Transcription continuing for Andover Parish Registers at St Marys Parish

Again I worked on my transcriptions of the Andover Parish Registers. Today thus far I have completed 5328 baptisms to date and I am up to 1 Feb 1678. This set of fiche are complete with March 1648 (end of year). The names of the people have changed somewhat. There are very few Blake entries and they represent two lines only - one coming down from Nicholas Blake who died 1547 at Old House and one from his brother Robert Blake who died in 1542 in Kings Enham. There may be older members of the Blake family there but they are not showing up at the moment because I am only doing the baptisms. The priest has now separated the baptisms from the marriages and from the burials. He has started quite early to do so in this parish as Bishops Nympton does not start to separate them out until the early 1700s. This set of fiche began in 1642 and already the three services have been separated.

Have I learned anything yet about my Blake or other families. I have found a couple of Spring baptisms that I was curious about. They were difficult to read and the two girls were twins (duly noted by the priest). The writing was very small so I missed it in my cursory look at the registers initially. It was an accidental find of an important piece of information that inspired me to begin transcriptions in the first place. I was very early to Genealogy (around 2003) when I started the Bishops Nympton registers. I completed them in 2009 and I could have by 2005 started to put them into an excel file but I decided to complete the project that way and it is quite useful to me but can not be send in to be put on my OPC Bishops Nympton site. I work away at converting it when the opportunity presents itself.

I will do the Cardinal Points for the Andover Registration District in as much as I am able and will send that in. Perhaps someone will do Andover Registration District Marriage Challenge for the Guild of One Name Studies. Although for me there isn't any benefit. Mostly I only benefit from Marriage Challenges in a couple of areas because my guild one name studies are very small and localized.

Our dishwasher broke so we are shopping around to see what is available. Ours was just a countertop model which has been interesting the last year that we have had it. It was used and the dial simply gave up. There are 45 cm portable ones that look quite interesting and would fit well into our kitchen. I do not want to give up the cupboard space to have one installed into the counter.