Monday, January 30, 2012

Empty Nesters again (except for the bunnies)

Back to genealogy as we said goodbye today to our youngest, her husband and their two dogs. They were here for about a month November/December and then over Christmas break (we went to their place for Christmas itself) and then back again with us looking after the two dogs whilst they went off to the sunny south for a sibling wedding (and a week in the surf and sun of Jamaica). Our house was full of running feet as the dogs kept us very very busy and my genealogy gradually decreased and finally I accomplished practically nothing. That is okay though; family time is always something wonderful that you can lock away in the memory banks as you carefully record your genealogy adding in all the other tidbits that make the story real to those who might read it later.

However, before that return to transcribing I am in cleaning mode as I must restore the house to our usual mode of living. The bunnies too may have a new home (they belong to our daughter and her husband as well) as four animals is just too much in one house but they have been so long together that it would be cruel to separate them. The older one is a dwarf bunny (but big for a dwarf) and he is four and a half years old and the younger one is a lion head bunny (full size bunny) and he is two and a half years old. Both are active and love to run about their large playpen which is basically a fence that links into a circle or any other style you might fancy. They have quite a bit of space and are used to being in that space all the time with us and then have runs when our oldest daughter comes home and give them the run of the hallways and stairs. They like that as well but do not seem to mind just having their cage the rest of the time.

Some interesting Routledge material has come my way and I will just have to transcribe it so will make time for that in between proofreading Bishops Nympton which I think I will give a two hour limit each morning and the other items I want to accomplish. I also want to build a Wiki for our Kipp and Blake research. At first I thought just a wiki for Blake but really we are a unit my husband and I and we could just divide the Wiki up into the pertinent sections and could have my husbands Kipp one name study and my Blake and Pincombe one name studies as sections of the Wiki. It would stand on our main page along with links to a Blake one name study website and a Pincombe one name study website. My husband has already established a very well looked at one name Kipp study website.

Hence my genealogy time is all blocked out for the moment but my external responsibilities are becoming smaller and smaller. I have expressed an interest in the Ontario Genealogical Society's Places of Worship database and will become more involved with that. I have a few ideas on how to construct and maintain that database from my Hampshire Genuki days with the Church database there. It is an item that interests me and would be my main external project other than my DNA studies.

A couple of Marriage Challenges to submit information to the Guild and I am back into the thick of research. As mentioned I will be doing the proofreading of Bishops Nympton parish registers, transcription of Routledge documents and working on our webpage wiki and one name study webpages for Blake and Pincombe. I also want to return once again to Abbotts Ann Parish Registers. It is nearly a year since I last worked on them.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Freedom of the City of London Blake members

The Blake family in London fits rather nicely into the one name Blake study at the Guild for several reasons. I know that some members of this family were descended from the Eastontown Blake family and hence rather interesting just from my own family point of view but also I might be able to separate them out from the other Blake lines that ended up in London since there is sometimes genealogical information in these records (parent in particular).

I am going to produce a chart of the genealogical information in the documents and put it up on my Blake webpage. This webpage does not yet exist and I am contemplating what it will look like. I think I will head it up with the oldest coat of arms known for the Blake family and that is the Blake family that lived at Calne Wiltshire as early as the late 1200s. Although there are many many other coats of arms for the Blake family this is a section of Blake history that Barrie Blake has greatly excelled at and for a number of years available for the world to look at on his webpages. If you were lucky enough to see his marvelous webpages before they were taken down you will know what I mean.

Gradually over time this Blake webpage will become the repository of Blake information that members of various Blake study groups are collecting. I also want to produce a Blake wiki for people to post information to and ask questions on. I just now have to decide how to set all of this up. It will probably be a month in production since I also want to continue proofreading Bishops Nympton parish registers. I decided that it isn't fair to my one name studies to concentrate days and days on the proofreading especially as I am finding very few errors but before I publish it I want to have proofread it.

The Blake original coat of arms is a simple one and may have been first displayed by Richard Blake in the late 1200s. Just who this Richard Blake is and how he is related to Robert de Blakeland is still somewhat of a mystery. They could be the same person but the difference in forename is somewhat disturbing so I do not make any such conclusion but both lived in the Calne Wiltshire area.
Again I am reproducing this from the Blake Pedigree images which I purchased from the Swindon and Wiltshire Record Office and it is but a taster for the images which they produced of this chart.

The details for the Pedigree Chart at Swindon Wiltshire Record Office:

343/1 c.1786

Pedigree of Blake from Edw. II to 1690, with additions to 1786. Fine illuminated document on parchment roll.



