the Oxenham family. This looks like a shrinkage of the story. So many had died without the apparition, that it was reduced in significance to the appearance before the death of the head of the family.
Mr. Cotton says: "On my pointing out to Mr. Oxenham that at least the earlier notices of his family tradition did not seem to warrant his supposition that the apparition was limited to the head of the family, he informed me that, so far as he was aware, it had always been the oral tradition in the family that the bird was bound to appear before the death of the head of the family, and that it might or might not appear at other deaths, but certainly not that it always did so. Mr. Oxenham, who was himself a boy at the time, does not remember hearing of any appearance of the omen to his great uncle, Richard Oxenham, the head of the family in the previous generation, who died August 24th, 1844, at Penzance. He was a bachelor, and lived alone, and only his sister, Mrs. Oddy, who herself died in 1861, was with him at the time of his death. It certainly was not seen at the death of the Rev. W. Oxenham, Vicar of Cornwood and Prebendary of Exeter, younger brother of the above, six months earlier, Feb. 28th, 1844, nor at the death of either of the younger brothers of the late head of the family, G. N. Oxenham, Esq., before mentioned. On the other hand, it is stated by a relative of the family now living, that when Mrs. Oddy died, her daughter, now dead, spoke of birds flapping and hopping at the bedroom window the night before."
My mother was most intimate with Miss Anne Oxenham, who lived in the Close, Exeter, one whom I remember and loved. My mother informed me that the bird was seen when Miss Anne Oxenham's sister died. But on what authority she received this I am unable to say.
