Although a few days late (completed 27 December), the Parish Register for Bishops Nympton has now been converted from the word document to the excel document. Now begins the long task of proofreading the excel and word file. I will have them up simultaneously so that I can make corrections to both. Since I went to the trouble of initially doing a word by word accounting of the parish register it only seems logical that I should correct this document as well as the excel file.
Unfortunately, my husband had another fall and had to be dashed off to hospital by ambulance again on Tuesday. I spent the entire day with him at the hospital and fortunately the problem was quickly resolved (new drug conflict) and we were back home again at 9:45 pm. having been picked up by our daughter and son in law. It has been wonderful having everyone here for the week after Christmas although they head home now in order to get ready to go back to work next week. Our older daughter remains with us another couple of weeks doing research before she returns to teach once again.
I believe that I will start tomorrow to proofread the documents. I would like to accomplish that by the end of January although that might prove to be too short a time. I will have to see how the reading goes.
I am trying to decide about my commitments for next year. I am tempted to back away from absolutely everything in order to be free to assist my husband as needed. I do not want to commit to anything very far in advance which will have its difficulties. I shall consider that over the next couple of weeks.
This Blog will talk about researching my English ancestors from Canada but also the ancestors of our son in law whose families stretch back far into Colonial French Canada. My one name study of Blake and of Pincombe also dominate my blog these days.
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Thursday, December 29, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Bishops Nympton Registers
As Christmas Day comes nearer I realize that I will not quite complete the last group of records although very close. There are still 400 burials to convert to the excel chart and I will leave them now until after Christmas Day although if there is a lull in activities I may find myself completing them :)
In total the Bishops Nympton Parish Registers have yielded 7302 baptisms, 1284 marriages, 5398 burials (with 400 still to convert for a total of likely 5798 burials), and 365 banns. These registers run from the late 1550s to the late 1980s yielding 430 years of history for this small village in North Devon. For myself, I descend from a number of families with deep roots in Bishops Nympton dating back to the earlier parish registers - Pincombe (from the mid 1590s on), Thomas, Tapp (from the early 1600s on), Blackmoore, and Manning (middle 1600s on) with the Thomas and Blackmoore families being in the earliest registers. My Pincombe and Tapp families were from North Molton and my Manning family from Landkey.
Thoughts for the New Year and I shall be downsizing my efforts in genealogical activities once again as my home commitments become somewhat larger and my time for genealogy smaller. I will be concentrating on my Blake one name study and my Pincombe one name study.
The latest Pincombe yDNA results are most interesting in that the Pinkham descendant does not match the results of my likely 5th cousin. Finding someone to test my direct line from Robert Pincombe would be really great as it would give me a baseline from which to look at all the data. The Pinkham result is quite within the realm of results to be expected from Devon. We are still awaiting results beyond the first 12 but a quick test with Withey's Haplogroup Predictor does yield I haplogroup rather than the R1b that is predicted for the results of my 5th cousin on ysearch. Since he is unwilling to be part of the project and has entered the data himself I would really like to have results in the study that are from a known cousin. Will have to wait and see on that.
The original researchers for the Pincombe one name study have linked the Pinkham and Pincombe family as having a common ancestor. yDNA results are really the only way to determine if in reality this was a true common ancestry.
In total the Bishops Nympton Parish Registers have yielded 7302 baptisms, 1284 marriages, 5398 burials (with 400 still to convert for a total of likely 5798 burials), and 365 banns. These registers run from the late 1550s to the late 1980s yielding 430 years of history for this small village in North Devon. For myself, I descend from a number of families with deep roots in Bishops Nympton dating back to the earlier parish registers - Pincombe (from the mid 1590s on), Thomas, Tapp (from the early 1600s on), Blackmoore, and Manning (middle 1600s on) with the Thomas and Blackmoore families being in the earliest registers. My Pincombe and Tapp families were from North Molton and my Manning family from Landkey.
Thoughts for the New Year and I shall be downsizing my efforts in genealogical activities once again as my home commitments become somewhat larger and my time for genealogy smaller. I will be concentrating on my Blake one name study and my Pincombe one name study.
The latest Pincombe yDNA results are most interesting in that the Pinkham descendant does not match the results of my likely 5th cousin. Finding someone to test my direct line from Robert Pincombe would be really great as it would give me a baseline from which to look at all the data. The Pinkham result is quite within the realm of results to be expected from Devon. We are still awaiting results beyond the first 12 but a quick test with Withey's Haplogroup Predictor does yield I haplogroup rather than the R1b that is predicted for the results of my 5th cousin on ysearch. Since he is unwilling to be part of the project and has entered the data himself I would really like to have results in the study that are from a known cousin. Will have to wait and see on that.
