Library and Archives Canada

We spent Friday and part of Saturday at Library and Archives Canada. Ed wanted to verify some of the newspaper obituaries for the article on his Great Grandfather Wilhelm Schultz who had come from Germany in about 1866 to Oxford/Brant Counties area.

This man had been quite a mystery through the years. We have a beautiful picture of Wilhelm, his wife Rachel Niemann and their three children plus the original baptismal certificate for his grandmother Ida Caroline Wilhelmina Schultz. We have three census reporting this family in 1871, 1881 and 1891. We finally found the marriage registration but we were unsure as it read John Fred William Muller and Freidericka Naumann and the marriage date 25 Dec 1866. We knew they were married around that time as their first son Charles was born 22 October 1867.

I decided to look up the Bertrand family because of conflicting marriages that I had found online. I now have the information from the archives which was prepared by a noted genealogist of the day. I shall try to figure out which one is correct.

An email from my Blake correspondent got me thinking about the Blake Wiltshire Lineage Chart again. I have two William Blakes living at Andover in the 1500s. The one is the son of Nicholas Blake (and my 11x great grandfather) and the second has been to date unknown. The chart shows a line down through William Blake married to Avice Ripley and living at Andover. This William is said to be a son of Roger Blake and Mary Baynard. The visitation does not list a William. However, the interesting part is that the daughter Margaret of William Blake and the son John of William Blake (my 11x great grandfather) married Margaret the daughter of William Blake. The suspicion is that the line is simply in the wrong place and it should show Margaret as the daughter of William Blake (the caption in the circle states that Margaret is the daughter of William Blake aforesaid and he is the only candidate for that!) in the chart marrying John Blake the son of William Blake who is not on the chart. Hopefully I will be able to clarify that when we are in London at Kew. It would be a somewhat monumental step forward in linking the Blake family at Andover with the Blake family at Calne. There is still the mystery of exactly who is the Blake who was married to the widow Jone Blake who left a will dated 23 Mar 1527 at Knights Enham (near Andover). But solving the above mystery would at least link the families on that line and seeing them both living at Eastontown in that time frame one is left to work out the relationship between these two family lines that marry at Andover.