When I write complete that is with a slight adjustment. They are as complete as I can get them using the census and in most cases I am only missing about 10% of the marriages between 1837 and 1911. Eventually I hope to be able to decrease the number of marriages that I can not complete but I will need to purchase parish registers to do that.
The next county to work on is Devonshire. The overlap in the Registration Districts between counties is rather interesting. It wasn't something that I had thought about when I first started this project looking at counties. It does mean that eventually I will work with Registration Districts. It is however easier to work with counties at the moment because that is the smaller number. I simply have double and triple entries in my flat file under the pertinent counties. Once I start looking at the census with regard to births and deaths I will be looking at individual families and already I can see that people were moving about quite a bit by the 1841 census although there are still a lot of people whose births are in the exact same registration district as their marriage.
Devonshire Blake families have interested me for quite a while. I found the Blake families in my South Molton Registration District parishes that I transcribed a few years ago. I am quite curious about their relationship to the Somerset/Wiltshire/Hampshire families. That of course brings me back to the yDNA Blake family study at FT DNA. No one has tested for the Devonshire Blake family and I am rather convinced that the families in Devon are likely descendant of several different Blake lines some of which are known to me from my studies on the Somerset and Hampshire families.
Once life settles down (if it ever does!) I want to get back to my new website for the Blake one name study. I also have several emails to answer on Blake families queries and work to do on the Blake yDNA study.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Cumberland and Blake marriages post 1837
I completed Cornwall and I have now started into Cumberland Blake marriages. This county has a relatively small number of marriages for Blake between 1837 and the 1950s. Finding one Blake entry in Eskdale Ward in the 1641-42 Protestation Returns though rather sparked my interest in this county which borders Scotland. Family names in this county are also found in Scotland along the so called border lands. I have not yet attempted to draw out Blake records in Scotland but will do so when these English counties are complete. Personally I like to work with data in the 1700s but the presence of Free BMD is just too good a tool in genealogy to overlook. I transcribed for Free BMD for about seven years and it was my first forage into genealogy "work" when I became interested in genealogy back in 2003. At that time I took it on because I couldn't find the marriage between Edwin Denner Buller and Ellen Taylor. This marriage is still not found but I learned so much from the task. Perhaps the incredible variety of English surnames was part of that. I will continue with Cumberland today but it is the day of making chili sauce which occurs once a year and is a major task taking about three hours to clean and prepare all the fruits and vegetables that go into it and then about three hours to boil it down and the shortest part is bottling it for the winter. The taste is such that the time is well spent!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Cornwall nearing completion
I am continuing with my project of extracting the marriage partners for Blake from the census and find my past (also free bmd) and well into Cornwall. Using the online census has made it possible to find many many of the partners in Blake marriages. I am looking forward to putting families together using the census and free bmd. This project is an easy one to pick up and put down on a moment's notice.
I am still deep in thought on how to do my Blake one name study website. I need to decide on a focus and mostly I feel that that is the yDNA study. It is the only true means of separating out various Blake lines from the past. As I delve deeper and deeper into old Blake records I am left to wonder why the name has arisen spontaneously in so many areas. It this a result of a name simply being popular or was this family prominent enough in the 1100s that sister's sons took on their mother's surname in order to inherit property from an uncle. There is also the possibility that in marriage the husband elected to use the surname of his father in law/wife. Looking at the name it is difficult to imagine people spontaneously selecting it as you might the name Baker, Hill, Large etc. All of these surnames would likely be expected to be multi locational at the time of surname selection. Blake as a surname (1286 in lay subsidy rolls) precedes the popular time of surname adoption which occurred in the 1300s and 1400s.
I want to have it possible for people to put up their information so that it is available to researchers (including myself although I mostly blog anything new that I find for the Blake family). Some Blake researchers have been collecting information on their family lines for up to 50 years and beyond. It would be a pity to lose that data and my thought is on how to preserve it. But then I look at World Connect where I have placed a number of short trees (5 or 6 generations) and I wonder if that isn't the better place to serve such information which is organized into family trees. I need to add the will transcriptions to my entry online for Blake at World Connect and will be doing that in the next little while. However excel databases of accumulated data do not lend themselves to putting them on World Connect. I still need to contemplate how to efficiently make such space available.