Finding tiny little sketches of this coat of arms on the Visitation attached to the William Blake family at Eastontown in the mid to late 1500s (presumably by the individual creating the Visitations) was my first introduction to coats of arms and the Blake family. Who attached them to the entry and why? Perhaps it was added to the charts as a result of queries by the visiting Procession with regard to just who were the members of the William Blake family at Eastontown. Time has eroded such information and one is left to just surmise possible scenarios that would have resulted in these tiny little drawings mostly added to the charts where a daughter of  William Blake had married (with 5 sons and 5 daughters  - 9 of whom married and had progeny). The number of descendants of William Blake is unknown at this but eventually I hope to trace the lines down of these nine children and my transcription of Andover has aided me in this regard. A few of these children moved away from Andover towards London and it is their fate that is hidden in the Freedom of the City of London Registers.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Routledge family

Although I have stepped back from doing a really intensive study on my Routledge family, the search for our roots continues apace under the able guidance of my cousin (several times over) Thomas Routledge who lives in northern England. He has proven that the Routledge is truly a Scots Clan and has flung out the tartan for all to see on his webpages.

http://theroutledgeclansociety.yolasite.com/our-clan-chief.php

We are now in the process of working up information and membership so that we can eventually apply to Lord Lyon to be recognized as a Clan and to have a chieftan appointed from amongst our numbers.

When Tom first wrote to me about seven years ago now about my Routledge.xls file that I had on my webpage, I welcomed him to use it as he wished. I have since taken it down because it was so large. When I discussed it with him it was already over 2000 line entries. He had determined that we were likely related on the Routledge side and I determined rather quickly that he were also related on the Tweddle side (seventh cousins) and since then we are also related on the Routledge side at least once more through the Kirkbeckstone Routledge family. Our original relation was through the Oakshaw Routledge family.

I am trying to decide if I should try to help on this side of the ocean with Tom's desire to increase membership, encourage people with the surname Routledge to consider coats of arms in order to increase the number of such holders in the Routledge Society until we have sufficient for Lord Lyon to consider that we are a descendant group worthy to be considered a Scot Clan and part of the great Clans of Scotlands which the Routledges were in times gone by.

Perhaps, initially I will have a blog once a month or so on the Routledge family happenings in Cumberland. Tom has organized a reunion in May 2012 (see the webpage for more information).


http://www.facebook.com/groups/TheRoutledgeClan/

Write Tom to join the Facebook group and learn more about the reunion in May 2012.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Bishops Nympton Parish Records and the Blake family of Calne, Wiltshire

Back to proofreading Bishops Nympton Parish Records as I was lured away by several interesting email requests over the last couple of weeks. Definitely I will not complete this task in January but it was perhaps very optomistic of me to think that I would. Life moves on and there are always queries on Pincombe and Blake that I want to deal with in a timely fashion. Although Bishops Nympton is quite important for my Pincombe family, in the total overall look at records doing an entire transcription of the records was a bonus (mostly for those people who write to me for information as I am the Online Parish Clerk for the parish). Once I have the proofreading done though the information will be online on the Genuki website for Bishops Nympton along with tax records and other interesting items. That will definitely minimize my queries for that parish. Initially I thought it might be a way to meet up with lines related to me but as I worked my way through the Pincombe family I did not find anyone. I have moved on completely from that idea actually and tend to meet my cousins on Genes Reunited which is a terrific site.

I have reached 1586 for marriages in my proofreading but have a great deal more to read as I have not done any baptisms or burials yet. I am following the flow of the registers as presented on the fiche that I purchased and the marriages came first.

I discovered whilst conversing with another of the Blake researchers that the Blake crest had a second variety quite early on in the history of the Calne Blake family. I insert a copy of the image from a large Blake Pedigree that I purchased from the Swindon and Wiltshire Record Office. Since it is under copyright I will only put in a taster. It was a well spent ten pounds on the eight images. They were extremely good images.

