Landkey Parish Registers - 31 January 2009

My day ran away with me today and I only completed two years of the Parish Registers of Landkey bringing me up to 1700 which is always an interesting stopping spot. There were very few baptisms in 1699. The numbers stand at baptisms 1291, marriages 550 and burials 1118. We are starting to see more baptisms once again compared to burials (173) which is a good healthy sign for this village.

We cleared snow once again and the height in the front yard continues to grow. I had said that the lower branches of the large tree in the front yard were at five feet. Actually they are closer to six feet above the ground and the snow is practically up to them now. We also cleared the patio away as the dogs were coming to visit with our daughter and son in law to be. The puppy is growing quickly and is already bigger than the older dog although the older dog is clearly the leader as the younger dog obeys him when he barks. He is training quickly and being a Sheltie he is learning very quickly. I have taught him not to jump on me and he is very good although always excited when he comes to see us but a quiet reminder and his paws stay on the ground although he comes for a welcome pat. I usually talk to him for a bit and he likes that.

Dinner was a family affair and we sat over it for quite a while so that I never did get back to transcribing. Tomorrow I might accomplish more although I have a couple of other items that I need to work on. My book report on Sykes trilogy of books is due and my husband wants me to do a write up on Salt Lake City. I am still thinking about what to write. It is really two articles. The first article would describe our preparations to go to Salt Lake City as we started to plan six months ahead (I am already planning the next as you can really not be too far ahead) and consulted a number of items (principally their catalogue) in order to have a complete excel file of what we hoped to view there. The second article would be about researching in Salt Lake City and visiting the sites there. Until you have been there it is hard to imagine how much you can cover in one week (six days of researching). Plus you can go off on tangents as a result of your research that you could not estimate in advance.

I hope to get back to my images from Salt Lake City by mid February. I have become sidetracked with the Devon Parish Registers but it is a direct result of the information that I brought back from Salt Lake City that has caused me to pursue these ideas. I collected quite a bit of material for my one name Pincombe study and in order to continue extracting information I needed to do a little sidetracking first.

Landkey Parish Registers - 30 January 2009

Parish Registers transcription completed up to 1698 today. The number of baptisms continues to be low compared to earlier years although there are a lot of marriages from the small villages around Landkey (plus from Barnestaple which is somewhat larger). There are now 1272 baptisms, 537 marriages and 1103 burials. We are now seeing 169 more baptisms than burials which is a good increase following the plague. The new priest is recording more details including the farm/locale of the individual entries in the register. Sadly his own son died as an infant and no new baptisms for he and his wife yet.

Snowshoeing today in the new snowfall was most pleasant. The snow is nearly up to the bottom branch of the large tree in our front yard (about five feet but that includes the snow heaved off the laneway into that spot! Standing snow on the backyard is around 3.5 feet now (two good thaws have helped us although leaves this six or seven inch thick layer of ice under all that snow but it does moisten up the earth so that we are not watering lawns all summer long). When you see those lovely pictures of snow in Canada all over the rooftops and the trees and the sun brightly shining that is what I am looking at out my window at the moment. And we have a few days relief from the minus 20 or minus 25 degrees celsius temperatures - it is a balmy -1 degrees celsius. Thank goodness, we need a respite every couple of weeks or so!

I am coming to the end of the third fiche for Landkey with just one more to transcribe before I move on to something else. I suspect I will go back and complete the banns for Bishops Nympton. I needed a break from that for a bit. It is actually quite easy as I can just cut and paste into each set of banns but the break has been nice and the Landkey register has been most interesting with regard to the Pincombe family my one name study.

We watched another episode of the History of Britain (produced by BBC) and it dealt with the French Revolution, Rousseau, Wordsworth and a few other writer and the impact on England. We are now into the early 1800s. I found it interesting because it was actually looking at Staffordshire where my Welch/Brockhouse/Linn/Lea/Wood/Diram families lived between the 1500s and the late 1700s. I haven't tried to find any of these families prior to the beginning of the Parish Registers. Our trip through Staffordshire was very quick and we stopped only at the Wedgewood Factory. This was a marvelous tour and we were very surprised to hear that it is now closing. We spent most of our time on major roadways so did not really see a great deal of the landscape. I was peering out the window at all the signs to see if Rugeley would be mentioned.

We now have a box for digital TV although the conversion to digital has now been put off until June 2009. Our ISP provider sent us one so we will attach it and see what happens.

Tomorrow I shall carry on with Landkey registers and hopefully complete up to 1704. I am beginning to see the end these days as my fiche only take me up to 1750s so likely just a week left to complete that project. I have the land records for 1798 and this priest is making note of the place where his flock lives (if other than the village) so that is most helpful. Perhaps I will purchase the registers up to 1812 in the future but for the moment this will be sufficient to give me a picture of the area.

Landkey Parish Registers - 29 January 2009

Parish Register transcription for Landkey completed to 1692 today and I was continuing to see a large number of burials although they appear to be lessening at long last. I did find my Hugh Pincombe in the register married to Sarah (but no marriage in this register) and they are baptizing children at Landkey (two so far). Finding Wilmott earlier was a surprise and she married John Bale in 1671. They appear to have had only two daughters Margarett b 1672 and Amy b 1676. Wilmott is a first cousin to Hugh Pincombe.

In terms of numbers with regard to the Parish Registers for Landkey there are now 1205 baptisms, 506 marriages and 1035 burials. As you can see, the baptisms have once again increased over the burials (fortunate for any society but most certainly for this one at that time) and outnumber them by 170. I find it intriguing that there are only 2077 baptisms more than this in the IGI up to 1837 and I have just completed 1602 to 1692 a mere 90 years. We will see the numbers when I complete all the fiche that I have (up to the mid 1750s).

We cleared the snow from the laneway this morning (another 30 centimetres came our way). Fortunately with the snowblower we can heave it up over the top of the very high snowhills that are at the front of our house. We are still clearing our patio at the front but soon we will be starting to fill in one half of it because there isn't anywhere to put the snow. The backyard is getting very very deep and we have given up on composting for a couple of months. Some years we move the bin closer but we still have to give it up for a bit as the snow just gets too deep.

We spent part of the afternoon with our daughter and took their dogs for a walk. They loved getting out and the new puppy ran and ran with either my husband or I close behind. He is a sheltie and already showing his ability to track and keep going even when the going gets rough. The chihuahua too proves himself to be most capable running along beside us and he is 12 years old (nearly 13) but he is a strong dog. The bunny stayed inside where it is warm. In the summer though he too goes out on a lead to the park and romps in the grass.

Tomorrow I will continue with the registers and I am well into the third fiche now on the third row with just three screens to complete and then the 4th and 5th rows to do. The style is changing as the priest is writing in a smaller tighter hand but giving more details often enough for location of the individuals named. I want to work on the DNA study as well to continue entering data.

The transit strike is over in Ottawa and we will see how long it takes to get the buses on the road once again. The federal government was going to legislate them back but they have managed to get together and come to an agreement. Too bad it has taken so long as it has made life quite miserable for many people. Young students have had to walk 1.5 miles to and then 1.5 miles home from school and with the cold weather here that has been quite cruel for them. The elderly have had no way to get to doctor's appointments, etc.

Landkey Parish Registers - 28 January 2009

Completed the Landkey Registers up to 1685 and the number of burials continues to be quite high with christenings rather low. The difference between them now is 111 more christenings than burials in the time period 1602 to 1685. There are now 1083 Christenings, 467 Marriages and 972 burials up to the end of 1685. More than half of the infants that are Christened are dying in the first one to two years. Most of the other burials are the older members of the village.

We watched the next episode of the History of England series and this time we saw George III but mostly about his Prime Ministers and the evolution of the empire with an eye to trade with Walpole in charge and then the change that was wrought when Pitt was Prime Minister. It was interesting seeing the American Revolution from the British perspective. Being Canadian we really did not learn a lot about the American Revolution in school.

I have started on my presentation for Gene-O-Rama and it is only 30 minutes. I want to add some new material but stick pretty closely to just a couple of family studies that have evolved over time. The title is Family Studies and DNA. I do not want to discuss DNA or the mechanics of testing. This may be my last lecture as I find that it takes a lot of my time and there are others out there who could do just as well (or better :) ).

Landkey Parish Registers - 27 January 2009

I completed 1679 in the Parish Registers for Landkey. The number of burials have increased enormously and is perhaps a sign that the bubonic plague was in the village (most affected were women in the childbearing age, young children and seniors). There are only 125 more baptisms now than burials in the registers. There are now 1011 baptisms, 424 marriages and 886 burials. The IGI has 3282 baptisms up to 1837 so that nearly 1/3 of them have occurred between 1602 and 1679. Although I noted an increase in deaths at Bishops Nympton in the time period when the plague ravaged England, the numbers are lower at Bishops Nympton. Perhaps that is because Bishops Nympton is away from the coast. It is not very far from Landkey to Barnstaple (and Bideford) having visited that area last spring so that they would have more people coming and going who have been in areas where plague raged commonly. Not sure really and will think about that as I do Molland, Rose Ash and Merton.