Perhaps my next newsletter should make the suggestion that World Connect would be a good site to place family genealogical charts on. The whole idea of doing genealogy, at least to me, is to share the result of your work. I do not have any intent on publishing histories of the Blake family other than online downloadable *.pdfs. In my retirement, I decided that I would not do any work for profit. I can not see any value in my work unless I share it with others. I will also be returning to transcription of Blake wills in the lovely dark days of winter when I find it easier to work at the computer. The summer is a time of outdoor work and we have been busy with that. We had to reset all the paving stones along our driveway with gravel underneath and a retaining wall to support them. It is not such a major job that you would hire someone (although I wonder about that sometimes :) ) but we have enjoyed doing the work and just a little more to completion. We also have large flower and vegetable garden areas which require a fair amount of work to maintain. Again it is good exercise and healthy to be outside.
Once Cornwall is complete than my next county is Cumberland. Cumberland is interesting because there is a small Blake family there and there was a Blake family there at the time of the Protestation Returns in 1641-42. In total there were only 125 marriages in all of Cumberland for Blake from 1837 to 1950. A few more have probably been added by the transcribers since I extracted that date. Nonetheless it is a small number. One of the large yDNA study groups traces back to a Theophilus Blake who came to the American Colonies in the 1740s. The yDNA haplogroup of I2b1 is likely an old British group and he settled in areas that were predominantly settled by individuals from Northern Ireland who were themselves from Scotland having been moved there as "planters" in the 1600s by the English. I have not yet extracted Blake marriages for Scotland. That is another very large project that I do want to eventually do. But the Blake family were part of the Lamont Clan.
I am still deep in thought on how to do my Blake one name study website. I need to decide on a focus and mostly I feel that that is the yDNA study. It is the only true means of separating out various Blake lines from the past. As I delve deeper and deeper into old Blake records I am left to wonder why the name has arisen spontaneously in so many areas. It this a result of a name simply being popular or was this family prominent enough in the 1100s that sister's sons took on their mother's surname in order to inherit property from an uncle. There is also the possibility that in marriage the husband elected to use the surname of his father in law/wife. Looking at the name it is difficult to imagine people spontaneously selecting it as you might the name Baker, Hill, Large etc. All of these surnames would likely be expected to be multi locational at the time of surname selection. Blake as a surname (1286 in lay subsidy rolls) precedes the popular time of surname adoption which occurred in the 1300s and 1400s.
I want to have it possible for people to put up their information so that it is available to researchers (including myself although I mostly blog anything new that I find for the Blake family). Some Blake researchers have been collecting information on their family lines for up to 50 years and beyond. It would be a pity to lose that data and my thought is on how to preserve it. But then I look at World Connect where I have placed a number of short trees (5 or 6 generations) and I wonder if that isn't the better place to serve such information which is organized into family trees. I need to add the will transcriptions to my entry online for Blake at World Connect and will be doing that in the next little while. However excel databases of accumulated data do not lend themselves to putting them on World Connect. I still need to contemplate how to efficiently make such space available.
Perhaps my next newsletter should make the suggestion that World Connect would be a good site to place family genealogical charts on. The whole idea of doing genealogy, at least to me, is to share the result of your work. I do not have any intent on publishing histories of the Blake family other than online downloadable *.pdfs. In my retirement, I decided that I would not do any work for profit. I can not see any value in my work unless I share it with others. I will also be returning to transcription of Blake wills in the lovely dark days of winter when I find it easier to work at the computer. The summer is a time of outdoor work and we have been busy with that. We had to reset all the paving stones along our driveway with gravel underneath and a retaining wall to support them. It is not such a major job that you would hire someone (although I wonder about that sometimes :) ) but we have enjoyed doing the work and just a little more to completion. We also have large flower and vegetable garden areas which require a fair amount of work to maintain. Again it is good exercise and healthy to be outside.