The original researchers for the Pincombe one name study have linked the Pinkham and Pincombe family as having a common ancestor. yDNA results are really the only way to determine if in reality this was a true common ancestry.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Arnold Family
Reading the posts on the Dorset list, I discovered a new cousin (probably quite distant) who has done quite a bit of research on the Arnold family. It would be most exciting to read her book now unfortunately out of print so I will search for that but she has offered to send me a CD of her Arnold research which is greatly appreciated. I find that my only seven years of genealogy research has not given me enough time and background yet to really offer to send large sections to people. I am still busily checking and proving connections. For a specific name though I can provide some information that has been extracted from the original records providing that the individual shares part of my direct line. With my father being an only child born in 1904 and my mother had only one sibling with no children and she was born in 1916, there are only my own siblings who connect back along this direct line. Because my father was 33 when he married and my mother's father was 42 when he married I am back into the 1800s with all of my grandparents (1872, 1875, 1876, and 1886) and then for my great grandparents I am well back into the mid 1800s so that finding these people has not been at all difficult plus I grew up on a diet of family history luckily for me (1845, 1850, 1859, 1853, 1837, 1839, 1850, 1859). One more generation back takes me to the late 1700s and mostly first quarter of the 1800s for all my lines (1798, 1804, 1827, 1828, 1825, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1808, 1801, 1810, 1804, 1805, 1820, 1830, 1841).
Still continuing with the conversion of the Bishops Nympton Parish Registers and at the end of 1880 there are 6363 baptisms, end of 1812 3676 burials (the post 1812 are to come at the end of the file), 1111 marriages and 364 banns (no changes except in the baptisms). There are 106 years left on about 80 pages. The number of baptisms does decrease considerably in the 1900s. There are no Pincombe births in this time period which is as expected. All of the my direct line was gone from the Bishops Nympton area with emigrations to Canada and Australia.
The yDNA result has come in for the Pincombe study and he does not match either of the sets of results thus far. No one has tested in my direct line and I have hopes that someone will. The result on ysearch is supposed to be my fifth cousin but until someone I know is my cousin tests I am somewhat ambivalent about the result's accuracy. Hopefully one of these days more Pincombe/Pinkham descendants will test. The Pinkham testor is descendant of the New Hampshire family who did indeed emigrate from Devon. The result is exciting as it may prove whether or not the original investigators were correct in thinking that the Pinkham and Pincombe family share common ancestry. Their charts very much indicate this to be the case but yDNA can now conclude with accuracy whether or not two families are indeed related even if they share a couple of centuries of assumed relationship. Since the latest member is probably I2b1 rather than the R1b of the earlier members there is always the possibility that his ancestor took on the Pincome/Pinkham surname from his wife many centuries ago. Likely the Pincombe/Pinkham family grouping predates the Roman occupation of Britain. I2b1 members came from the Roman Legions mostly as auxiliaries and some of them stayed on. They could have become part of the Pincombe/Pinkham family grouping through marriage with daughters of this family prior even to surname selection.
Once Bishops Nympton is complete and it does appear I may accomplish this task before Christmas with respect to the conversion, then I will turn to South Molton transcription although these registers do not begin until 1600. The next part of the task is the proofreading of the file. Since I created it very early on in my transcribing career I do wish to proofread it very thoroughly before sharing it or sending it off to Genuki to put on the Bishops Nympton webpage. I receive even yet a few enquiries a week and I would like to publish all of my work to reduce their enquiries.
I have answered probably a thousand or more enquiries on my early transcriptions but I want to just put everything up where people can find it so that I can concentrate totally on my lines and those of our son in law.
Still continuing with the conversion of the Bishops Nympton Parish Registers and at the end of 1880 there are 6363 baptisms, end of 1812 3676 burials (the post 1812 are to come at the end of the file), 1111 marriages and 364 banns (no changes except in the baptisms). There are 106 years left on about 80 pages. The number of baptisms does decrease considerably in the 1900s. There are no Pincombe births in this time period which is as expected. All of the my direct line was gone from the Bishops Nympton area with emigrations to Canada and Australia.