Early Crest of the Blake Family of Calne, Wiltshire

This is a pike that is held by a knight and located around the timeperiod of 1300 to 1400 in the Pedigree Chart. Eventually the individual who shows this particular crest is William Blake who married Avice Ripley and lived at Eastontown. I am still sorting out the William Blakes who are paying taxes at Andover to discover just how many Blake lines lived at Andover (my own being one of them). Were they all related? or not? yDNA is the answer to that query and the yDNA study for the Blake family now has 47 members at FT DNA (see the link below if you are able to join this family grouping).

http://www.familytreedna.com/group-join.aspx?code=A70410&Group=Blake

There is an enormous amount of information on this Pedigree Chart and for the most part it has been prepared from the Visitations according to the notes on the chart. The only confusion for me is William Blake marrying Avice Ripley and his being named as a son of Roger Blake and Mary Baynard. I have not been able to prove this relationship to date. Roger's will only mentions his eldest son Thomas and his youngest daughter Mary. I acquired the wills for the Baynard family and I need to transcribe them to see if they will provide any clues.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Pincombe and Blake

The last few days have produced a flurry of activity in my two main one name studies - Blake and Pincombe. I received emails from two descendants of each of these families that have provoked more thought on their lines.

In the case of the Pincombe family, the email request is from Australia and I am still learning about the Pincombe family now located in Australia. My 2x great grandfather's brother George went to Australia and died there. He did not have any children whilst living there though so I would be going back one more generation to find anyone in Australia related to me (5th cousin or greater likely). The person in question was a William Pincombe who married Emma White at the parish church of St Pancras in 1852. Fortunately I do have that marriage and know that his father was George Pincombe (deceased in 1852) and Giles White was the father of Emma also deceased in 1852. There was a substantial Pincombe/Pinkham family in Middlesex in this time period that was descendant of Arthur Pincombe who had migrated to Middlesex in the 1700s. It will be this family that I will investigate initially as the family lore says that William was born in Middlesex but there is also some controversy which may have him born in Devon. Since the records in Australia (thus far) indicate Middlesex my effort will be directed towards the family that is known to me in Middlesex and descendant of Arthur Pincombe who was christened 26 Dec 1761 at Robourough by Torrington and buried 19 Apr 1823 at St Mary Whitechapel, Stepney, London. Arthur married twice, first Elizabeth Milton 13 Oct 1784 at St James Westminster, London  and second Ann Smale. From his second marriage, there was a son George Pincombe baptized 29 Aug 1802 at St Mary Whitechapel. I will first either eliminate or prove that this is the George for whom we are looking.

In the case of the Blake family, I have been corresponding with a descendant of the Charles Blake family living in the United States. Probably I have received more requests about this particular Blake line than any other from individuals who live all over the world including never having left England. Charles Blake appears in the Abbots Ann, Hampshire, England records that are available on the FamilySearch site first with his marriage to Mary Prince 4 Sep 1736. Mary was the daughter of James Prince and Ruth Burger. Charles was buried 28 Oct 1783 at Abbots Ann. They had only one child recorded in FamilySearch and I am still in the process of transcribing Abbots Ann so have not found any more either. Their son Charles was baptized 24 Jun 1737 at Abbots Ann and buried there 31 Oct 1800. Charles married twice.

His first wife was Jane Gilbert (baptized 3 Oct 1740 at Abbots Ann) and Jane was also descended from the Blake family through her father John Gilbert. John Gilbert was the son of John Gilbert and Sarah Kidgell with Sarah being baptized 28 Mar 1690 at Abbots Ann (married to John 3 Feb 1707 at Abbots Ann). Sarah's father was Richard Kidgell baptized 24 Sep 1661 and Richard's father was John Kidgell. John's father's name was Kidgell and his mother was Elizabeth Blake. This Elizabeth Blake was the daughter of unknown Blake married to Elizabeth Hinxman (baptized 17 Jul 1593 at Andover). My suspicion is that the unknown Blake was the son of Thomas Blake (brother to my Richard Blake). The brother of Elizabeth Blake was a merchant at Oxford according to his mother's will of 1688.

The second wife of Charles was Hannah Powell and they were married 17 Aug 1779 at Abbots Ann. From the two marriages there were nine sons in total who lived to adulthood. I have corresponded with descendants of a number of these sons but not all of them.

A will left by John Blake malster at Abbots Ann is full of genealogical information and can be found on my website. Both my ancestor Thomas Blake at Upper Clatford and Charles Blake are mentioned in the will with considerably more attention (and bequests) being paid to the descendants of Charles Blake making me think that there is more of a blood connection to John. I do know the connection to John for my Thomas as he was his uncle. The mother of Thomas was Joanna King and it was her sister Mary King that married John Blake malster at Abbots Ann. Whether or not I am also related to John Blake on the Blake side is unknown to me at this time.

