Blake Newsletter - 2 - 1 - 2013
Blake
Newsletter
Looking back, 2012 has been a busy year for the
Blake One Name Study. I have corresponded with more than 50 descendants of
various Blake families. Many of the conversations have not carried on as
completely as I would have liked due to my time constraints. I shall endeavour
to do a better job this year of keeping up.
Blake Wills
One of my major projects during 2012 was the
transcription of the more than 100 Blake wills that my husband and I
photographed at Kew in 2010. A project that I meant to complete much sooner
ended up taking more than two years as I am still not quite finished although
close with less than ten wills to transcribe for Blake family members.
There were surprises in those wills letting me link
together several generations on occasion. I did not spend a lot of time with
the linking because I want to have the parish register entries to go with that
data. However, in my own line at Upper Clatford/Andover I found mention of my
families as far away as Berkshire (which isn't that far in miles but quite
unexpected). No statement as to kinship just the mention of the family at
Knights Enham (near Andover).
The Blake lines were a variable lot from large
wealthy landowners to gentleman farmers to husbandmen tilling their own soil to
artisans and tradesmen and all those Blake men in service principally as
seamen/naval personnel. Quite a few Blake women left wills and especially those
who were spinsters revealed interesting details of their Blake family
relations.
All of the wills that have been transcribed have
been added to my blog:
and I have attempted on occasion to weave them into
the family lines where they belong when such information as was readily
available. In order to keep up the pace of one per day in the spring and fall
when I was transcribing I avoided going too far afield in trying to place the
individuals into family lines.
Blake yDNA study
Our numbers have increased in the Blake yDNA study
much to the delight of Bill Bleak and myself who are the
administrator/co-administrator of this study. More Blake yDNA is always
welcomed in order to better understand the origins and descent of Blake through
the centuries.
A guest blog at Ancestry has not yet appeared but is
forthcoming. Getting the word out that there is a Blake one name study is
helpful to learning more about each of the individual lines in our study. Is
there a common ancestor to Blake? A mystery really as the potential is there way
back in the distant past for sister's sons to change their surname to their
mother's brother's/father's surname of Blake. The Blake family was very mobile
as seen in the Blake Pedigree Chart held at the Swindon and Wiltshire Record
Office. On that chart is mentioned the gift of land in Essex during the reign
of Edward I/II and this family was already living in Wiltshire at the time. The
chart mentions the Blake family in Somerset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Surrey
and London and that is looking at the Blake family prior to 1690.
Future
Issues: I plan to continue publishing this short
newsletter quarterly mentioning what I am doing with the one name study but
welcome contributions from Blake descendants. These can be short articles
pointing to a larger article perhaps or queries. I think having a half page
devoted to queries would help all of us looking into the past.
Email: kippeeb@rogers.com
No comments:
Post a Comment