Variants of Blake and continuing with North Molton Parish Register

At the end of 1700 (I have now completed 162 years of parish records at North Molton) in North Molton there are 4714 baptisms, 929 marriages, 2844 burials and 162 banns. No more Pincombe entries these last few years. There are quite a few new families likely replacing the families that were quite reduced during the high burial years. A number of Cornwall males have moved to North Molton and if one followed the manor ownership one would likely discover that they were moved from the holdings of families that owned property in both places. Must look into that one day.

I also received an email from a fellow Goons who looks at the Blaker family. He was curious if I investigated the name Blak. In general it is not a variant that I investigate. However, in the parishes that I have done quite a bit of work transcribing in the 1500s to the 1700s I do look at each of these entries as they are generally my Blake family and the priest has simply written too lightly on the e and it isn't readily noticeable or he has spelled the name Blak (or Blaak or Blacke). There are a number of spellings for even such a short name as Blake. He is suggesting working together on a project looking at all the Blak names and I will think about that for a couple of days. I am still mostly involved with the 1800s in my overall Goons one name study for the Blake family and I do not want to rush back too quickly into earlier times until I have completed my accumulation of 1800s data and early 1900s data for the Blake family.

I will continue with North Molton planning on completing the last five years in the next two days. Then the proofreading must be done before I can submit it to Genuki. The work on Bishops Nympton conversion will come first and has a high priority from Thursday coming on to completion. After completion of that I have reserved research time which will then move to the Blake family of Norfolk where I plan to extract the Blake entries from the Norfolk Parish Registers.

Once I have finished this particular research time than I will return to my usual pattern of days working on my family history and that of our son in law. I had planned to begin this month but It will wait another cycle through. There is just so much ongoing to look at.