We watched another one hour program in the History of England series - this one carried on from Mary II and William III to Anne and then George I. The views of Scotland were wonderful and made us quite nostalgic. We were there in April/May and what a change by mid summer. I guess there is Arctic tundra on the bare hills that we saw just waking up from winter. There was still snow on the tops of the mountains and the Five Sisters that you pass on your way to Isle of Skye and returning were quite bare. I wonder if they have a covering of grasses in mid summer or perhaps heather. We quite enjoyed the scenery of Scotland when we were there.

Spent some time working on the DNA study and hope to enter the data in the next few days so that I can begin mapping. It is a slow process although I captured most of the data electronically but still need to put the data into columns in my excel spread sheet as I am using colour coding to look at it. Probably could have written a program to sort but I suspect it would have taken me as long to write it as it will take to actually do it. For thousands of pieces of data I think though it would be a good way.

Reading Megan Smolenyak and Ann Turner's book: Trace your Roots with DNA. I meant to read it earlier but time escaped me. I am going to do a book report on Sykes three books - His Trilogy of DNA. Although there is a lot of debate about his books and recent finds, yet his three books remain the most readable for people with little science background and the stories that he weaves are quite good. The book report will go into the Ottawa Journal for OGS as my husband is the publisher. I write articles for him. Generally they take me quite a bit of time but it is interesting to learn about the history of this area. It is strange to live in an area that has absolutely no genealogical value to me at all. Being in England I felt absolutely steeped in ancestry as almost everywhere that we went on the tour bus I could point out the window and say that is where my 3x or whatever great grandparents lived.

My mother's ancestors came from all different parts of England but my father's were rather concentrated around northwest Hampshire (within two miles of Andover) but also his paternal grandmother was from the Winterbourne Valley in Dorset and I have had a marvelous time tracing all of them back. His mother's family was from Wiltshire - Enford, Woodford, Ludgershall, and other small villages. Visiting the Winterbourne area is a wonderful treat especially if you start at Milton Abbas with all of its thatched houses and then take the country roads up through the Valley going to all the Winterborne villages - Clenstone, Strickland, Houghton, Whitchurch, and Turnworth. I have ancestors from all of these villages and as a child my father did visit the area to see his great grandfather Samuel Knight who lived at Turnworth. Samuel died in 1912 when my father was just eight years old. Every summer they would go to the New Forest and then up to Turnworth to visit.

For my mother I look at Devon, Somerset, Yorkshire and Cumberland and that covers her father's ancestors for the most part but it is her mother's ancestors that are an absolute treat. Her mother's father was a Buller and he lived in London and Birmingham doing business in both, his wife was a Welsh and they were from Rugeley Staffordshire (with her mother being from the Cheatle family of Leicestershire (Ashby de la Zouch and possibly Castle Donnington area)) and then her mother's mother was from Birmingham and she is a real mystery with the name Taylor. Family lore helps a little and it rather looks like her father was a shoemaker (ran a shop)who eventually moved to Ashton in Lancashire in the late 1870s and her mother was a Roberts from Birmingham and Bickenhill before that. Her mother was a Lawley from Wellington Shropshire and so I have all these counties to look at although all in the Midlands. But with my maternal grandfather having four counties widely separate (south west England to north and west England) this side keeps me very busy.

I am trying to solve the puzzle of one error on the Hampshire Genuki webpages. It continues to be an error but everytime I open it up it works fine for me so I hate to remove it. I will just have to leave it with the red box on my statistics page I think :)

Landkey Parish Registers - 26 January 2009

I completed to the end of 1673 of the Landkey Parish Registers and there are now 946 baptisms, 389 marriages and 795 burials. A Pyncombe marriage appeared and I rather think that this is the cousin of my ancestor that I had been looking for and perhaps helps to explain why Hugh the brother of that ancestor marries at Landkey and ends up living there. Always fascinating reading these registers and how they can help answer questions. The baptisms outnumber the burials by 151 now.

We went for a walk (about 2km) again today and it was quite cool and windy (minus 15 celsius) but a good invigorating walk.

I then worked on a DNA study with which I am involved. I have quite a bit of entry to do as we were away in the spring and then I was ill on and off from the late summer to Christmas so didn't get a lot of data entry done. I am back at that again.

Tomorrow I will again continue with the Landkey register (I am on the 3rd of 4 fiche now) and will try to do 6 or 7 years as I have been doing since I started working on the registers for Landkey. The baptisms have dropped off again and in some years there are more burials than births. At the end I will do a short study to see the numbers between 1602 and 1750 when my fiche end. As well I need to work on the DNA study.

I spent a little while thinking about knitting patterns and will also look at sewing patterns.

Landkey Parish Registers - 25 January 2009

I continued working on the Landkey Parish Registers and completed up to 1666 which includes 876 baptisms, 343 marriages and 720 burials. Historically speaking the last 20 years have been the period of the Commonwealth in England which followed the beheading of Charles I and later the establishment of Cromwell as Lord Protector and then the Glorious Restoration when the son of Charles I was asked to return by the Long Parliament to be crowned Charles II. Perhaps the many marriages from outside of Landkey is the result of the movement of troops during the Civil War in the 1640s. I am not seeing as many now and the number of baptisms has increased once again. The baptisms only exceed the burials by 156 which doesn't seem like very many over a 64 year period.

We went for about a 2km walk around 2:00 and it was about minus 11 celsius with a wind chill. Then we watched another episode of the BBC History of England series and this was about the Civil War which rather caught my interest. These episodes are very very interesting and the images used give one an interesting view of what life and the areas were like during this time period. Interesting that in some ways it seems little changed when you are away from the cities as we were noting having been there in the spring of 2008.

Tomorrow I shall continue with the Landkey registers but I also want to spend some time on the DNA T project where we are looking at FGS for about 400 samples and working on the tree for the T haplogroup. We will be publishing the results by summer of this year.

Dinner was our leftover homemade macaroni and cheese. We make it in a 18 cm x 25 cm glass dish and it is about 5 centimetres high and it includes non fat carnation milk and low fat cheese along with 125 ml of onions chopped up. Very delicious and you can add salads and in this case my husband had a steak to accompany it.

Landkey Parish Registers - 24 January 2009

I continued transcribing the Landkey Parish Registers and completed up to 1660. I now have 791 baptisms, 310 marriages and 640 burials in my excel database. The marriages have settled down to between 2 and 8 marriages per year. The number of baptisms has decreased to 10 rather than 20 per year. That rather surprised me and I shall see how that progresses. This is during the Cromwell period when a number of the parishes did not keep the registers up but so far I have found the Devon parishes to have done so.

I had a request with respect to my being Online Parish Clerk for Bishops Nympton which I completed. The individual had written to me last year about this time and I had only just completed the first 100 years of the Registers. I said that likely it would take me another year to complete to 1812 (and I was close in that estimation) so I was able to provide him with the data that he wanted plus the data from the mid 1800s which is fairly easy to extract from the registers if the dates are sent. I am going to transcribe that as well but I still need to complete the Banns. I moved away from that for a bit to work on Landkey and other registers since I can readily draw out the material now if people send me the dates that they are looking for. A global search is still not possible past 1812 without some input (IGI up to 1837 and FreeBMD 1837 on).

We went to see "Orfeo Ed Euridice" at Silver City - a direct digital signal from the Met in New York City. A most interesting opera although quite short by usual standards. The clothing was modern and the choreography was quite fantastic. The story line was interesting but the dance was absolutely brilliant. Although the lead signers received most of the applause, if I had been there I would have been clapping for the dancers as well.

This evening my desktop computer appeared to be acting up so I decided to do a complete backup of my files (3.5 hours to copy everything to my Iomega drive) just in case. However, the machine is just fine now. The computer is about five years old so will not likely last a lot longer. I usually acquire the oldest computer as they are passed down and have worn out three in the last seven years that I have been actively working on various items. I started genealogy in 2003 with my courses and that has pretty well occupied all my time since then. Just now I am thinking that I would like to get back to knitting and sewing again so I am starting to restrict my time on the computer to six hours per day. I think next week I will try to decide on knitting patterns for all the wool that I have and begin to knit for 2 hours per day or so when I am watching the television. I also want to spend 2 hours in the afternoon sewing as I also have a stack of material that I bought about 15 years ago that I will now make into other items than the original intent - my children are no longer small but I always bought good lengths so will be able to utilize all of the material eventually. I have a lovely new sewing machine that is programmable that I want to learn to use. Smocking is one of my favourite items and I have a number of items that I want to smock.