The yDNA result has come in for the Pincombe study and he does not match either of the sets of results thus far. No one has tested in my direct line and I have hopes that someone will. The result on ysearch is supposed to be my fifth cousin but until someone I know is my cousin tests I am somewhat ambivalent about the result's accuracy. Hopefully one of these days more Pincombe/Pinkham descendants will test. The Pinkham testor is descendant of the New Hampshire family who did indeed emigrate from Devon. The result is exciting as it may prove whether or not the original investigators were correct in thinking that the Pinkham and Pincombe family share common ancestry. Their charts very much indicate this to be the case but yDNA can now conclude with accuracy whether or not two families are indeed related even if they share a couple of centuries of assumed relationship. Since the latest member is probably I2b1 rather than the R1b of the earlier members there is always the possibility that his ancestor took on the Pincome/Pinkham surname from his wife many centuries ago. Likely the Pincombe/Pinkham family grouping predates the Roman occupation of Britain. I2b1 members came from the Roman Legions mostly as auxiliaries and some of them stayed on. They could have become part of the Pincombe/Pinkham family grouping through marriage with daughters of this family prior even to surname selection.
Once Bishops Nympton is complete and it does appear I may accomplish this task before Christmas with respect to the conversion, then I will turn to South Molton transcription although these registers do not begin until 1600. The next part of the task is the proofreading of the file. Since I created it very early on in my transcribing career I do wish to proofread it very thoroughly before sharing it or sending it off to Genuki to put on the Bishops Nympton webpage. I receive even yet a few enquiries a week and I would like to publish all of my work to reduce their enquiries.
I have answered probably a thousand or more enquiries on my early transcriptions but I want to just put everything up where people can find it so that I can concentrate totally on my lines and those of our son in law.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Bishops Nympton conversion
Proceding along with the conversion of the word file to an excel file, there are now at the middle of 1835 5278 baptisms, at the end of 1812 1111 marriages, at the end of 1812 3676 burials and at the end of 1886 364 banns. The baptisms continue up to 1986 and I will complete all of those before going to the marriages. Marriages will just be up to the middle of 1837 as Devon does not make fiche of the marriages from 1837 onwards, the burials then continue from 1813 to 1987. The Banns are now complete. I am on page 554 of this 876 page document. I am quite pleased to be moving along so quickly. The next stage will be to proofread the documents from the original microfiche of the Parish Registers.
I have had a few interesting emails. One in particular was from a descendant of the older brother of John Pincombe (my 2x great grandfather). The two families communciated into the early 1900s (likely until about 1918 when William Robert Pincombe died (my great grandfather). He used to visit relatives in the United States with his second family leaving my grandfather to take care of the farm.
A second email was from a descendant of the William Millin/Elizabeth Beard family (the sister of my 3x great grandmother Mary Beard married to Christy Buller). I am not entirely sure what to think of their queries and perhaps it was an error on my part to record a couple of thoughts on the Millin family and their emigration to Australia. I may just remove them from my blog until I can figure out again why I think it was five rather than the three for which he has clear knowledge. I know I chatted back and forth with another Beard cousin at the time about the Millin family. I think perhaps I will just remove the statement. Sometimes people are quite friendly on line and other times they are rather pointed and this is supposed to be fun so I tend to ignore them for the most part. My study of family history is just a hobby these days. My working in genealogy is way back in the past now. If I am incorrect in a statement than I can just remove it if anyone can substantiate that it is incorrect.
A third email today mentioned North Molton records. I eventually plan to submit the transcription to Genuki Devon.
Well that being said I shall get back to my Bishops Nympton file and delete the short statement from the Millin post until I can substantiate it. Likely I will not delve that thoroughly into the Millin family so I may never substantiate it. Time will tell in that regard.
I have had a few interesting emails. One in particular was from a descendant of the older brother of John Pincombe (my 2x great grandfather). The two families communciated into the early 1900s (likely until about 1918 when William Robert Pincombe died (my great grandfather). He used to visit relatives in the United States with his second family leaving my grandfather to take care of the farm.
A second email was from a descendant of the William Millin/Elizabeth Beard family (the sister of my 3x great grandmother Mary Beard married to Christy Buller). I am not entirely sure what to think of their queries and perhaps it was an error on my part to record a couple of thoughts on the Millin family and their emigration to Australia. I may just remove them from my blog until I can figure out again why I think it was five rather than the three for which he has clear knowledge. I know I chatted back and forth with another Beard cousin at the time about the Millin family. I think perhaps I will just remove the statement. Sometimes people are quite friendly on line and other times they are rather pointed and this is supposed to be fun so I tend to ignore them for the most part. My study of family history is just a hobby these days. My working in genealogy is way back in the past now. If I am incorrect in a statement than I can just remove it if anyone can substantiate that it is incorrect.