Once Cornwall is complete than my next county is Cumberland. Cumberland is interesting because there is a small Blake family there and there was a Blake family there at the time of the Protestation Returns in 1641-42. In total there were only 125 marriages in all of Cumberland for Blake from 1837 to 1950. A few more have probably been added by the transcribers since I extracted that date. Nonetheless it is a small number. One of the large yDNA study groups traces back to a Theophilus Blake who came to the American Colonies in the 1740s. The yDNA haplogroup of I2b1 is likely an old British group and he settled in areas that were predominantly settled by individuals from Northern Ireland who were themselves from Scotland having been moved there as "planters" in the 1600s by the English. I have not yet extracted Blake marriages for Scotland. That is another very large project that I do want to eventually do. But the Blake family were part of the Lamont Clan.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Moving on to Blake marriages in Cornwall
The process of finding the partner in a marriage from 1837 to 1911 is moving along very nicely for the Blake family. Once the darker days come I shall get back to reading my microfiche and working on Abbots Ann which has a rather interesting Blake family.
A rather interesting discussion on the Devon listserv has left me thinking about the Blake family of Devon and Norfolk. The premise has been made that families that were heavily involved in the wool trade were often found in both Devon and Norfolk and indeed there are Blake families in both of these counties (as well as a number of others). My Blake line were drapers although principally linen but I do not know that for sure and is certainly worth investigating.
Trying to advertise the yDNA study for the Blake family in England is an interesting project to which I am giving a good deal of thought I am wondering if I should do a singleton webpage attached to our Blake one name webpage on Wordpress and then try to get that into various publications that are online there. Most of the members of the yDNA study are from the United States, Australia, Canada etc. In my case I know that my line was at Upper Clatford back to 1750 and then at Andover or nearby back to the late 1400s. However, I am not matching any of the other groupings except for one person with a family history in Ireland. The I haplogroup is an ancient one in the British Isles but also is there as a result of the Viking interactions in the British Isles according to some researchers. At this moment in time I am sitting in the late 1400s (although land records may help me in that regard and a project is formulating in my mind with regard to that need) so have no idea of my ancestry prior to that date.
I have had an interesting set of documents from another Blake researcher going back to the Essex Blake line through the Somerset line. The writings of Francis E Blake indicated that this is an erroneous line and I shall have to hunt out my copy of his writings to send to the researcher. I do not entirely agree with Francis Blake but that is why I pulled out all the Blake records now published for Somerset. There are still unpublished ones that I need to look at.
A rather interesting discussion on the Devon listserv has left me thinking about the Blake family of Devon and Norfolk. The premise has been made that families that were heavily involved in the wool trade were often found in both Devon and Norfolk and indeed there are Blake families in both of these counties (as well as a number of others). My Blake line were drapers although principally linen but I do not know that for sure and is certainly worth investigating.
Trying to advertise the yDNA study for the Blake family in England is an interesting project to which I am giving a good deal of thought I am wondering if I should do a singleton webpage attached to our Blake one name webpage on Wordpress and then try to get that into various publications that are online there. Most of the members of the yDNA study are from the United States, Australia, Canada etc. In my case I know that my line was at Upper Clatford back to 1750 and then at Andover or nearby back to the late 1400s. However, I am not matching any of the other groupings except for one person with a family history in Ireland. The I haplogroup is an ancient one in the British Isles but also is there as a result of the Viking interactions in the British Isles according to some researchers. At this moment in time I am sitting in the late 1400s (although land records may help me in that regard and a project is formulating in my mind with regard to that need) so have no idea of my ancestry prior to that date.
