Blake family at Strood and King family research at Upper Clatford

A new marriage challenge for Strood Registration District in Kent from 1886 to 1920 and I have already collected Kent marriages. I needed to order them however and that is my first task for the day. I am starting to rethink how I am organizing the Blake marriages. By using counties as my delimiter I will have some registration districts that overlap giving me a double count in some cases in my overall total. I need to decide if it is better to go by registration districts although they are much more numerable than counties but it would save me time in the long run. I have only just begun to submit for marriage challenges for the Blake one name study but eventually my marriage challenges will contain all the marriages in a particular registration district. How best to arrange all of this information? Are registration districts the most important or are the counties the most important? Certainly when I look at the Blake family at Andover I am looking at the Registration District which does overlap with Wiltshire.

I think the answer to which is the best way of collecting the information is to continue as I am since I would be covering both bases - checking I see that there is duplication within counties for overlapping registration districts. This way I cover both angles and it may be that I want to look at a county or a registration district but I will need to remember that the county includes the overlap. If I get involved with statistics looking at numbers I will need to work with registration districts rather than counties. But the historical counties are also something I would likely refer to.

I think I have passed now on thinking about doing my Masters and/or PhD in population studies. I think I would just rather work on my one name studies and do a little research on my other family lines on the schedule which I have produced. For the most part I am looking at all the families at the 4x great grandparent level with a few exceptions. I shall recount them just to record for future reference.

Taylor at Birmingham is my great grandmother's line (and my mtDNA line). My knowledge on this family is all family lore. Other than stories about her mother that I heard from my maternal grandmother and finding her death registration, census entries and the entry for her illegitimate daughter born before she was married to Edwin Denner Buller, I know very little about her. She died so young - only 37 years old and of pneumonia as my grandmother had told me. Between 1886 when my grandmother was born to 1895 when my youngest great aunt was born she had seven children. They moved house four times - moving to a new house as the city grew but all within a four block radius of where they first lived after marriage. Edwin Buller worked two full time jobs (from my grandmother's memory). This is by far my weakest line in terms of research although I can take the Buller line back to my 3x great grandfather Christopher.

 I am only researching my paternal grandmother's mother's line as my grandmother was illegitimate although her likely father was George Cotterell. The priest has added Cotterell as one of her middle names in the baptism. There was only one Cotterell family in the village and the grandfather of George had come to Kimpton from Woodborough Wiltshire. No family lore on this at all actually as we thought her father was William Taylor (Elizabeth Rawlings and William Taylor married when my grandmother was six years old). She was raised in their household. In retrospect, as a child I always understood that my paternal grandmother wanted to return to England (as did my grandfather) when he finished working here. One might have thought she would have enjoyed the anonymity here but it has left me with the thought that she was unconcerned in that regard.

Another marriage challenge and I have 32 marriages to submit. I pull the information from Free BMD and then check the census to see if I can exactly determine the spouse and if not then I just insert the two/three names into the Other box. This is Strood Registration District and there are a lot of marriages there during the war years. I submitted Pately Bridge last night and that was just one marriage.

I need to put all the marriage challenges together for the Siderfin and the Pincombe family that I have acquired (not too many actually as they are small families) and submit them to the Guild Marriage Database. I need to come up with a system as there will be a lot of Blake marriages. Blake marriages at Strood RD 1886-1920.

Year    Qtr.    Last Name    First Name(s)    Spouse
1886    Sep    Blake     Richard    Francis, Catherine Sandford
1886    Dec    Blake     William Thomas    Kemp, Harriet
1887    Jun    Blake     Fanny Amelia    Dann, Henry
1889    Jun    Blake     Mary Ann    Petley, Henry
1890    Dec    Blake     Alfred David    Cole, Alice Mary
1893    Dec    Blake     Charlotte Osenton    Nugent, Walter Sidney, or Scott (Whitnall), Albert Boyce
1895    Dec    Blake     Ellen Kate    Perrin, Thomas
1895    Dec    Blake     Ellen Lydia    Ashby, Charles William or Cole, Richard Thomas
1896    Sep    Blake     Alfred Osenton    Whiffin, Alice Sarah
1897    Mar    Blake     John William    Accleton, Edith Agnes
1897    Jun    Blake     Mary Ann      Reed, James
1899    Dec    Blake     Mary Ann    Reed, James
1901    Mar    BLAKE     Eliza    Lawrence, Edwin John
1901    Sep    BLAKE     Ebenezer James    Clare, Ada Emma
1903    Mar    Blake     Clara    Nicholls, Edward George M
1903    Dec    Blake     George Arthur    Cox, Ada Jane or Letley, Jane Sarah
1904    Mar    Blake    Esther Florence I    Harvey, Edwin Dibney
1904    Mar    Blake     Thomas Charles    Andrews, Elizabeth or Jewsbury, Winifred Emily
1907    Sep    BLAKE     George Walter    Hancock, Elizabeth Ada E or White, Alice Maude
1907    Dec    BLAKE     Ada Louisa    Hoadley, Arthur William
1908    Jun    Blake     Ellen           Phillips, Edmund William
1908    Jun    Blake     Elsie Eliza    Long, Albert or Terry, Arthur
1908    Dec    BLAKE     Ada Maud    Usborne, Henry John
1910    Sep    Blake     Frederick    Elcombe, Beatrice Helen
1911    Dec    Blake     Florence E    Hulyer, George A or Saville, William
1912    Jun    Blake     Hilda H     Hoadley, Frederick
1912    Sep    Blake     Elizabeth A     Brooks, William H
1913    Jun    Blake     Ernest W     Oliver, Charlotte
1913    Sep    Blake     Alice M     Forbes, James E
1916    Dec    Blake     Alfred R     Waters, Beatrice G E
1916    Dec    Blake     Alice E     Faram, Alfred J
1920    Sep    Blake     Emily     Mant, Frederick F

