Routledge Wills

I spent my computer time on the 7th December looking at the Routledge Wills that I had received from the Routledge Research Group. This is a set of five wills from the late 1500s - early 1600s for five members of the Routledge family living in Bewcastle Parish. None of the wills were for the Oakshaw family from which both of my 3x great grandparents Thomas Routledge and Elizabeth Routledge were descended. However, Elizabeth has two lines of descent with her mother being descended from the Oakshaw family and her father from the Todholes Routledge family. One of these wills was for the Todholes family. Interestingly, William Routledge of Todholes is leaving behind an unborn child and a daughter Elizabeth Routledge. William has asked that if this is an unborn son that he receive his sword and otherwise it should pass to his sister's son Edward Routledge.

I extracted all the Routledge names and using the Protestation Returns for Bewcastle (1641-42) I went in and placed father's/uncle's names opposite the listed names since these children would then be adults in this time period (or would be deceased). There are 23 Routledge names on the Bewcastle return. Having now extracted all of the Eskdale Ward, I now know that almost all Routledge families are listed at Bewcastle with only a few in total in other parishes of this ward. One of the individuals, James Routledge of Baileyhead, writing his will has six sons in total and four of these names appear on the list (James, Richard, Rowland and Thomas). James Routledge of the Ash mentions his sons Francis and George. William Routledge mentions his nephew Edward Routledge. Rowland Routledge of the Nook includes his sons Adam and Thomas. John Routledge of Black dubs mentions his son Thomas. Also mentioned is Edward Routledge of Ash. Half of the names on the list appear to be these men who were mentioned in their father's wills between 20 and 40 years earlier. It allowed me to look at the list differently as I already know that some of the names are the men who were at Oakshaw (Cuthbert and William). I need to now purchase these Oakshaw Routledge wills to see if I can separate out more of the people in the list.

I have now removed the link between my Todholes and Oakshaw families (other than that Grace Routledge of Oakshaw married George Routledge of Todholes/Raw) showing two James Routledge now at the 8x great grandparent level. These wills have made it obvious that we also need to transcribe the manor records from this time period from the original latin to really have a clear understanding of these Routledge families. The first appearance of the Routledge families may be in Morayshire at a place called Redlatches. Tom Routledge (http://everymansprey.com/) has been researching our family lines (we are related on the Routledge and the Tweddle lines) in England and come up with some very interesting history.

I will set this aside for awhile to let it gel a bit as I did collect some interesting material on Bewcastle at Salt Lake City other than the protestation returns.

My new book "Adam's Curse" arrived and I have started reading that (four chapters finished). I had passed on reading it earlier but lately his views have been debated heavily on the DNA list so wanted to see what all the excitement was about. I have read his other books - The Seven Daughters of Eve and Saxons, Vikings and Celts. Both of these books were very interesting reads although not adding enormous amounts to the Science, his grasp of archaeological history is quite wide and, at the moment, the theoretical field is very wide open.