I have had an interesting set of documents from another Blake researcher going back to the Essex Blake line through the Somerset line. The writings of Francis E Blake indicated that this is an erroneous line and I shall have to hunt out my copy of his writings to send to the researcher. I do not entirely agree with Francis Blake but that is why I pulled out all the Blake records now published for Somerset. There are still unpublished ones that I need to look at.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Blake marriages in Cheshire
Returning to "work" between Olympics and still working on Cheshire. Learning a lot about emigration with this particular area. The percentage of people who came to this area from Ireland is very large in this time period (1830s to late 1800s and possibly later but haven't noticed it there as many families have now married into "English" families). The Blake family here is possibly primarily Irish Blake family. Have they returned to their roots in England is a good question as I look at all of this information. More people testing their yDNA in England would be oh so helpful looking at the Blake family. Was there an "original" Blake family in Ireland or are they descendants of the earlier Blake family in England? Would love to know the answer to that question given my one and only "match" for Blake in the study. Mind you Blood of the Isles database has several matches to my line so I have not yet despaired on being dropped on this planet at some point in the past :)
The movement from Cheshire to London can also be noted as being very interesting and possibly quite significant. Later census will reveal those details when I get to that. In the meantime I am completely engrossed in my Blake one name study. It has turned out to be quite fascinating.
However, I continue to receive queries on my other lines namely one on the Question family which quite intrigues me but not so much that I will find every member in a one name study! I will leave that quest to someone else.
The newest member joining the Pincombe/Pinkham study is most welcomed. I would like to build that yDNA study as well but suspect it will be a very slow process. When it is such a singleton name I suspect most just assume they are all related and do not really get into the idea of a surname study. At the moment I remain in limbo on the study because of the different results that I have for the Pincombe and Pinkham family names. Thought to have common ancestry by the earlier group I have to just grope along in the dark waiting to see if I can inspire others to test and apparently I may have. The one thought on the Pinkham results is adoption back in the 1600s when families died out leaving small children who were assimilated into other families. I know the person who wrote to me and tested is looking into that with his line.
The summer has passed very quickly amazingly so. Our new status as grandparents is slowly sinking in although the little fellow is distant from us so not a daily growth observance. Perhaps we will move closer to them as time passes. I can do my genealogy anywhere actually and the further from a big city perhaps the better. I mostly purchase all of my records where I can and with such strong "English" ancestry I am not going to find very much at the archives here. I believe I have mostly found it all for my lines. All were known to me which is the main reason that I am so late to genealogy although in truth I did not find it fascinating to look through microfilm - I knew everything that I could know here! Now I spend days looking at microfiche! Amazing how one short trip to London, England back in 2001 has impacted on my life.
Lucille Campy's latest book (mentioned on John Reid's blog) brings out a comment that I have often felt myself. "English" heritage is basically ignored in Canada. Lumping all those of us with "English" heritage and calling us "English" Canadians is such a misnomer. Few people who are labelled "English" Canadians are actually English. They come from all over the world and in reality there isn't any such thing as an "English" Canadian. They are all Canadian (and hyphenated if you must with their country of origin). This tendency to call people "English" Canadian has completely hidden any actual English heritage here.
The movement from Cheshire to London can also be noted as being very interesting and possibly quite significant. Later census will reveal those details when I get to that. In the meantime I am completely engrossed in my Blake one name study. It has turned out to be quite fascinating.
However, I continue to receive queries on my other lines namely one on the Question family which quite intrigues me but not so much that I will find every member in a one name study! I will leave that quest to someone else.
The newest member joining the Pincombe/Pinkham study is most welcomed. I would like to build that yDNA study as well but suspect it will be a very slow process. When it is such a singleton name I suspect most just assume they are all related and do not really get into the idea of a surname study. At the moment I remain in limbo on the study because of the different results that I have for the Pincombe and Pinkham family names. Thought to have common ancestry by the earlier group I have to just grope along in the dark waiting to see if I can inspire others to test and apparently I may have. The one thought on the Pinkham results is adoption back in the 1600s when families died out leaving small children who were assimilated into other families. I know the person who wrote to me and tested is looking into that with his line.