A third email today mentioned North Molton records. I eventually plan to submit the transcription to Genuki Devon.
Well that being said I shall get back to my Bishops Nympton file and delete the short statement from the Millin post until I can substantiate it. Likely I will not delve that thoroughly into the Millin family so I may never substantiate it. Time will tell in that regard.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Home again
I arrived home again from Milwaukee and my almost two week stay with our eldest daughter. Lovely weather and beautiful scenery walking along Lake Michigan.
Bishops Nympton excel file has moved along and I am now at 4372 baptisms (end of 1767) , 768 marriages (end of 1754), 3593 burials (end of 1767) and 21 banns (a short period of time prior to 1754). Surprisingly there are nearly 700 more baptisms than burials bespeaking a very healthy community at Bishops Nympton and environs. There may be a few more entries as this register's microfiche are very mixed up by years. Once I am into the 1800s the register follows the years but prior to that one flips back from the 1700s to the 1600s and the end of the 1700s to the beginning of the 1700s. It will be very nice to have a sortable file and I will give it to Genuki Devon once it is proofread. I may also send it off to Free Reg as well to put up on line.
No surprises for any of my families lines as I extracted all that information a long time ago now. What might change is how I see some of the collateral family lines to my own direct line. I transcribed these fiche at the beginning of my genealogical researching so that the proofreading is very much needed. As I get towards this time period though the transcriptions are probably more precise. I started to transcribe before taking the Palaeography Course. That course itself greatly speeded up m y transcriptions and smoothed them out.
Other than the Bishops Nympton file I haven't really looked at genealogy for a couple of weeks. I am at page 336 of the 876 page file (adjusted for our new printer). I like this printer as it shortens everything.
Bishops Nympton excel file has moved along and I am now at 4372 baptisms (end of 1767) , 768 marriages (end of 1754), 3593 burials (end of 1767) and 21 banns (a short period of time prior to 1754). Surprisingly there are nearly 700 more baptisms than burials bespeaking a very healthy community at Bishops Nympton and environs. There may be a few more entries as this register's microfiche are very mixed up by years. Once I am into the 1800s the register follows the years but prior to that one flips back from the 1700s to the 1600s and the end of the 1700s to the beginning of the 1700s. It will be very nice to have a sortable file and I will give it to Genuki Devon once it is proofread. I may also send it off to Free Reg as well to put up on line.
No surprises for any of my families lines as I extracted all that information a long time ago now. What might change is how I see some of the collateral family lines to my own direct line. I transcribed these fiche at the beginning of my genealogical researching so that the proofreading is very much needed. As I get towards this time period though the transcriptions are probably more precise. I started to transcribe before taking the Palaeography Course. That course itself greatly speeded up m y transcriptions and smoothed them out.
Other than the Bishops Nympton file I haven't really looked at genealogy for a couple of weeks. I am at page 336 of the 876 page file (adjusted for our new printer). I like this printer as it shortens everything.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Conversion of the Bishops Nympton Parish Register from text file to excel file
Working away on the Bishops Nympton word file and at the end of one week I have converted 25% of the file to an excel file. It has been a slow process on the one hand and on the other hand I do have 25% converted. It is still possible that I can complete the file by Christmas.
Initially I typed in the entries from the one file into the other. But I listened to the thoughts of my husband and daughter and tried capturing the text and converting it to an excel data sheet and then working on rearranging the text. Although it initially appeared to be slower gradually I developed a scheme that worked and I moved to this newer method for the conversion.
The priests of course had their own pattern for recording and it wasn't always the same. I have now reached the contracts/marriages which in the mid 1600s had an amazing amount of information in this parish register. I must reduce them to one line but it is the "form" that will be left out not the information that can be gleaned from these entries.
Initially I typed in the entries from the one file into the other. But I listened to the thoughts of my husband and daughter and tried capturing the text and converting it to an excel data sheet and then working on rearranging the text. Although it initially appeared to be slower gradually I developed a scheme that worked and I moved to this newer method for the conversion.
The priests of course had their own pattern for recording and it wasn't always the same. I have now reached the contracts/marriages which in the mid 1600s had an amazing amount of information in this parish register. I must reduce them to one line but it is the "form" that will be left out not the information that can be gleaned from these entries.