Landkey Parish Registers - 23 January 2009

Landkey Parish Registers completed up to 1653 and there are 715 baptisms, 278 marriages and 582 burials. The burials of infants and young children continue to dominate the register. Many of the marriages are from places nearby like Barnstaple, Bishops Tawton, and South/North Molton. It makes me very keen to see the Church at Landkey. Perhaps it was such a charming area or perhaps the priest was more accommodating for marrying although he always identifies the home parish of the people being married from the 1640s on.

I now have the marriage for Thomas Manninge and Elizabeth Upcott and it would appear that they live in the village. There are Manning and Upcott families in the village but neither of them appear to fit into any of these families so are perhaps siblings of the adult family members since the Upcott family has only just appeared and the Manning family appears and disappears!

We went to see Australia (the movie) today and it was an amazing film. One tends to forget that Australia was very much on the firing line in the second World War. The theme of the movie was quite fascinating.

Tomorrow I shall continue on with the Landkey Parish Registers as I would like to complete the four fiche for this parish which brings me up to around the mid 1700s. After that I do not have a strong interest in Landkey as my families all converged on Bishops Nympton in the mid 1600s (the ones that weren't already there). The entries are quite well spaced and have been fairly legible for the most part. I had two screens today that were very faint and on one I had to give up on four entries (all burials). That was the pity as the burials are not on the IGI and are a particular interest of mine.

Landkey Parish Registers - 22 January 2009

Parish Registers completed up to 1648 and in 1646 and 1647 there were 21 and 20 marriages respectively. Most years there are 3 to 6 marriages. Why all the marriages in those years is an interesting happening. There are now 663 baptisms, 248 marriages, and 544 burials. The incidence of infant mortality is very high and I will pull some of those statistics out. The number of times that more than one sibling is buried very close together is somewhat heartbreaking for the family - oftimes the mother succumbs as well leaving the father with the remaining children. Life was certainly hard in the 1600s.

We went ice skating on the canal (8 km of rink) today for the first time this winter. We probably skated about 4 km in total. It was just around freezing so a very comfortable ice skate and actually a bit too warm! We had our youngest and her fiance over for dinner and that was a lot of fun. We are going to do once a week just to touch base with each other. The time passes very quickly. Although we generally take the dogs for a walk several times a week we do not always see our children so must plan for at least a weekly visit with them.

Other than that I didn't accomplish anything else today. I need to start to work on my presentation and probably I will start that tomorrow. I will need about 25 slides and I actually have all of them prepared but need to update them with new material that I now have plus I want to replace a couple of sections with different families.

Landkey Parish Registers - 21 January 2009

I have completed to the end of 1642 for the Landkey Parish Registers. The priest makes these interesting little drawings to direct your eye towards the correct column of material. Sometimes he has little drawings in other spots on the page. The handwriting is fairly reasonable although sometimes a little tight so that one has to scrutinize carefully to deduce what he has written. Mostly the same names but new ones creeping in and old ones disappearing. A number of couples come from Barnstaple to be married at Landkey. I didn't visit the Church there so do not know if it is a particularly nice one that attracted people for their marriages. Perhaps they were of the village before and wanted to return to marry there - all sorts of thoughts on that as I work my way through the records. The death rate for infants is quite high and when I am done I may just do a few calculations on that. I now have 590 baptisms, 189 marriages and 473 burials entered into my excel database. One family is excluded from the IGI - Wilkey. Sometimes it is difficult to interpret the entry and that is perhaps why. Whenever the entry isn't in the "usual" format it tends to be omitted from the IGI.

Other than that I haven't done much else today on genealogy. Did do the laundry - now that we are empty nesters there isn't too much of that actually. Since we are mostly home all the time I tend to wear just a couple of warm outfits (heavy sweaters and slacks) and wool worksocks so that we just do laundry twice a week. Only wash dishes once a day and it takes about five minutes. Finished for the day but ended up working into the evening as the day was broken up a bit this afternoon as we took the dogs for a walk.

Tomorrow I will continue with transcribing the Landkey registers - I am on the second fiche and getting close to finishing the 2nd row (5 rows to a fiche). I have only four fiche which brings me up to the mid 1700s. That should satisfy my interest in the Pincombe, Manning and Upcott families at Landkey as they are at Bishops Nympton by the 1600s for my direct line. The Manning and Upcott ancestors are buried at Bishops Nympton which is what attracted me to the baptism of John Manninge at Landkey plus he was baptized in 1655 which fits into the Manning that was the father of Grace Manning my ancestress who married John Pincombe at Bishops Nympton in 1725.

I also need to work on my presentation at Gene-O-Rama on Family Studies and DNA. It is only 30 minutes this time and I will concentrate on some of the good results that we have from a couple of family studies and compare that with the paper trails that are available.

Landkey Parish Registers - 20 January 2009

Continuing on with the Landkey Parish Registers, I completed another six years bringing me up to 1636 completed. New names do enter about one to four per year with some names disappearing. I now have 486 baptisms, 151 marriages and 388 burials. I have found only a few discrepancies with the IGI online but there are about 30 baptisms missing. The marriages agree quite well but the priest has added in the parish of the individuals that are not "of Landkey parish" which can be very handy. The burials are the real plus though as the IGI only has the burials of young children for the most part. I am still not seeing my Manning family any too frequently but the Upcott family finally appeared there. I am not sure that Elizabeth Upcott is from Landkey - I rather suspect she is from Witheridge but will need to do those registers to find that answer! I will soon see my Pincombe family there and hope to sort them out as Hugh is a sibling to my William Pincombe (6x great grandfather). All of his children were baptized at Landkey and his marriage is supposed to be there to Sarah but I haven't located it on the fiche. Some part of the fiche are difficult to read and I may be missing it - hence my reason for transcribing the parish registers. A good method for small parishes but a real task with larger ones. I hope to do Andover Hampshire one of these days to sort out the period from 1550 to 1700 (I have the fiche up to the early 1900s).

More discussion with others on the Vicary family. I had an error on my webpage (innocent actually as I picked it up from worldconnect a while back). I have now removed that particular item and replaced it with Alexander Vicary senior as the father of Alexander Vicary junior. This is not proven and I have debated removing it as I either say that I have proof or give the reasons for picking the individual. This is still weak on my webpage. I have removed most items from my webpages now that I do not have proof for the link. My initial thought in including some of the items was that I had received them from another researcher and my pages are becoming more and more visible and people do contact me. It allows me to discuss the entry and see if they have any further proof than I have of the connection. I probably need to state the controversy though in my preamble for each of my ancestral lines and will do that where it is needed. For the most part I do not go past what I can prove.

We have watched the Inauguration of the new United States President today for a good part of the day. I liked his Inaugural address and did think that he had a few key phrases that are memorable but perhaps not quite the same as President Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you; but ask what you can do for your country." The people who came to see the ceremony were incredible. We have been to Washington DC in the area where the people were standing and it is an enormous area. There is so much hope being directed at President Obama and it was wonderful to see him so eager to accept the mantle of such a burden. The impact upon the black people of America will be a wondrous event to see in my lifetime. I can remember segregation and desegregation and how painful that was for the United States. God bless America and God bless President Obama, his family and his administration. God speed to them all.

Landkey Parish Registers - 19 January 2009

Another six years completed of the Parish Records for Landkey and they continue to be the same people with the occasional new person. No sign of the Manning family at the moment - between children as the young ones become adults and start their own families. I am getting to the point where I should start to see some of the Manning children as adults. The spelling of Manning developed through the years.

I spent a little time on Rose Ash looking at the Vicary family as per the request I had yesterday about Bishops Nympton and the author mentioning her connection to the Vicary family of Rose Ash. I sent off my records from the parish register which pretty much go against the usual reporting for this family. It is really necessary to check the parish registers in order to prove the connections in families. The IGI (which is quite good) nevertheless does not include some of the extra information found in the Parish Registers which helps to link families and there are some errors and omissions plus it does not include the burial registers other than for infant and young children.

We watched another episode of the History of England BBC series. They are quite exceptional and I highly recommend them. This evening I shall watch a movie; haven't decided which one yet. Six hours transcribing is enough for one day.

Landkey Parish Registers - 18 January 2009

No work on the Landkey Registers today; probably tomorrow as we settle back into a regular "work" week. I received a request for information in the Bishops Nympton Parish Register so spent about 30 minutes dealing with that request. It was made a little spicier by the reference to my Vicary family at Rose Ash as being related to her family. I found the relationship back to be quite interesting as it raised the spectre of Alexander Vicary Junior being the son of John Vicary whereas I am fairly convinced these days that his father was likely Alexander Vicary Senior (likely brother to John). John had a very large family but he didn't marry until after I think that Alexander was born and there isn't a baptism for him although the register begins in plenty of time for his baptism to appear if he was John's son. I suspect that he was actually born earlier and the registers hadn't begun (or are lost!). Alexander Vicary Senior was churchwarden at the time that Alexander Vicary Junior was likely born. The marriages and burials begin before the baptisms.

