Tuesday, March 3, 2015

A followup to my earlier post on Blake or Black

The Calendar of Patent Rolls (http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/patentrolls/search.html) is a project of the University of Iowa Libraries and made available on line by them under the leadership of Dr G.R. Boynton.

Checking for Black in that particular set of documents I found that Black occurred 278 times but I was unable to eliminate the colour black from this search overall but could use the find function and then search only for Black. That still gave me 74 matches on the first page. Checking through by eye all of the instances of Black refer to the colour black (alone or as a place name) and not an individual except for references like Mr J G Black, BA of the Public Record Office who was involved in the preparation of the material and the Black Prince. The second page of search results yielded 69 instances but again they were either the colour black (alone or as a place name) or Mr J G Black mentioned above or a new item the Black order (referring to a Roman Catholic order). The last page of the search results yielded 45 instances of the word Black. In one instance Alexander Ratonner is referred to as Black Saundre. There is one reference to the surname Niger with Black in brackets following (1338-1340 (during the reign of Edward III)). I am left to think that Black did not occur as a surname in this earlier time period 1216 to 1452 or they did not do anything that brought them to the attention of the Crown (as that possibility always exists).

Is it possible that it arose as a derivative of Blake - no ideas on that actually and again if anyone wants to take the surname Black on it would certainly be interesting to compare (a later post corrects this thought and I do believe that Black is a surname that arose in England prior to the surname Blake coming from the Continent). There is a yDNA study and I decided to check that out at this time as well. They have 225 members. Now I was almost hopeful as I searched out this data but nothing in my line. However I decided to grab the data and will do a comparison with the Blake yDNA study.

The Blake yDNA project

 https://www.familytreedna.com/public/blake?iframe=yresults

includes haplogroups: I, R, T and G.

The Black yDNA project

http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/black/results?raw=1

includes haplogroups  E, G, I, J, L, Q, and R.

We can eliminate E, J, and Q from the discussion as they only occur in Black and we can eliminate T from the discussion as it only occurs in Blake.

The discussion then will look at haplogroups I, R, and G. G is the smallest so will examine it first and there is no similarity in thousands of years between the Haplogroup G entry in Blake and the Black entries so no common ancestry since surnames have been adopted.

Haplogroup I is the next largest and my own Blake line is part of haplogroup I. Looking at I-M223 which is the group to which descendants of Theophilus Blake belong there is one entry that is similar but only 11/12, 19/25 and 27/37 and this is not considered to be related. Looking at I-M253 there are a number of entries in both Blake and Black. In the Blake study two begin with 13, 23 and I matched them up with the one in the Black study thus beginning and they matched 31/37 which is considered as not matching. Another one beginning 13,24 in the Black study I also compared with this group and the match was 7/12 again not matching is the interpretation. At this time I will make note that the Black study includes Schwartz/Swartz (or Black in German). The group that is left begins 13,22 and there are four samples in Black and 4 samples in Blake. One of the comparisons yields 21/25 and again this is not considered to be a match. Another sample in Black has only 12 markers and the match is 10/12 and generally this is not considered a match as there are just too few markers to analyze. More markers should be looked at before entirely eliminating since we are looking at surnames and the possibility that they are related. The last two Blacks that I am comparing with Blake are interesting but they do not match any member of the Blake group exactly but their differences are within the possibility of being related but I note that the name of one individual is Swartz and of the second Jensson so both continental surnames.

Haplogroup I-M170/253 is a third I haplogroup in the Blake study and there are seven samples in the Black study. I eliminated the testers who differed between 7 and 11 markers on 37 as not being related in a genealogical time frame. That left two who were 31/37 and had further markers to look at. Checking further the differences are such as to exclude both of these samples although interestingly enough one of the Blake samples does resemble these two and is a new addition to the study. Within the grouping to which he is assigned he does not match anyone for instance he differs from my brother's sample by 8 on 12 but because of his haplogroup he does belong to this rather ancient sub clade of the British Isles showing how much variety there can be within a subclade.

Haplogroup R1a will be the next group examined. The group in the Blake study are rather a good match for each other and known to be descendant of Jasper Blake the emigrant to New Hampshire Colony. There are 8 Black samples and 5 Blake samples. Four of the eight Black samples differ between 3 and 5 on 12 so are not a match. Two of the Black samples differ by 6 and 8 respectively on 37 markers and would not be considered a match with this Blake group. The remaining two differ by 4 on 37 or 33/37 and are within the realm of possibility. But they do not match each other and one traces back to Alexander Black 1820-1860 and the second to a Philip Black b c 1750 in Cumberland County PA.

Haplogroup R1b has been broken down into a number of study groups in the Black study and there are matches within a number of these groups.  I will comment further on this group tomorrow. My day at the computer has finished!

Thus far though I would have to conclude that comparing the yDNA studies of Blake and Black does not lead anyone to the conclusion that they are related in the haplogroups thus examined.








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