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 :)
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