I spent the morning working on emails - I seemed to have quite a few and they involved my giving a response. Then I decided to investigate a train trip to Carlisle and thence to Bewcastle by car. I had some really interesting responses from members of the Cumberland group and will tuck them away for later when we actually make it to England once again. We have some travel plans here though since we are in recession and I feel we should try to do most of our spending here to help Canadians.

Read some more of my very interesting book on "Mapping Human History" by Steve Olson. His discussion on language evolution was very interesting. DNA has certainly spawned a renewed interest in history and will result in people who do advanced research in history having a science background.

On to YOGA and then off to bed. I am sleepy!

Landkey Parish Registers - 17 January 2009

I was right that it was a day of low accomplishment - I completed the 1624 entries in the Parish Register only. The priest is starting to add location to some of his entries which will be helpful. As well, the first name of the mother occurs with most baptisms now. The burials often have a few more details but are still very basic.

I also continued sorting through piles of my papers that accumulated during my working days. For the most part I have all of my family information in binders - 32 in all (one for each of my 3x great grandparents). A few of the binders are large since they hold the Blake and Pincombe lines and others have just a few pages.

Went shopping with my youngest daughter and her maid of honour looking for her wedding dress. That will take a little time to decide I expect. We saw some beautiful dresses today.

I am back to doing my yoga every day now that my bruised ribs have more or less righted themselves. We are going to start snowshoeing, skiing and skating this next week. The weather is going to be in the minus teens instead of the minus twenties. Minus 25 is just too cold for me to ski, skate or snowshoe unless I have to!

Tomorrow I shall continue to work on the Parish Registers - I am on the last row of the first fiche (5 rows in total). In total, there are four fiche up to the early 1700s. This is a parish of 774 inhabitants in 1844. The entries are well spaced with seldom more than 12 to an image compared to Bishops Nympton where there could be as many as 30 to an image. The IGI shows 3282 baptisms and burials (377 infant burials) for this parish and 1141 marriages with the dates 1602-1850 for baptisms/burials and 1602-1837 for the marriages. Thus far I have 298 baptisms, 86 marriages and 233 burials up to 1624.

Landkey Parish Registers - 16 January 2009

I was just thinking of writing up my blog for the 16th of January when we had a hydro failure and consequently could not access the Internet. Instead we lit about 20 candles and enjoyed the warm glow and heat of candlelight for about two hours when luckily the hydro was restored. It was minus 24 degrees celsius when the hydro failed so we were glad to see it come back again although we have a small generator that we can run a heater with if we need to do that although it will not last a long time just long enough to get a little heat.

Yesterday, I accomplished very little on the Landkey Parish Registers, I only just started 1624 and today is another busy day so may not get a lot done. Now that we are empty-nesters we are going to clean on Fridays so that will take up much of the day but gives us a neat tidy house for the weekends when our children drop by to visit us. Now that we are walking the dogs a couple of days a week in the day while they are away our days seem to pass very very quickly but the dogs certainly enjoy their outings (we usually go twice to walk them).

I sorted through another large pile of items yesterday and found a good sized plastic bag worth of material to add to the recycling bin for next garbage day. I have a number of stashes of material that I need to go through, sort it out and dispose of duplicates, wrong ends (as I learned more about genealogy I learned not to get quite so deep into wrong ends!) and just general material that accumulated during my working days when I really didn't appear to have time to sort through everything or didn't want to throw things out because the material was still new and fresh from conferences.

We stopped our daily newspaper after 35 years because it is just too much paper and I am sad for the trees. Now we will just watch our news online and buy the paper twice a week to keep up to date with the items that do not make the news or the internet. Cold mornings like this though one wonders if that was such a good idea but I think that the amount of paper that goes out the door is unbelievable but it does keep an entire industry of pulp and paper running so must think about that as well.

Landkey Parish Registers - 15 January 2009

Five more years completed and I am up to 1624 for the Landkey Parish Registers. A few new families and the variety in spelling continues. The burials suddenly started to increase in 1621, 1622 and 1623; 14 in 1621, 22 in 1622 and 25 in 1623 with there usually being six to 10 per year. I will see if they decrease again. The baptisms are fairly constant around 15 to 20 and the marriages between four and eight although none in 1621.

I was looking at the European Tours as we are seriously considering doing that this year. We are looking at tours between 15 and 30 days and will have to decide on the number of countries and the path that most suits us. I have been to Rome, Italy (spent a week there in 2001) but I haven't been to any of the other countries. My husband's ancestors emigrated from France, the Netherlands, Belgium, several German states, Italy and Denmark so it would be nice to spend some time in each of them. The England/Scotland/Wales tour by Trafalgar was absolutely excellent and is one of the reasons that I would now like to do a European tour.

I need to start my presentation for Gene-O-Rama. It is partially together but I need to update a number of my slides and I have a couple of new studies that will be interesting to present. It is on DNA and Family Studies and I have six studies now that I follow from time to time. Amazing what you can learn about a person from the DNA matches; but on the other hand you really can not link one person to another with just the DNA results but rather it gives you a matching point that lets you look at possibilities.

Tomorrow, I will continue on the Landkey Parish Registers. My intent is to continue past 1655 when John Manning was baptized and likely into the 1680s when this Manning family is now found at Bishops Nympton. I have the Registers into the early 1700s. I also want to start organizing my sewing area in the spare bedroom. I have an enormous pile of material that I bought for various projects over the last 15 years but going back to work meant that priorities saw sewing slip to a quiet tenth place and I seldom got past 6th! I bought a brand new sewing machine that does all sorts of fancy stichery and I will start learning how to use it. I meant to take the classes but I was still working so I will just have to read the book and figure it all out. I have used the machine for straight stitching and it is very neat.

We watched the first hour of the 15 episode series - History of Britain by the BBC and it was very good. We will set aside an hour each day to watch the rest over the next couple of weeks. I try to take a two hour break in the afternoon from the computer to read or watch a movie. I will now be adding a two hour break to sew. I think that five or six hours of transcription or other computer work is enough now that I am retired!

Landkey Parish Registers - 14 January 2009

I completed the Landkey Parish Registers to 1618 today but only worked for a couple of hours this morning. The rest of the day was spent on non-genealogy items. The day certainly flew by and I hope to accomplish more tomorrow! Mostly the same names but a couple of new ones. The priest is starting to make note of farms that some of the individuals are located on which is helpful. Not a lot of details for the burials unless it is an infant.

Today we did a large roasted chicken dinner with dressing, cranberries and several cooked vegetables. It was fun on the coldest day of the year thus far. The warmth of the food is much appreciated. The temperature didn't go above minus 25 celsius all day and is colder this evening. We will have these temperatures at least until the end of the weekend. When we first moved to Ottawa, we always had a two week spell in mid-January of minus 25 or less in the day. Perhaps the weather of the 70s has returned now in the 00s!

I searched the 1911 UK census for my great grandparents and discovered that they were likely at Waterloo Terrace still in 1911 which is handy to know. Also Maria is still alive and Henry is living with them. All of the rest of the children are either married or living elsewhere. William and Henry are the only two not married yet. Henry married in Canada in 1913. William married in 1918 after the war.

Tomorrow I will continue with the Landkey registers and I need to bring my BIFHSGO Research Interests up to date (one entry arrived today).

Landkey Parish Registers - 13 January 2009

I completed to 1616 today for the Landkey Parish Registers. A few new families but mostly the original families that were there in 1602 when the registers started.

The 1911 UK census came online today so I checked for Pincombe and Siderfin and found more of each now that Somerset and a couple of other counties are up and running. That prompted me to think about my Greatgrandmother and I have now found Edward and Maria Jane with Henry living with them. Henry leaves for Canada between 1911 and 1912 as he was in Canada about a year before my grandfather working for the Grand Trunk Railway. That prompted me to look once again to see if I could find her death registration and now I know for sure that she did live until 1911. When Edward died in 1916 his daughter Sarah Anne was the informant and he was living at Yew Cottage in Goodworth Clatford which I believe was like a Nursing Home. I think that Maria Jane was still alive then and that after he died she used to stay with each of her children for a few months. My cousin remembers that at the end of her life she lived with his grandparents quite a bit but couldn't remember when she died. I did find a Maria dying at Winchester in the first quarter of 1933 so will send away for that certificate. I shall soon have a collection at this rate and eventually I should find the right one!

That prompted me to look at my sister's photos on her family tree on Ancestry (I looked up the death registrations in Ancestry) and I noticed that one of the pictures was incorrectly labeled so I sent her off a note on that to let her know (especially as I had given her the pictures!). I shall have to be more careful how I label them. I sent her a lot of the pictures that I received from other people (still have a few more to send her) so that there would be two copies in the family.

