Saturday, December 14, 2013

Christmas Break and the Blake yDNA study

Transcriptions will be slower coming as I prepare for Christmas. In the past I used to make 40 different kinds of sweets which meant using nearly ten pounds of butter, dozens of eggs and all the rest that goes with that. We have greatly modified that these past twenty five years so that I make two or three sweets only now.

Parcel wrapping to be done and finishing up Christmas shopping. I made mine easy this year by asking for online items so just a memory stick in my presents for the most part along with a package of most desired wills from Hampshire Record Office. I shall have my scanner at the ready as I intend to scan all those wills so that I can work on them electronically. I had hoped to finish Wiltshire by Christmas but that is not likely to happen.

The latest will, although from the early 1800s, is small cramped writing and so slow going and it is four pages long. Very interesting though as it is from the Blake family at Ford, Laverstock and a search brought up a connection to the Portbury Admiral Blake website. This family is said to be descendant of Nicholas Blake (brother of the Admiral) and Jone Question (my ancestor's sister). More discussion on that when the will transcription is published.

So no will today but maybe tomorrow. I shall think more about DNA and the Blake family today as I have assigned the two new results. One is a new category - East Anglia and Suffolk - and I continue to think that assigning R1b to Irish Blake is not realistic so am in disagreement with the earlier co-administrator of the project. 70% of English males belong to R1b so it is likely that a proportionate number of Blake may also belong to R1b in England. I hope we learn more about the I1 line of Blake in England as to whether it is an ancient prehistoric line or a more recent line (i.e. the 11th century or later).

I also have another set of yDNA results for a known Somerset/Wiltshire Blake line that is I2b1 but does not match the Theophilus Blake group but rather the second I2b1 grouping (second line of this group) is an almost exact match so likely this individual should begin to look at Somerset (Bath) and Wiltshire (Wootton Basset/Burbage) areas for his ancestor.

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