I am a little tardy with the newsletter as I have been waiting to see if the remainder of the new I2b1 result would come in. I have written it though and will publish it tomorrow on my website and on my blog.
I have finally made a decision on the website and I will use The Next Generation (TNG) genealogical software to build the website. It will be a standalone on our current provider and accessible from our main webpage as well as direct with the main page labeled blakemain.html. More details on that later.
There is a Google hangout this Saturday where I hope to learn more about TNG but it sounds like it would be suitable to use. I can set it up so that people can add information directly to the website although I will monitor that for all of us. Spammers tend to congregate around open websites.
The value of such a website in my opinion would be that I could share the research that I have done so far on the Blake family which is largely about the Blake family in the Hampshire/Wiltshire area although that is expanding. The marriage database I will put online as it may be helpful to people and will update that as I receive new information. There are over 30,000 Blake marriages in England on Free BMD and nearly 16,000 of them between 1837 and 1911. After 1911 it is usually possible to figure out the maiden surname of the bride from the indexes. I am slowly putting maiden names into the excel file as I receive them or find them. My next step will be to work on the births and burials which I may do at the same time. Then using the census I can start to put them together. Concurrently I am working on parish registers prior to 1837 to extract the Blake information. A major project that will not be completed in my lifetime I am sure but the accumulated information will be archived with the Guild of One Name Studies for future reference.
This website will not contain the remarkable information which Barrie Blake collected on the more famous Blake families of the British Isles. His work was quite wonderful but my interest hasn't been kindled to any great extent in that regard. I am more interested in the genealogical story of the Blake families of the British Isles.
I am thoroughly convinced however that only our yDNA study will let us build these family trees and allow people to find their true roots in the British Isles. Although I do see references to Blake as a family name outside of the British Isles in early times it would appear that it is a result of anglicizing of the name in America primarily. However, I will collect any information that is sent to me and any member of the yDNA study that submits yDNA and has place of origin outside of the British Isles will be placed in the group where there is currently a member with German ancestry. Since the name Blake occurs in some of the earliest records of the British Isles I remain convinced that it is a British Isles surname primarily.
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