There was a fresh snowfall today so I went out and shoveled that away as my husband was busy today for awhile. We shoveled again this evening but doing it the once reduced the load somewhat although we have a snowblower if the snow is heavy.

I watched the Senate hearing for the appointment of a new Secretary of State in the United States and Hilary Clinton gave a very interesting speech. Most often the presidents do two terms down there so that there is just a big change every eight years. It is amazing how different their democracy is from ours in some ways. There can be many kinds of democracies in actual fact.

Off for some television watching now as I am trying to wind down my "work" day by 9:00 at the very latest each day. That gives my husband and I some time to sit and chat about our days events since we both are working away on our family trees quite a bit of the day and he works upstairs and I work down that we need to get together a few times in the day to touch base and talk about our research.

Landkey Parish Registers - 12 January 2009

I continued transcribing the Landkey Parish Registers and I am up to the end of 1612. The names are staying fairly constant with a few additions. I am not sure if the Mangey eventually becomes Manning but I suspect that it does. No Upcott family members yet for Elizabeth Upcott's ancestors. I am not doing a word for word transcription as I did for Bishops Nympton but rather an excel database. Eventually I will bring them all into Access so that I can search them all at once with queries. I am using a standard setup for the excel database headings.

I checked the Family search transcriptions to see what is available and the 1861 census is there. Once Ontario is added I will start working on that. I could do the other provinces but I only want to dedicate so much time to these items and Ontario most interests me.

I got my hair cut today so it is nice and short ready to let it grow in again! I am still reading my book "Mapping Human History: Genes, Race and our common origins" by Steve Olson. The book is very well written and is giving me an interesting picture of his thoughts on how people emerged from Africa and started on their great treks which finally brought them to where our ancestors dwelt.

I have decided that six hours of transcription is enough for each day and I gradually want to add some new items into my daily pace. My sewing machine is coming upstairs so I will get back to sewing as I still have stacks of material that I never used. I also want to start knitting again. I made a scarf for my eldest last winter but that was my last project. I again have a lot of wool to use up.

My only big project other than my talk and a couple of papers that I want to submit is to do my Certified Genealogist Application. I would like to do it for the sake of my family reporting. To at least show that I have had the training when I am publishing information. I am very cautious about what I do publish as I do not want a lot of misleading information (more than is already out there!).

Landkey Parish Registers

I spent six hours working on the Landkey Devon Parish Registers. I decided to transcribe the information and the registers commence in 1602. I completed three years today and I am beginning to have a picture of the families that were at Landkey in this time period. Probably I will transcribe all of the registers that I have purchased eventually. Just reading them and extracting information doesn't give me an overall picture of my family lines that are there as I need to read them carefully line by line and I do that best when I am transcribing them.

I also uploaded some photos to my ancestry family tree. I have this as a private tree on Ancestry but have given access to my sister, my Buller cousins, my Taylor half-cousins and a cousin that both Ed and I share (he on the Kipp side and I on the Gray/Carling side). I have also uploaded a number of Ed's legacy trees as it is so easy to capture census and other images with the search engines of Ancestry assisting you. I anticipate that I will continue to subscribe to Ancestry for quite a few years simply because they offer all of the types of data that we both are using - Canadian, American, British, French, and German census, Parish Records/Town Records from many areas, Emigration records from Europe to North America, military records, and so much more.

I also published a post on the Bewcastle Blog that I have author rights on now. I have done my 3x great grandparent Routledge plus the letter that my 2x great uncle wrote from Ontario to Bewcastle in 1837. I will add several more postings including the ancestors of my 3x great grandparents and other material that I have found on the Routledge family.

We took Hogan and Jackson out for a walk this afternoon and Jackson is growing quickly. He is about twice as big as he was a month ago. Another three months and he will be almost full grown. He is starting to learn a lot of tricks now. He keeps me running when I take him for a walk. He could likely go a kilometre now.

By disciplining myself to write my blog at the end of the day, I am closing up my books for the day instead of working into the evening. I think if I spend six to eight hours per day on transcribing that is really enough and I should start to do other things like sewing, knitting and reading. I enjoy all of those things and I need to do a variety of items. I decided that last year was the end year for my business which I have run for over 25 years. I am not going to do any more work and still have a few more loose ends to tie before I am finally finished.

I have one more lecture to prepare and I rather think that I will stop doing lectures as well. There are lots of other people out there to lecture. I will send in articles to journals though and have one in the works now for Lanercost Protestation Returns. I want to write a preamble for explanation to go with the transcribed information.

Tomorrow I shall continue with the Landkey Parish Records. Probably I will do Merton next and then Rose Ash last. I will not transcribe Molland at the moment as I purchased them primarily to give me a copy of my Great grandfather William Robert Pincombe's actual baptism plus the baptisms of his siblings.

Lambden Research

I had planned to look at the St Mary Bourne parish registers when we were at Salt Lake City but I had to leave out three different sets of research that I had scheduled in order to complete the rest of my research aims. Also, I was still ambivalent about my Lambden family having been at St Mary Bourne. There simply isn't a Nathanael Lambden there on the IGI.

Traveling in Hampshire in the spring, I realized that the distance between Thatcham or Bradfield Berkshire and Andover Hampshire was really very small and very negotiable since there are several main byways that would have been usable. I joined the Berkshire list the other day and since then I have received a couple of interesting thoughts from members of the list including the location of Lambden Farm near Bradfield. Today I checked the 1841 census for Bradfield but there isn't a Lambden family there in 1841. The IGI also shows that the Lambden family was no longer at Bradfield in the 1800s.

The interesting item is the baptism of a Nathanael (my spelling for Nathanael from Elizabeth's wedding registration which he signed (his son's name was spelled Nathaniel)) Lambden 26 Jul 1724 at Bradfield son of John Lambden and Joan Caruthue. I wonder about the name Caruthue and suspect it is perhaps a transcription error. But I am unable to purchase the original fiche for the parish registers. However, I could order the film and perhaps I will do that. John and Joan were married at Bradfield Oct 1721. Nathanael appears to be their first child and other children born to them include: Sarah baptized 17 Sep 1727, Mary baptized 22 Mar 1729, John baptized 1 Apr 1733, Benjamin baptized 20 Jun 1736, and Joseph baptized 1 Apr 1739.

Nathanael is married to Sarah by 1751 but the place and Sarah's parents are unknown. Pursuing the idea that he trained as a wheelwright in Berkshire might lead me to an answer as my grandfather thought he was a wheelwright. He remembered hearing about his great grandmother that lived to be 96 years old (she only died in 1862). Sam was born in 1875 so she was probably still being talked about especially as she was the mother of his paternal grandmother who lived right next door to Sam all of his life until she died in 1893.

Watched an issue of Cranford which I quite enjoyed and then slept about two hours this afternoon. I was very tired after having company yesterday although I enjoyed hearing about Europe as that is our next trip.

Tomorrow I shall get back to my Devon fiche to look at Landkey, Merton, Molland, and Rose Ash. I will build up an excel file from these fiche to make it easier to follow the family lines as these villages are all fairly small and, except for Molland, I have ancestors from before 1700 in the villages. I would like to fill in my family details and move on from the Pincombe family for awhile although I also want to get back to entering into my Pincombe one name study file in Legacy the original one name study that I inherited from the earlier researchers.

Leicestershire Parish Records

I want to start recording my days events at the end of the day that I am discussing. I continued looking at Blake information this morning and reviewing some of the early wills. My next big extraction should be the Blake family at Abbots Ann.

My parish fiche from Leicestershire Record Office arrived today and I still need to order the marriage fiche from Castle Donnington. I looked through the Cheatle baptisms for William Cheatle and Sarah Woodcock and discovered that William was a Stockiner (he makes stockings). I have absolutely no information on my Cheatle family other than the baptism of my Sarah Cheatle at Ashby de la Zouch 21 Jan 1795 as the daughter of William Cheatle and his wife Sarah and Sarah's marriage at Longdon by Lichfield 24 Aug 1818 where William Cheatle signed the parish register (as did Sarah Cheatle and her husband William Welch). Would a Stockiner be able to write with a firm clear hand? Probably since he has to keep records. However this William is at Castle Donnington and I need to continue reading the register to see if he is still there up to 1812. I may also order the burial register up to 1837.

The Cheatle name is not a common one which is helpful. The Cheatle family at Ashby de la Zouch has only one child. There is a death of a Sarah Cheatle (no parents stated, no mention of widow status or wife status) and the family at Castle Donnington has a daughter Sarah b 3 Jan 1783. The burials at Ashby de la Zouch do not really give other than the name in most cases unless the child is an infant. There are still other Cheatle families in Leicestershire.

