Andover Parish Registers - 2

I had every intention of working on the Andover Parish Registers later in the day yesterday but never got back to them. We took the dogs for a walk and then spent the afternoon with them - they were lonely!

Today I will spend some time on the Andover Parish Registers but I also want to do two more bookshelves and put them on LibraryThingy. This is an exciting new database online in which you can enter all your books. It will give us a chance to do an inventory and then figure out what else we want to give away as we continue to downsize. Eventually I only want to keep the books that I enjoy reading that are non genealogical and all my genealogical material.

I am still deep in thought on the Blake family and it is quite exciting actually to be once again looking at them. It is quite a while since I actually did do so. From my grandfather and father I have my ancestry back to Nicholas although it was always tricky between John (b 1649) and William (b 1615). I would really like to find items other than the Parish Register and family lore that would link them together. Linking together William (b 1615) to William to Richard to William to Nicholas (b 1489) is easily obtained by wills and tax records. Finding one of my cousins to test their yDNA would also be exciting and I continue to mention that to every Blake male that writes to me on Genes Reunited! Mostly they write about Charles Blake and I finally put the will of John Blake up on my website. Linking Charles Blake back to my Thomas Blake is the usual reason for writing to me. Although I have searched the Andover Register and the Abbotts Ann Register I can not find an entry for the baptism of Charles Blake who married Mary Prince in 1737 at Abbotts Ann. Since Charles and his family are mentioned before mine in John's will and they receive more money I rather think they are more closely related. I still suspect the relationship between my Thomas (3x great grandfather) and John Blake is through the King family since Thomas King is his will (1762 probate) mentions the daughter of John Blake and gives her a legacy. She was just a young child then and the only surviving child of John. We visited his gravestone and that of Mary Blake Holmes his daughter when we were at Abbotts Ann last year. They were substantial stones about five feet high, well engraved and still in excellent condition 230 years later with Mary's stone being closer to 250 years old. Interestingly he remembered Mary's husband after my family!

Delving into the myriad Blake families in the Andover area will be a large task but most worthwhile now that I also have someone working with me on it who has been looking at the Blake family for quite a long period of time. Two heads are always better than one.

The discussion on APG looking at Genealogy and Academia continued apace yesterday but I stepped back from it after my original couple of posts. I am still new to the list and have much to learn. It is an interesting discussion list actually and they are very up to date in their comments particularly using the Genealogical Proof Standard.