Sunday, August 19, 2012

Cumberland and Blake marriages post 1837

I completed Cornwall and I have now started into Cumberland Blake marriages. This county has a relatively small number of marriages for Blake between 1837 and the 1950s. Finding one Blake entry in Eskdale Ward in the 1641-42 Protestation Returns though rather sparked my interest in this county which borders Scotland. Family names in this county are also found in Scotland along the so called border lands. I have not yet attempted to draw out Blake records in Scotland but will do so when these English counties are complete. Personally I like to work with data in the 1700s but the presence of Free BMD is just too good a tool in genealogy to overlook. I transcribed for Free BMD for about seven years and it was my first forage into genealogy "work" when I became interested in genealogy back in 2003. At that time I took it on because I couldn't find the marriage between Edwin Denner Buller and Ellen Taylor. This marriage is still not found but I learned so much from the task. Perhaps the incredible variety of English surnames was part of that. I will continue with Cumberland today but it is the day of making chili sauce which occurs once a year and is a major task taking about three hours to clean and prepare all the fruits and vegetables that go into it and then about three hours to boil it down and the shortest part is bottling it for the winter. The taste is such that the time is well spent!

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