I changed my picture on my webpage. It was from 2001 and now I am up to date.

We showed our pictures to friends today of our English/Scot/Welsh trip (1200 images) and had a quiet dinner. That took up a fair portion of the day but the discussion was good as they have traveled in Europe a fair amount and that is our next trip.

Blake family at Andover

Following my extraction of the CMB Blake information from the Penton Mewsey register, I continued reading through the various wills and other documents that I have on hand from the Hampshire Record Office. I had noticed the Blake families at Andover when I was reading through the Parish Registers and couldn't account for a couple of the lines after 1750 and the wills provide the answers for those lines. It has been a while since I really thought about Blake but the mistake in the marriage reminded me that a lot of my work on Blake had been done fairly early on (back to Thomas b 1685) as I had my grandfather's memories to build on.

My ancestor William Blake (b 9 Aug 1615 Foxcott, Andover) married Ann Hellier 5 Sep 1644 and they had at least six children which included three sons and three daughters. The eldest son John died by 1649 when a third son was named John. The second son was William b 9 Aug 1647 and he is referred to as William Blake Clerke - I haven't traced his line at all yet. John (b 10 May 1649) married Elizabeth by 1684 and they have 11 children but only six survive infancy with my Thomas being the eldest (b 21 Feb 1685), Margaret (b 8 Jan 1689), John (b 23 Nov 1690), Elizabeth (b 27 Oct 1695), William (b 9 Jan 1698) and Joseph (b 24 Feb 1702). Thomas is buried in 1714 (leaves a widow and one son Thomas), I have no information on Margaret, John, Elizabeth, William or Joseph. This family is not at Penton Mewsey because the John that is there is already baptizing children by the 1680s. The sons do not appear to have stayed at Andover other than Thomas and his son Thomas. The daughters may be the burials found in the 1700s (at least Elizabeth; I do not recall Margaret offhand). Joseph (grandson of the elder Thomas) is baptized at Andover in 1730 (my 4x great grandfather).

The Abbots Ann John is a mystery but the Penton Mewsey register may solve that mystery. Going back to William (b 1615), he had 17 siblings (of whom seven did not survive infancy) and they are not found at Andover records in their adulthood so are they the source of the Blake family at Penton Mewsey and at Abbots Ann (all places are within two miles of each other)? The Will of William (b c 1587) and married to Dorothy Magdwicke is very complete mentioning all of his children (probated 1645 as well as Dorothy's will probated 1648). I have purchased a number of documents on the various properties/parcels of land that he mentions in his will to better understand where these family members went by the mid 1600s.

What amazed me as I read the wills was how well Richard (father to William b c 1587) had managed his 50 pound legacy from his father. This legacy was almost an afterthought in the will as William (b c 1516) mentions all of his elder sons with an eye to ensuring that the male line was enshrined with his properties but Richard wasn't included as he probably thought that by son four he had really covered all of his bases. So Richard just received his 50 pounds and we next find him in Andover with a Draper Shop and 12 children (three did not survive infancy) in the parish records and then his will of 1623.

It also wasn't a comfortable time to be a Blake after Restoration in 1668 since the Blake family of Somerset had supported Cromwell. Perhaps this family simply kept very quiet during this time period in order not to draw attention to themselves resulting in a loss of records for the family lines that moved away from Andover during this time period. Certainly the registers show the impact with family members being referred to as Mr. Richard Blake, Mr. William Blake in the early 1600s but in the late 1600s no such designation is given (but also the eldest children of William had moved to Essington Hampshire with Richard's descendants being the Blake family found at Andover (as well as descendants of Robert Blake at Knights/Kings Enham). William (b 1615) died at Foxcott in 1696. The Robert Blake line at Andover could also be the ancestors of Blake family members found at Penton Mewsey which is part of the complication in looking at this family.

So my day was spent thinking about my Blake family line and in between shoveling the snow away from our latest deluge.

Blake family at Penton Mewsey

Almost from the beginning of the day yesterday I was totally distracted from looking at the Devon Parish Registers which I had thought to do. Instead I started to think about the marriage between Thomas Blake and Ann "Carter" at Penton Mewsey. I have the Penton Mewsey fiche for parish registers and always meant to extract the Blake family items from there as I had purchased the will of John Blake at Penton Mewsey and he died there in 1757. The will mentions his eldest legal son as being John living at Andover which explains the John at Andover now in the 1750s. Almost the same day that John senior died his grandson (son of John) died at Penton Mewsey as a small child (John senior died a little later). So I had those three Johns and also as I extracted I discovered a Thomas b 1704 and a son Thomas who died in 1734. I thought this was my Joseph Blake's younger brother but I suddenly realized that the reference to the marriage of a Thomas Blake and Ann Carter at Penton Mewsey was not my Thomas.

The baptism for Joseph Blake (my 4x great grandfather) at Andover says Thomas and Ann and back in my early days of researching I had picked up the marriage at Penton Mewsey. I corrected my files to show Ann and I must now find that marriage if I am able to do so. I also found a marriage for Thomas (younger brother of Joseph) at Andover to Hester Stephens in 1852 (by Licence, Thomas was only 18). I corrected my webpage. I have always meant to look at Penton Mewsey to extract the entries but the will of John reminded me and I had gone looking for that first thing which is what distracted me from the Devon Parish Registers.

Now I have a list of the Blake family register entries at Penton Mewsey and I was noticing as I looked at the burial register at Andover that a number of Blake entries are at Little London which is just between Andover and Abbots Ann. It could be that I may have located the family line for the Blake family at Abbots Ann where John Blake malster leaves a will in 1796. There are two distinct Blake lines that have their initial entries at Knights/Kings Enham and Eastontown in the late 1400s. Hence they are quite distinctly separate by the time the registers are set up in the 1500s. Eventually I will get all the Blake entries extracted from the various parish registers that I have. But there is a Sacheverall Blake at Penton Mewsey (Charles Blake named one of his sons by this distinctive name). Was he doing so just as a gesture or was this a relative of Charles? A question I may place on my website for people looking for Charles Blake to find.

This has now given me pause to think about why Thomas King mentioned John Blake malster at Abbots Ann daughter in his will. Initially I was thinking it was because the Penton Mewsey and the Abbots Ann Blake family were related and the link was through the Blake family but now I will look more carefully at the King family to see what link may exist between John Blake at Abbots Ann and Thomas King at Upper Clatford. John mentions the church at Upper Clatford in his will. I do not have the marriage between John Blake and his wife Mary - it wasn't at Abbots Ann. There was a Blake family at Upper Clatford in the 1600s (Peter Blake) and there was one widow Mary Blake who died there in 1762 (I have her will and need to review that one as well). My Blake family did not commence at Upper Clatford until 1757 when Joseph Blake of Andover married Joanna King (daughter of Thomas King).

We went and saw the lights on Parliament Hill last night. Certainly one of the worst nights of the winter in terms of snow (we had about 30 cm yesterday) but it was the last night and we simply hadn't made it into the city this past couple of weeks. We have been so incredibly busy. I am looking forward to some quiet weeks so that I can assemble my thoughts and get some really constructive work done on my proofs for my 64 4x great grandparents. I am actually missing eight names entirely (seven mothers and one father) and have only the first name for two mothers. I have ten people for whom I need links to their parents. That means that I actually have 44 that I can find proofs for at hand which is phenomenal. For my mother's father's family I have no missing people and can readily trace all of the lines back to the 5x greatgrandparents and in many cases further back then that. This was a family that kept up contacts with their family members through the years (although not after my grandfather died in 1925 so I had to rely on my mother's memory and then the records to feel my way back). But as I did so I encountered people also searching who knew of my line through their family lines - very interesting!

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 6 Jan 2009

After concentrating on the Bishops Nympton records for a week and the discipline of it, yesterday was a day of catching up and looking at lots of interesting bits and pieces. I want to prove all of my 4x great grandparents and I am starting to work down the list. These are my grandparents 2x great grandparents so I will be proving up to 64 people over the next little while. I started with my paternal grandfather. That means sixteen people to prove their relationship to my grandfather's great grandparents and to their parents my five times great grandparents.

Starting with my grandfather's paternal ancestors, the first two: Joseph Blake and Joanna King are quite straightforward as I have all the information needed to show the two relationships. The next two: John Coleman and Elizabeth Pearce are straightforward for John Coleman but Elizabeth Pearce is more of a challenge. They marry at Abbots Ann (not Old Alresford as is found on the IGI) as I have the fiche of the original register. Unfortunately no parent details are found for this couple in the marriage registration. John was baptized at Upper Clatford as it would appear that the Coleman family found earlier at Goodworth Clatford is no longer running the Inn there and his parents are buried at Upper Clatford. The interesting part about the Pearce family is that they ran an Inn at Abbots Ann but I am not sure of the relationship between Peter Pearce who ran the Inn and William Pearce the possible father of Elizabeth. William Pearce married Elizabeth Habgood at Collingbourne Kingston where she was baptized (daughter of Thomas Habgood and Anne Farmer (interesting detail!)) and their children were baptized at Collingbourne Ducis. I haven't found a baptism for this William Pearce or parents. I have nothing to go on with regard to this Elizabeth being the wife of John Coleman other than proximity. There were four Pearce marriages at Abbots Ann in this time frame and none of them state other than that they were "of the parish."

