in the previous half century.

       In 2002 my Mother died. She had been the oldest of three children. Her "kid brother," the youngest, was a bomber pilot who had been killed in May, 1943 when she was pregnant with me. I'm named after him. Among the things that came to me after her death were his service medals, some letters, and old family photos. Buck, as he was called had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, even though he was American. Canada entered the war in Europe well before America did and Buck had already started training as a private pilot.

       So, this late in life opening of some family history, along with other mysteries I had encountered over the years, and the remarkable access to information afforded by the Internet age got me started digging around for answers and information about where I came from and who were the people who were my ancestors.  This website started as a way to collect and present family information to my siblings and immediate family. Along the way I'm been contacted by many other Luckhams with bits and pieces to offer from their own branches of the family tree.

       Among the Luckhams is Barbara Luckham, whom you will soon meet in the pages that follow. If the family has an official historian it is most certainly this remarkable woman. Barbara has spend 30 years carefully researching and documenting the history of the Luckham family and creating a family tree with nearly 2800 names going back to England in the 1500's. I am pleased that she has permitted me to publish her book on the family history for the first time in the following pages.