Poll Books and the Blake family

Thus far working on the flat file of the Blake family members who were found in the UK Poll Books which ancestry has lately added to their sites; the best results are for the Norfolk Blake family with the London Blake family also having good representation. In the case of the London entries there is often a street address attached to the name along with the occupation. Matching that up with wills  for these individuals is starting to flesh out the London Blake family. Some of them are descendant of the Hampshire Blake family and the modern day Blake that has roots traced back to these individuals in London would be an interesting candidate for yDNA testing of his Blake line. Our study is now up to 52 members although results are available thus far for only 37 members with several results in test mode. Looking at the results, the Blake lines deep ancestry is quite fascinating. There are 18 R1b results (in the British Isles one could anticipate that 75 to 80 % of males will test R1b), six I1 (in the British Isles approximately 15% of males are I1), I2a and I2b account for another 8 which is surprisingly high for this haplogroup (in the British Isles approximately 1 to 2 % of males are I2) and R1a1 five members and this haplogroup is most commonly found with respect to deep ancestry on the eastern side of the British Isles as it tends to be an Eastern European haplogroup including the Germanic peoples and into Scandinavia. Hence the Blake family thus far in testing has a very high incidence relatively speaking within the British Isles population of the I2 haplogroup which is of course very interesting to me as my line tests I2. However, I find that I am equally interested in the R1b, I1 and R1a haplogroups that are also appearing in the Blake families that do trace on paper back to the British Isles and those that feel strongly that their link back is to the British Isles and trace back to the early colonial days in the Americas.

I continue to work on the Routledge family documents and they are my highest priority with regard to transcription. I have completed the first page of a two page document and will continue with that today. Again it is an interesting document with links to John Rowtledge at Bewcastledale and his attempts (along with others) to have the boundaries of particular properties clearly defined and this is a time that the Commons were available for grazing. This is early in the reign of James I (of England and VI of Scotland). James was not fond of the families that lived in the so called Debatable Lands considering them to be outlaws. The first page was rather interesting once I got onto the rather elaborate writing and I hope that the second page has more information on the Routledge family. I still have several other documents on which I intend to work in the next week or so.

Congratulations to my husband as he will be awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. His dedication to public service in so many fields has impressed me through the years and I am so very glad to see all of his work recognized in this way. The pacemaker has made his life so very much easier and we do spend part of each day ensuring that he gets plenty of healthful walking. Our gardens are looking good as this year we are both working away at them. Not too much in any one day but with his guidance my "non" green thumbs are certainly being more effective this year as I work with him. Although I helped my grandmother as a child in her garden and my grandfather in our garden that was many many years ago and I had forgotten 99% of what I had learned. This past year has certainly passed very quickly for me as I was trying to keep everything up but now as he grows stronger and stronger with the aid of the pacemaker we are working together on everything now.