I am ordering the parish register fiche for Collingbourne Ducis and Collingbourne Kingston. I did look at these two parishes in Salt Lake City and have copies of the Poor Rate there and registers at Kingston. I will continue looking at this information today. Proving Elizabeth may take a while so once I have ordered the registers I will move on to the next couple: and they are interestingly enough John Farmer and his wife Mary. Isaac Farmer (an unusual forename) signed his marriage registration with a good clear hand at Woodhouse in Andover 16 Aug 1789. The Isaac Farmer that marries at Andover (Elizabeth Lambden) was not baptized at Andover (I have the fiche and have studied them for Isaac). The only Isaac Farmer that I have found to date was baptized at Collingbourne Kingston 6 May 1764 (matches his age at burial of 44 years in 1808).

Clearly I have not proven the connection between this Isaac my 3x great grandfather and John Farmer who is baptizing an Isaac at Collingbourne Kingston which is why the marriage between Thomas Habgood and Anne Farmer is rather interesting (great grandparents of Sarah Coleman who is the wife of Thomas Blake (son of Joseph mentioned above). This Anne Farmer married Thomas at Collingbourne Kingston. John Blake who married Ann Farmer at Andover is the son of Sarah Coleman. One of the daughters of Elizabeth Lambden Farmer (wife of Isaac) married Thomas Hawkins of Collingbourne Kingston at Andover one year earlier than the marriage between John Blake and Ann Farmer at Andover. Clearly this is not proof of the relationship between Isaac Farmer married to Elizabeth Lambden and John Farmer baptizing an Isaac Farmer at Collingbourne Kingston but it is certainly an interesting happening.

To pursue an answer I again need to look more carefully at the records of Collingbourne Kingston which I will continue to do today as well as ordering the fiche. Mary, wife of John Farmer, was buried in 1761 so could not be the mother of Isaac. He must have remarried but he too was buried in 1771 at Collingbourne Kingston. I shall try family reconstuction on his other two sons as well John b 1756 and Joseph b 1759 to see if that will help to link these families.

Since the Lambden family is also involved I will be looking at the parents of Elizabeth (my 3x great grandmother): Nathanael Lambden and Sarah his wife (surname unknown). I tried to purchase the fiche for the two parishes of Thatcham and Bradfield in Berkshire where there is a Nathan(i or a)el Lambden baptized in the correct time frame but this is not possible. I may purchase the transcription of the Bradfield register transcription from the FHS there and that one is very interesting as it has the Nathanael spelling which is the one which Nathanael Lambden used when he signed the marriage register for Elizabeth marrying Isaac Farmer. Having now traveled the roads in the area around Andover I can see it is quite feasible to see Nathanael marrying in Bradfield Berkshire and then traveling to Andover with his family to work for the rest of his life at Woodhouse as a wheelwright. All of their children are baptized at Woodhouse.

Looking at my paternal grandfather's maternal ancestors I know the names of all eight and I have the parents for six of them. This is my Dorset family line which begins with my grandfather's mother Maria Jane Knight who was born at Turnworth Dorset in 1850. More about them when I complete looking at my paternal grandfather's paternal line. Having so much information on the Dorset line is great as I am unable to purchase the parish fiche for my Dorset parishes. For the two that I am missing it will take a fair amount of digging to work their lines back I rather suspect. This is one of my collapsing lines as two of my 3x great grandparents (married) were first cousins.

As well today I want to continue looking at the Rose Ash, Merton, Landkey and Molland parish register fiche. Landkey proved interesting with the Walter Manning family baptizing children in the 1630s when Thomas (father of John Manning baptized 1655 at Landkey) could have been born (married to Elizabeth Upcott at Landkey in 1653). I want to have a longer look at that time period as some of the entries are difficult to read and perhaps have not been transcribed into the IGI.

At Rose Ash I want to look at the Vicary family; at Merton the Rowcliffe family and at Molland I continue to look at the Pincombe family there both in the 1800s when John and Elizabeth (my 2x great grandparents) lived there and earlier to see if there are other Pincombe lines there.

Another snowfall and it continues to snow here with a good wind. We are supposed to have 25 centimetres so the buildup begins that only sees an end with the thaws of late March and early April. Last year when we went to England 19th of April, the snow was still about 4 feet high in the front yard. I love the snow actually and we will try snowshoeing or skiing this afternoon. When it snows heavy it is usually a little milder here and then we go into a deep freeze for a few days which compacts it and builds up the ice on the canal. If you have winter; this is by far the best kind where the snow gradually builds up and you do not have the severe flooding that comes with the freeze, thaw, freeze cycles to the south of us.

Bishops Nympton Parish Register - 6 Jan 2009

Time to take the tree down; traditionally we never take the tree down until Epiphany. It always seems like Christmas until January 6th. We usually decorate on the eve of Advent I (end of November, beginning of December) so the season lasts for five weeks - Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. This year we didn't get out the battered Christmas China. Most of the pieces are still very nice after 25 years but the plates have chips here and there. I actually missed them Christmas Day (as did everyone else) but we were simply too busy this year and forgot to do that.

Yesterday I finished Fiche 5 of Bishops Nympton and I am at 475 pages of text in word (single spaced). There has been a lot of detail in the register but now we are into forms and the detail still there for some of the priests isn't quite so colourful. I am up to 1774 with the Banns and the next Fiche (6) continues on with Banns and then a couple of prints on the 7th Fiche and then I am into the forms for 1813 which includes baptisms, marriages and burials. It is somewhat hard to believe that on just six fiche (Fiche one occurs twice with the oldest called Fiche 1 and then the 2nd Register is also labeled one) there has been so much information. The priest wrote in small hand on the pages and there might be as many as eight years on facing pages. I am going to take a break for a few days from Bishops Nympton and look at my new Devon Fiche.

I was glancing at Landkey trying to learn more about the Manning and Upcott families there. I found a Walter Manning baptizing children there in the right time period for Thomas (1630s) as we know that John Manning son of Thomas was baptized in 1655 at Landkey (son of Thomas Manning and Elizabeth Upcott). I do find an Elizabeth Upcott baptized at Witheridge (daughter of John Upcott and Marye) in 1634. Is this my Elizabeth? Still working on that. I am trying to prove the 4x great grandparents at this point so I may wait until we go to Salt Lake City once again to work on this line since Thomas and Elizabeth would be my 7x great grandparents.

Today I shall look at Rose Ash for the Vicary family, Merton for the Rowcliffe family (and there is a Pincombe family there I have discovered) and Molland for the Pincombe family. I already found the baptism of my great grandfather William Robert there. I have seen it on the IGI but I wanted to have the original image. Elizabeth Rew (his mother) appears to have been a "closet" methodist although all of her children were baptized Church of England and she attended Church of England after her marriage. The area of Somerset (Selworthy) where she grew up had a large Dissenter following. It is interesting how people tended to hide their religious views if they were different from the Establishment even in the 1800s.

We went looking at new laptops yesterday and found one that was interesting (and a good price) but all sold out by the time we had come to a decision. We will keep looking as Ed needs a new laptop. We also want to purchase one of the small laptops when we go to Europe the next time. It could just be in a small shoulder bag and save the large briefcase that Ed carried all the time last trip. They actually have them for less than $500 now so we will watch for a sale. I would like to pay $400 for the laptop plus the service contract and we are actually seeing a couple of brands that would fit into that criteria. As the number of them selling increase the price appears to come down so we will wait until summer to purchase anything like that. We are still thinking of Europe in 2009 but it may be 2010.

Bishops Nympton Parish Register - 5 Jan 2009

The Banns are now transcribed up to 1767 which means I have now done the banns for John Pincombe and Mary Charlie (sp). Up until 1766 the Vicar Lemuel Griffiths kept beautiful records mentioning occupation for the groom but the priest changed at the end of 1766 and the records have less information. I would dearly have loved to see how Mary Charlie (sp) would have signed her own name on her marriage registration but the next priest opted for having the "bride" sign with her new husband's surname. Transcribing this register is fairly straightforward now as the handwriting is very similar to the present day in terms of formation of letters. The names of the villages/towns are similar to the present day with some exceptions. Nymett is still being used instead of Nympton.

