The Devon Muster Rolls 1569

 The Devon Muster Rolls 1569 have also provided an insight into the Pencombe/Pincombe/Pynkeham family in the North Devon area in 1569. The expected people were found in North Molton, South Molton, and East Buckland. Missing were Pynkeham at Tawstock, Pencombe at Kings Nympton, and Pencombe at Bideford. Thomas at  East Buckland has died, William Pencombe at North Molton has died. I will continue working on the missing Tawton, Kings Nympton and Bideford people. They were on the Devon Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1543-45. There are 25 missing parishes in Devon on the Muster Rolls and 15 are noted in the Index. I need to look for these three parishes at my next Pencombe day which will be Saturday.This is finishing up the second chapter and I also started into the third chapter on the Pencombe family of Herefordshire. 

Today will be a Blake day and I am working on the early history of Andover. Thus far I have discovered that in Roman times the closest village to present day Andover was Leucomagus which was located on present day Eastanton Manor Farm and on the east side of A343 (Newbury Road between Viking Way and Smannel Road). At the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 Andover was a thriving community. I will continue looking at some of the interesting archaeological papers on the Andover area (and my mind will also be looking for Upper Clatford where my grandfather was born and three generations of his family before that with the next generation back, Joseph, being from Andover). 

Freezing rain and I did make a path down to the road with de-icer. More freezing rain today and I have just a small amount of paper so may not put that out today. Time will tell. 

Getting into a routine with the two books and I think it is a really good idea to work on both of them. The same style. Reviewing general information at the beginning. Then into the furtherest back generation and I shall work forward into time. I will principally follow the surname lines but there is some good information on some of the female lines coming down which I will include. Again this will be a one-name study so the surname predominates. 

Edward considered writing a book but the book that was already published on the Kip/Kipp family in America that descended from the Kip family of New Amsterdam/New York was he felt adequate and he added to it with his Kip family tree on his website and he also put up a tree on World Connect. I asked if he would like to write his story a few years before he died but he said not just yet. The last six months or so before he passed I did collect some material and will work on that but it is still too soon in my mind. I think one needs time to sort one's life and at the moment this material I have collected on Pincombe and Blake has waited quite a while to be written so will work on these two first although I may come to a time when I think it is the moment to write down what Edward told me about his life both in the last six months (all typed) and what I gleaned from his life before that time by our 54.5 years of marriage, the time that we knew each other before marriage and what was said to me by the people that we visited in his home town area when we were first married and had a car. He loved those visits with the people of his childhood and I found it interesting listening to the thoughts of this elderly group of people in the 60s and 70 before we moved here. Older people can be quite fascinating actually; they have lived their entire lives and have opinions and thoughts and it is a luxury to listen to them in terms of equating how life flows from one generation to the next. I am unlike the people we visited and Edward himself as I discovered a slightly different person when he was with these people he knew so well in his childhood having worked for them since he was thirteen years of age and knowing them before as friends of his grandfathers. That was the sociable side of him that I saw once again when he met up with his (perhaps third cousin not sure) cousin Gordon Riddle here and they enjoyed that time together going to the Ontario Genealogical Society. Then Edward became Treasurer of Orleans United Church and again some common time together with someone from his area that shared his background of being on farms and living in the country. Myself, I had very little in common with all of that and just let them have their time together. Edward enjoyed it and it set him on a different path perhaps than what he might have taken enjoying the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch, enjoying singing in the Choir at Orleans United Church and being treasurer for nearly ten years, taking his children to the church of his youth which was his desire and of course working. I still remember when he decided to learn to downhill ski and he and the girls went off for lessons and enjoying the slopes. They had a great time for maybe four or five years every Saturday during the winter and he was 50 years old when he started to do that. He asked me to come but I said why don't I proofread/copyedit my work while you three go and then we can play board games when you return. Always the loner but also part of the family but I did treasure those quiet moments for sure working away on the scientific papers proofreading and other types of copyediting/proofreading for the commercial printers for whom I worked whilst I worked at home all those years. I gave up going back to do my masters when my youngest was born and have absolutely no regrets on that. It was a good plan to return to school but life does throw curve balls sometimes and I just went with the flow. I was sorry that I had to back out on that commitment but did carry on with the marking for a year for the professor for whom I was going to work. Children must always come first and my youngest did need my 100% attention due to medical issues at that time which pretty much occupied me for the next few years although I continued to proofread and copyedit at home. Fortunately the Church hired a secretary freeing me up from that volunteer secretary position I had occupied for quite a while. I did teach Sunday School to two year olds and then three year olds for a while when my youngest was that age and then took on the position of purchasing for Sunday School since I had to go out to pick up my work I felt that I could do that little bit for God along the way. (I think people found my two year old class strange but children are quite capable of siting in a spot and listening and following along with stories and they love it. Of course the first few weeks are a bit wild but soon settle down and it is good for children to be capable of managing themselves and staying in a circle. But I am from a large family and my ideas are different for sure.) I also helped run Bible Studies but my heart was in the Anglican Church and as my children grew (and I went to early Church at the local Anglican Church) and then back to work I took on World Day of Prayer for a few years which was a fabulous time for me meeting with other like minded people through the year as we prepared for World Day of Prayer. Now I do Church online and read my service from my own Church that comes every Friday. I must get back to that more regularly though as I have been tempted away by these books.

The day begins and I have a number of ideas on how to proceed with the discussion on Andover and I will likely include a small section on Upper Clatford since that was my grandfather's beloved village of his childhood. His grandmother Blake lived next door to him in a set of townhouses called Waterloo Terrace and, unless I am mistaken, this group of houses still exist in Upper Clatford along the main road opposite Andover but Andover not actually visible as there is a large area of trees. Mind you that was 2008 and since then there has been a huge installation in this area of solar panel "farms" harvesting the energy of the sun for the people of the British Isles. That we noted in 2016 when we were returning to London from our trip around the British Isles beginning in London and then on to Scotland, over to the Orkney Islands, return to Scotland and then Northern Ireland and into the Republic of Ireland then back into Wales and down into Somerset, then Devon and then Cornwall and the return through Devon into Dorset and up to Stonehenge in Wiltshire then back through Andover to London. A marvelous trip actually and highly recommend it. 

The day awaits and teatime.