I then extracted the Poor Law Records for Abbots Ann to find the Blake family there and indeed there was a Robert Blake there as early as 1727 when he was Churchwarden and paying the poor rate. The lands on which he paid this tax ended up being later assessed to Charles and John Blake leading me to suspect that Charles and John were sons of Robert Blake. Perhaps aiding with matching up families is the entry of 1812 where Ann Blake (sister to my Thomas) is paying the poor rate as per the terms of John's will where Ann was to remain on the property with various codicils pertaining to that.

There was a Robert Blake married to Elizabeth Russell 15 Jul 1694 at Andover where they baptized:

Blake Sarah       daughter       Blake Robert Elizabeth 1696 March 10
Blake Joannah   daughter       Blake Robert Elizabeth 1700 February 12
Blake Mary        daughter       Blake Robert Elizabeth 1702 December 21
Blake Edward     son               Blake Robert Elizabeth 1711 August 12
Blake Thomas     son               Blake Robert Elizabeth 1714 July 2
Blake Jane          daughter        Blake Robert Elizabeth 1717 July 22

There is the rather large gap between 1702 and 1711 where the birth of Charles could have occurred but where is the question. Edward does appear on this list and he is also in the tax list at Abbots Ann living on Coles which was formerly held by Robert Blake. I did find a John Blake baptized to Robert 22 Feb 1714 at Penton Mewsey (he was born 14 Feb 1714) but the priest has not given the mother's name unfortunately. This does appear to be rather close to the baptism of Thomas on July 2 but February would follow July as this is old calendar  but it is still only seven months later. However, it is a possibility. But still no Charles baptism found yet. The Abbots Ann parish registers are still in the process and the period that I am most interested in is very faint and poorly organized unfortunately. Plus I am only up to 1613 in the register thus far.

The ongoing debate for me is which to put first. I would like to complete my proofreading of Bishops Nympton and have those records online to reduce the number of requests for this information but I am also quite dedicated to the idea of transcribing Abbots Ann which is just one set of registers for the Andover Registration District that I am working on.

I must admit that I tend to always mention yDNA testing to people these days because I do believe that is the only way to sort these families in both of my one name studies.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Change in commitment

I decided as the New Year dawned that it was time for me to lessen my commitments in terms of managing items and as a result have stepped down as Regional Representative for Canada East for the Guild of One Name Studies. Linda Hauley responded to my newsletter query as to whether or not anyone was interested in taking over this position. Thank you very much to her.

I have another item that I am pulling back from and that is my DNA studies. I have asked on the GOONS (Guild of one name studies) list if anyone is interested in taking on the study of Hampshire yDNA. There are over 100 members and I have not found the time to investigate any further than putting people into haplogroups. I haven't been as strict as Debbie Kennett who runs the Devon DNA study although people have indicated that they have Hampshire ancestry in a number of cases. Ideally the person would have very close ties to Hampshire  (my father was born there as was his father, grandfather etc. back to at least his  11x great grandfather). The individual would also be a member of the Hampshire yDNA study group.

Enquiries on my Blake and Pincombe one name study have increased considerably and managing them will take up any spare time that I have. I would also prefer to have my time free to be available to help my husband who had another visit to emergency just after Christmas. He is greatly improved I am happy to say but my home workload has increased dramatically and I simply can not do justice to some items that require me to travel hence stepping down from the Regional Representative for Canada East.

My next item of business is to put together the Blake newsletter which will be found on my webpage for Blake once completed. I would like to produce freestanding pages for both Blake and Pincombe in order to put all of my information online that I have acquired/transcribed etc.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Tooley Street Fire 1861 lecture at BIFHSGO

A very interesting personal lecture at the BIFHSGO meeting yesterday on the Tooley Street Fire of 1861. Myra Conway put a human face on what would have been a catastrophic event in the lives of many on the southside of the Thames River in Bermondsey in 1861. Although my own families were gone from the Bermondsey area by the early 1830s (my 3x great grandfather died at the hospital there in 1832), I found it fascinating listening to her story of her own family living quite close to the actual conflagration and indeed they survived to appear once again on the 1871 census. Perhaps it is the mention of Tooley Street which most fascinates me. On our first tour bus in London we passed by the intersection of Tooley Street and the London Bridge and back in 2008 I never anticipated that I would come even close to seeing anything in London that would bring me close to my Buller, Beard and Hemsley families. But there the roadsign was staring back at me as we slowly rounded the corner. The pull was so powerful that on our trip in 2010 to London we walked the streets of Bermondsey spending our time walking up and down Tooley Street, Bermondsey Street, Long Lane and others where I knew that my families had lived; where they too had walked. I mentioned in an earlier blog the slate reproductions of the wharf before the fire under the Southwark Bridge (my blog 18 Oct 2011).