We continued to watch Cranford and concluded the five issues. A really interesting series about life in England in 1842-43. Sudden death, wonderful happenings occur rapidly and on the same day on occasion. Life was so violent, so calm and so predictable in this time frame. I especially enjoyed it as all but one line of my ancestors were living in various parts of England at this time (many of them were farmers but one in particular ran a restaurant (eating place) at Birmingham). On his daughter's marriage registration he was listed as a gentleman and the series gives me a better idea of what his shop may have been like and the kind of person he may have been although we do not experience a large city in this series but do hear about Manchester which is only 12 miles away from this village.

A walk around the large block near us (2.5 kilometres) was a pleasant way to spend another 45 minutes in the afternoon. We have lots of snow still even after the thaw. The thaw simply compacts it down, forms an ice layer which takes quite a while in the spring to thaw but waters the ground well into the summer here.

Bishops Nympton Parish Register - 4 Jan 2009

I completed the marriage registrations for Bishops Nympton to 1812 and started the Banns (up to 1760 now). Again I am using cut and paste which means just typing in the personal information and saves me quite a bit of time. But the details are often quite interesting for my personal lines and for my one name Pincombe study so I sometimes get "off topic" and spend time entering details into my studies.

I added my fiche to my ongoing list of sources that I want to send to the Anglican Archives. I offered to do work for them as a volunteer so just need to let them know the records that I hold. I still need to list all of my books and I have managed to acquire quite a few of those as well. I have more fiche coming and want to order Hampshire and Wiltshire fiche one of these days.

I pulled out my CG application and will submit that to begin my one year of study and submission. I want to do this to give more support to my work on my family tree and to begin to submit articles to more journals since I have discovered some interesting publishable tidbits. I will proofread the Lanercost Protestation Returns and write up a preamble and short history to go with it so I can submit that to the Cumbria Family History Society Journal. The time passes very quickly these days but will be a little quieter by mid January.

Other than my fiche transcription on Bishops Nympton, I continued revising my webpage by neatening up the spacing so it is more consistent. I also revised some of the entries so that they only fill one page. Just Routledge runs over now and it is hard to get around that one since I have both of my 3x great grandparents as Routledge and their lines back that each include three Routledge lines or more (3 of my 4x great grandparents in this line are also Routledge). I neatened up the Blake preamble and put in a divider between the Hampshire Blake information and the Wiltshire Blake information. I have not proven the Wiltshire line at all yet and it is solely from published works (mostly American descendants of William Blake the emigrant in 1635 from Pitminster Somerset).

We watched Cranford a BBC production on life in this village in 1842. The characters remind me of my families although I am remembering them from the 1950s and 1960s but I think rapid change came with my generation whereas their generations were more like their parents. We purchased a number of DVD sets this Christmas which will give us over 30 hours of watching. We generally set aside two to three hours in the afternoon for our TV watching pleasure so it will be a while before we have gone through everything once and these DVDs are so good that I think we will watching them several times this winter so as not to miss all the little extra bits that are there and you miss them the first time through.

Bishops Nympton Parish Register - 3 Jan 2009

I worked on the Wedding Registrations once again for the Bishops Nympton Register bringing me up to 1810 (just 12 left to enter to complete to 1812). There were Banns kept from 1754 to 1812 as well (about 360 entries) and they are mostly there for everyone of the marriages in this time period. The priests at this parish used the "new" form for marriages and banns which gives a lot of information and is most helpful with these families. So helpful that my transcription has been slow as I added the details to the Pincombe one name study and to my own personal family tree. Along with the Freeholder book entries, I have been able to completely sort out the Pincombe families that lived in this area. It has shown me that I need to do the same with the records for North and South Molton and probably the other parishes that I purchased this past year - Rose Ash, Merton, Molland and Landkey. I have the Chittlehampton from our time at Salt Lake City and they proved to be quite interesting for the Pincombe family there.

My webpage suddenly disappeared yesterday so I spent a little while discovering what happened there. It is now reinstated with a counter which I might find interesting to look at. Adding in all the details for my family lines back to the 3x great grandparents was an item that I have had on the back burner for awhile. I wanted to check out the details at Salt Lake City before I posted them to my webpage since George Cotterill is the reputed father of Ada Bessie Cotteril Rawlings. I still need to check the Bastardy Orders to see if he was charged as the father. Not one line of this passed down through the family other than my father's comment on his grandfathers - one was a gardener (William Taylor), one was an agricultural labourer (Edward Blake) and one was a bailiff (George Cotterill began as an agricultural labourer but advanced to bailiff of an estate (his grandfather John Sherwood was a bailiff of an estate in Kimpton)). It wasn't until I got into genealogy that his comments sunk in and made sense to me. I had been looking for my grandmother Blake's registration at the time we created their 50th Anniversary Wedding Book (1987-88) and then occasionally I would glance again as records appeared but not with an interest in genealogy but rather personal. Then when the interest in genealogy came to me after our visit to England in 2001, I began to search in earnest. With my course work and discussion on family reconstruction, I began to recreate the half siblings of Bessie (she was known as Edith Bessie Taylor before her marriage) and found their mother Elizabeth Rawlings. That led me to the 1881 census where William Rawlings had a granddaughter Ada living with him (5 years old). My Bessie was also born in 1876 and I then searched on Ada Rawlings in the Free BMD indexes and found Ada Bessie C Rawlings born in the second quarter 1876. Bessie was born 1 April 1876. The birth registration arrived and Elizabeth Rawlings was the mother of this child and I had my grandmother's birth registration at long last.

Webpage Update and Bishops Nympton PRs

After overhauling my webpage "Table of Contents" the day before, I spent a little time compiling a list of people that I have in each generation back to the 6x great grandparents that I have not yet put on my webpage or that I am missing. I was missing 1 at the great grandparent level, 1 at the 2x great grandparent level, 5 at the 3x great grandparent level, 10 known at the 4x great grandparents level (with nine unknown), 11 known at the 5x great grandparent level (with 47 unknown) and 19 known at the 6x great grandparent level (with 185 unknown). A lot of work to do at the 4x, 5x and 6x great grandparent level even yet (241 people to find although some of these will be included in my Routledge/Knight lines that collapse together). I have 2 Routledge cousins at the 3x great grandparent level and 2 Knight cousins at the 3x great grandparent level (reducing the number of lines as I work my way back) and then a likely Knight line in common at the 6x great grandparent level. It is amazing how quickly your tree collapses when there are first/second/third cousin marriages. I then added the Cotterill, Sherwood, Alderman, Habberfield, Dove, Harborne and Lawley lines to my webpage. That brings me to the 4x great grandparent level which I am now proving. As I prove each line back I will add them to my webpage. I find this an interesting way to display my information plus I can begin adding transcriptions of documents about people for whom I receive requests for information. This has its pros and cons in that people might not then write to me and I would not gain their insight into the family lines.

I continued working on the Bishops Nympton PRs for marriages bringing me up to 1803. I continue to find so many interesting witnesses to these marriages that I am finding my process through this material rather slow. I have quite a number of lines at Bishops Nympton since my families were there from 1599 up to the present. I did correspond with one family member but haven't heard back from her. I believe she is descended from the brother of my 3x great grandfather.

Charley Family and Bishops Nympton

The wills of Somerset list only two Chorley members (one at Porlock which is interesting). The question to answer perhaps is did the Chorley family of Bampton/Tiverton Hundred move north to the Barnstaple area or did they independently move from West Somerset (Porlock area) to the North Devon area? Continued reconstruction of the family in Somerset may answer that question but it is rewarding to have been able to look at the Charley family in such a thorough way as Mary Charlie at Bishops Nympton was very much of a brickwall these past five years of researching. I knew about Mary from the beginning of my research days since my mother had been able to recall her Pincombe line back to John Pincombe and Grace Manning the parents of John Pincombe who married Mary Charlie at Bishops Nympton. I added Charley to my webpage under 4x great grandparents as I also reorganized my webpage to list names under their particular generation. It has a clean look to it as the number of names was becoming lengthy.

Continued working on the Bishops Nympton register and have moved the marriages transcription to 1802 now. I continue to find interesting marriages which slows me down as I fit them into the Pincombe one name study. Eventually I would like to look at Bishops Nympton as a one place study. Having visited there in the spring of 2008, I can see that it would be a very interesting one place study. I suspect that it hasn't changed a lot in the last few hundred years other than the normal modern improvements of paved roads and amenities. The graveyard of St Mary the Virgin Parish Church was particularly surprising - all the large trees have been cut back giving it a somewhat austere look which will improve as the trees fill back in again. The graveyard itself was immaculate with all lawns neatly clipped around the stones. Finding my Robert Pincombe and Elizabeth Rowcliffe's stone was a real luxury especially given that it was behind a large fir tree and fastened to the exterior wall of the Church. Perhaps at some time it broke off and this was to ensure that it was not lost.