The seven italicized names I have not yet determined their spouse using the census.

This is also my day to look at the King family at Upper Clatford for my review of my family lines. I had scheduled myself to work on the Hearth Tax Returns of 1665 for the King Family  and they are as follows:

       
Upper Clatford     442     King     Stephen
Upper Clatford     442     King     William
Upper Clatford     442     King     widow
Upper Clatford     442     King     Thomas
Cholderton     447     King     Thomas
South Tidworth and Sarson     451 King     Richard
Monxton     455     King     Richard
Andover     434     Aldermans Row     Kinge     John
Kings Enham     440     Kinge     Robert
Upper Clatford     442     Kinge     Catherine
Over Wallop     456     Kinge     William
Over Wallop     456     Kinge     Ellen
Cadnam     463     Kinge     Thomas
   
Five members of the King family are at Upper Clatford, Then two at Over Wallop and the remaining are singly at Cholderton, South Tidworth/Sarson, Monxton, Andover (Aldermans Row), Kings Enham, and Cadnam. All are close to Upper Clatford.

The King family were millers at Upper Clatford. I do not yet know the father of my Thomas King. Thomas was a farmer; I do not know if he is related to the King family that were millers. In 1665 there is a Thomas King at Upper Clatford and he did have a son Thomas baptized in 1688 at Upper Clatford but this Thomas was buried as a young child. The records are a bit scanty around the 1700s so I can not tell if he had another son Thomas. Stephen and William are the other two male King members at Upper Clatford. Now my aim was to check and see if anyone had started to research my family in the last few months since I have looked at the King family - a search of FMP, Ancestry, World Connect and Mocavo will be the next part of my research routine.

It takes about thirty minutes to search these four particular sites looking at Thomas King. I did find Thomas' burial on FMP (already transcribed in the Upper Clatford Parish Registers); his marriage was likely by banns as no record of a license found on FMP (the parish register did not state if by banns). Ancestry I checked out the ten relevant trees and I believe that most of them have their material from me. I initially thought that Thomas King was the son of Thomas King and Abigaill but finding the burial when I was transcribing the records (a couple of months ago) changed that thought somewhat. He may still be their son but I haven't found a baptism or any other proof of that relationship. Most have him married to Mary Carter and the marriage 10 Jan 1728 between Thomas King and Mary Carter would appear to be reasonable. Thomas and Mary named their first daughter Mary (baptism missing) and she married John Blake malster at Abbotts Ann. Thomas' will mentions his grandchildren although he doesn't say they are his grandchildren but this will does appear to link these families through the maternal side which was an interesting find for me plus John Blake married Mary King at Upper Clatford. Their second daughter Elizabeth died as an infant (although some have married her off) and the third daughter Joanna married Joseph Blake my ancestor. No new information gleaned there. World Connect has only one tree with Joseph Blake and that is once again my information given to Charlou Dolan. Mocavo is an interesting new website but even putting quotes around Thomas King and adding Hampshire and England did not reveal anything new.

I want to think out my next research strategy for eight weeks hence as that will be when I look at the King family once again. I believe that I will look once again at the Carter wills that I brought back from Kew. It is time to transcribe them and that can be the product of my next look at the King family. Joanna (widow) married Thomas Collins, farmer, at Upper Clatford in 1781 after fourteen years of widowhood. Thomas' wife had died two years earlier. My ancestor would have been 14 and his elder brother William would have been 17. William is at Andover when his uncle John published his will in 1792, Ann was keeping house for him and Thomas was at Upper Clatford. Perhaps William went to live with his grandfather Thomas Blake - was he alive then? But that is veering away from the King family. I think I will stick to looking at the Carter wills and seeing if there is anything in the Carter family that might help me - it is very easy to turn to the Blake family and most of my effort will be concentrated there anyway.