Interestingly, my 2x great grandfather still had his pork butcher shop near Covent Garden (Lamb Conduit Way) and I wonder if he too wandered down to look at the burning docks so close to the area where he was born in 1805. Henry Christopher Buller used to commute between his pork butcher shop/restaurant in Birmingham and London on a regular basis between the late 1830s when he first went to Birmingham and 1862 when he died 26 Jun 1862 at Westminster Hospital in London. His story is an example of how life can change so drastically for a family once affluent with servants and then lacking a solid income on the death of the father. The young widow returned to live with her widowed mother bringing her large family with her (11 children).

I have discovered descendants of Henry's older sister still living just south of Bermondsey and an email from my fifth cousin reminds me of my promise to visit on our next trip to London. Edward (my cousin) is 86 years old and doing very well. He is quite fascinated by all the history that I have sent his way and to discover that he lived only a few miles from where his 3x great grandmother was born. I have these huge generation lengths which makes me a 5th cousin to Edward although we differ in age by 22 years.

Kudos to BIFHSGO for a most interesting lecture. An image that Myra displayed quite caught my attention and it was the funeral procession for James Braidwood (Superintendent of the London Fire Brigade) who died when a wall collapsed during the fire on Tooley Street. I was trying to place the location but heavily bombed London in the 1940s changed the look of the area in so many places but yet it remains so much the same which is amazing given the bombing that London endured. I look forward to walking those streets once again as I have learned even more about my London roots which extend back into the late 1600s thus far with my Beard and Roland families who lived in the Bermondsey area continuously from this time forward to the early 1800s.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Bishop Nympton proofreading

A slow progress through the parish registers for Bishops Nympton as I am now into proofreading. I have completed the marriages up to 1581. I expect this will take me at least all of January.

No new work on genealogy as my time is consumed by other needed items at the moment. Hard to believe it is already January 2012 and it will be a year in early May since Ed had his first fall. This created a tremendous change in my life as I have now become the driver of the car. I like driving and gradually I am getting back into the swing of it. I used to drive quite a bit but after going back to work first at the Medical School and then at the Ottawa Hospital I stopped driving to work and took the bus.

I still have my calendar notices coming up every day to look at specific family lines but I rather think that I will be passing on the sequence once again when the names begin again mid January. I rather think it will be March or April before I get back to that process once again.

My mind is busy with thoughts at the moment and I am also busy knitting once again. Another of my great loves is knitting and I used to knit all of my daughters' sweaters and often knitted skirt and sweater sets when they were small. I also have some sewing to do and will get to that this week I rather think.

Ed is much improved after his second fall and visit to emergency. We are waiting now for a referral to a heart specialist once again. There is still the MRI to do and more appointments with the neurologist.

My eldest daughter and I are busy using the Wii every day. We received Wii Fit Plus for Christmas along with a couple of sports discs. It has been great fun doing archery, golfing, bowling and other sports. Although it is all electronic it still gets you up and moving. I especially like the Wii Fit and spend an hour a day on strength training and yoga plus aerobics (mostly running). In the summer there is always the gardening but in the winter I have to bundle up to go out and ski or snowshoe and I actually prefer not to go out and freeze although my eldest daughter and I had a good session of skiing the other day! She even has a disc for skiing which is rather fun!

An interesting query on Genes Reunited I have still to reply to. It is on the Elworthy family and is only a collateral line to mine. Since I do not have much on my tree for this family, I need to write an answer and must do that one of these days.

A couple of years ago the person who does the Elworthy family wrote to me to say that Elizabeth Pincombe (sister to my 2x great grandfather John Pincombe) and Richard Elworthy were not really married. It took a couple of emails and some research on my part to show that he had incorrectly married off Richard Elworthy (husband of Elizabeth Pincombe) to another person prior to their marriage. However, this other individual had married a Richard Elworthy but it was a different line (cousin actually though). I thought I had totally convinced him but a year or so later he sent out the same tree (without the corrections) to another Elworthy descendant so I had to go through the process once again. Since it isn't my direct line I am not sure I want to get involved once again with this line!

However, a short answer might be sufficient and then the person can begin to look elsewhere since I am not going to do anymore than I have already done on this family.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Happy New Year

Bishops Nympton's parish records are now in the process of being proofread - another enormous task but once completed will cut my workload somewhat in terms of queries about these records. They will be online for anyone to look at.

The good news is that this is a leap year so we have one extra day for genealogy.