Blake and Routledge

These two family lines have the most emails from others including 7x and 8x cousins. I worked through all the information on the Blake family that I have received and added a couple of documents to my excel file. The Routledge family has many many emails chocked full of information on the many different family lines at Bewcastle.

There is so much information on the Routledge family that I am still sorting through all of it. I am now aware that there were 56 Routledge families in 1604 all living on different parcels of land and primarily in the Bewcastle area. By 1641-42 there were 23 males at Bewcastle over the age of 18 who signed the Protestation Returns. In less than 40 years the number of potential families at Bewcastle had been reduced by more than 50%! The family lore that passed down was that following the ascension of James VI Scotland to the throne of England as James I the Border Reivers (of which the Routledge were numbered) were harassed from their lands in the Bewcastle area - many did not survive, some fled to Ireland and others stayed under very punitive conditions. Eventually I need to read the Manor Books to learn more about my Oakshaw branch of the Routledge family (which was, by the 19th century, slowly dying out). The Routledge family suddenly branches out through the late 18th century into the 19th century which was probably the reason for their survival to the present. Many Routledge/Rutledge (name in Ireland) families emigrated to the United States with my own emigrating to Canada in 1818.

Today I shall continue reading through the emails on the Routledge family and building up my file of my material so that I can extract all the Routledge, Robson and Tweddle information plus with a side look at the Armstrong, Bushby, Goodfellow and a couple of other lines that are related. Already I have found new material for my various lines. My 2x great grandmother Elizabeth Mary Ann Routledge's parents were Thomas Routledge (son of Henry Routledge and Margaret Tweddle) and Elizabeth Routledge (daughter of George Routledge and Grace/Grizzel Routledge). Mary Routledge's great grandparents were William Routledge and Grizzel Routledge, Thomas Tweddle and Margaret Robson, George Routledge (and unknown), Thomas Routledge and Mary Routledge. Mary has five Routledge great grandparents (and possibly six as the Oakshaw Routledge generally married another Routledge). Moving back one more generation will possibly see my lines start to "deflate" in that I may have shared great great grandparents but I am likely only going to be able to determine that by reading the manor records.

My Routledge family has always been very interesting to me because my mother had stories of her great great grandparents passed down through the family (her father was named John Routledge Pincombe for his maternal grandmother's side of the family and he and his mother were very close). His mother would have most of her aunts and uncles as a child growing up in London Township.

I started a new excel file for the CMBs of the Routledge family that I have collected in my trawling through Parish Registers, from other researchers and from the published works that I have. It is already over 1500 entries but not yet finished. I will continue to work away at that.

As well I have carried on with our daughter and son-in-law to be's family tree (our section is now penciled into the eight generation chart) and we have the maternal line now complete and need to pencil those entries in. Just the paternal line to do and it will be quite interesting more so perhaps for our daughter's future first niece or nephew due to arrive in 2010. I think I will make up a chart especially for them to go with the knitted sweater/leggings set that I need to start sooner rather than later. But first I need to sew my dress and today I shall do my tailor tacking.