Saturday, October 22, 2011

Blogs and genealogy research

Although I initially started this blog totally for me as a diary, it has become more than that with comments received which have sometimes led me along the path to even more genealogical studies of my family lines. The ability to label each blog with the keywords that are most important to that particular post is one of the strongest features of the blog.

Today I started a blog for the Eastern Canada Region of the Guild of one name studies. It gives me the opportunity to interact with the members of my region and to send them quick messages as their Regional Representative.

Continuing on with Pincombe/Pinkham one name study, the excel file which I am updating now has all marriages complete from 1912 to the mid 1950s. I am working on the births now to list the parents of each child in the flat file. I will be continuing with my census work and linking the children born prior to 1912 to their parents. My mornings are generally spent on my one name studies (along with gardening, washing and a lovely walk and aerobic exercises). I think I shall have to rethink my day in order to glean the best possible working sessions.

Plus I am rethinking my priorities with regard to my surnames that I have researched in the past. I had enthusiastically set up my surnames on a rotating schedule along with those of our son in law but time ran away with me through the summer and I had to abandon the schedule. The beginning of the schedule (i.e. King for my family and Bédard for our son-in-law) will come around again in November and I shall begin again to work on these names but I will not expand my surnames beyond the frequency that they now hold in the old schedule. I will stick with no more than one hour in a single day on any of the surnames unless something arises which is spectacular - unlikely given the distance back I have now reached but one never knows that is true. The time will be spent transcribing principally in order to clear all the documents that I now hold on these surnames or any parish fiche which I have purchased. In the future my fiche purchases will be primarily to look at my Blake one name study or my Pincombe one name study. For our son-in-law's French Canadian ancestry I shall continue working as before on these names in order to pull all the documents out of the databases for them and organize the folders to accommodate them generation by generation.

I will no longer work on the Mead family although continue to be on their mailing list. I am satisfied with Hannah being the daughter of Jonathan Mead the Cooper III and unless someone discovers evidence to the contrary - the overwhelming evidence at the moment does point to that conclusion. Hannah Mead was my husband's 2x great grandmother and married to Isaac Kipp. My husband continues his Kipp one name study now officially a Guild study. The Force Study Group has become active on email once again and he may yet learn about his Force family (his great grandmother was Elizabeth Force daughter of Benjamin Force and granddaughter of Noah Force.

Well having made all those decisions, I can see the work that I will go ahead with as we go into Fall here. I continue transcribing North Molton Parish Registers to complete all the fiche that I own and then move back to Abbots Ann Parish Registers which I had to leave in the spring. I need to re-contact the Blake researchers that I spoke to last winter via email to let them know that I will be continuing with Abbots Ann as they are descended from Charles Blake who married Mary Prince at Abbots Ann in 1736. Determining his parentage is one of the goals of our joint research and of course part of the bigger picture on the Blake family. There are a number of Blake researchers who descend from Charles Blake and I would dearly love it if one of them would test their yDNA to see if they do match my brother. I am still curious if there are several different yDNA lines at Andover or whether they are indeed the same family and descendant of the Calne Wiltshire Blake family as the Pedigree Chart at Swindon and Wiltshire Record Office indicates.

I will also be working on my Pincombe/Pinkham one name study continuing to work on the flat file of BMDs and the Parish Registers that I currently hold. With the PRs for London on Ancestry I also need to start working on the Blake family there since they are known to be descendant of the Hampshire family.

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