Exactly this time 50 years ago, Gloucester County’s bicentennial organizers received a right royal disappointment. In a letter from Buckingham Palace in London, county officials were informed that Queen Elizabeth II would probably not have time to slip a visit to Gloucester County into her upcoming trip to America. The queen planned to visit the United States on its 200th anniversary, on and around July 4, 1976. The county, celebrating its 325th year as well as the nation’s bicentennial in 1976, had invited the queen to Gloucester, pointing out its historical connection to her. An article in the Jan. 15, 1976 Gazette-Journal noted that Queen Elizabeth II was a descendant of Augustine Warner II of Warner Hall. It explained that his daughter Mary Warner married John Smith of Purton, also in Gloucester. Their daughter Mildred married Robert Porteus; that family went to England. Mildred and John Porteus’s great-great-granddaughter, Frances Dora Smith, married Claude Bowes-Lyon. Their grand...