The summer has passed very quickly amazingly so. Our new status as grandparents is slowly sinking in although the little fellow is distant from us so not a daily growth observance. Perhaps we will move closer to them as time passes. I can do my genealogy anywhere actually and the further from a big city perhaps the better. I mostly purchase all of my records where I can and with such strong "English" ancestry I am not going to find very much at the archives here. I believe I have mostly found it all for my lines. All were known to me which is the main reason that I am so late to genealogy although in truth I did not find it fascinating to look through microfilm - I knew everything that I could know here! Now I spend days looking at microfiche! Amazing how one short trip to London, England back in 2001 has impacted on my life.
Lucille Campy's latest book (mentioned on John Reid's blog) brings out a comment that I have often felt myself. "English" heritage is basically ignored in Canada. Lumping all those of us with "English" heritage and calling us "English" Canadians is such a misnomer. Few people who are labelled "English" Canadians are actually English. They come from all over the world and in reality there isn't any such thing as an "English" Canadian. They are all Canadian (and hyphenated if you must with their country of origin). This tendency to call people "English" Canadian has completely hidden any actual English heritage here.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Paralympics and Pincombe/Pinkham family
First of all I also watch the Paralympics so will be missing in action once again on my blog but returning to "full time" devotion after that. I do love the Olympics/Paralympics.
My excitement for the day other than watching the Olympics and a really grand closing ceremony was a new person signing up for the Pincombe/Pinkham yDNA study. I would love to solve the mystery which has been created by the testing thus far.
My excitement for the day other than watching the Olympics and a really grand closing ceremony was a new person signing up for the Pincombe/Pinkham yDNA study. I would love to solve the mystery which has been created by the testing thus far.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Olympics and Blake family
Still watching Olympics most of the time and working on the Blake family a little of the time. I have completed about half of Cheshire marriages now between 1837 and the 1960s extracting the marriage partners from the census and then free bmd from 1912 on. This continues to be an enormous project with an even bigger one looming as I will then put families together with the births and deaths using the census and then the leap back into the 1700s where possible.
I have received two lots of Blake information from descendants that I have not yet worked through for which I apologize. The Olympics is a big item in my lifestyle. One of these days I hope to attend the Olympics and perhaps Rio is the time. We will see about that. I have never been to South America. I should have gone to Vancouver but we just didn't get to that. Neither of us like long lineups and the Olympics does tend to be about long lineups.
I have received two lots of Blake information from descendants that I have not yet worked through for which I apologize. The Olympics is a big item in my lifestyle. One of these days I hope to attend the Olympics and perhaps Rio is the time. We will see about that. I have never been to South America. I should have gone to Vancouver but we just didn't get to that. Neither of us like long lineups and the Olympics does tend to be about long lineups.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Olympics 2012, Blake and Buller/Taylor
Needless to say I am an Olympics fan and have been more or less glued to the Television (or computer screen depending on how you interpret watching events :) ) for the last week. I love to run and still do but mostly in my own basement using video games like "Walk it Out" and Wii Fit and Decca Sports!
I have had a few interesting emails on the Blake family and continue to put in a few hours working on my flat file of the Blake marriages from 1837 on. I have had good success in finding the couples in the census so that I am able to match up many of them. I have now completed Buckinghamshire and working on Cheshire. Discovered Merseyside yesterday and decided that I will not move beyond 1974 so that I do not have to get into Merseyside just yet. I will stick with the old counties for the moment and besides it seems like an invasion of privacy to go beyond the 1920s to me because of Canadian restrictions on access to Information!
Made an interesting discovery that the Taylor family in Birmingham that interests me lived in St Philips District and on Bull Street. This is rather an incredible discovery because Henry Christopher Buller (father of Edwin Denner Buller who married Ellen Taylor) was a provision dealer in the 1830s living on Bull Street. Coincidence or a remarkable breakthrough still remains to be seen. My only true brick wall is Ellen Taylor my great grandmother and my mtDNA line. That particular set of mutations (H11a2a1) says that I am likely Scot so was my great grandmother the daughter of Irish parents who were originally Scot Planters in Ireland. My grandmother's favourite song was "Danny Boy" and that was because her mother used to sing it. Everytime I hear the lyrics it reminds me of my grandmother.
Unfortunately my grandmother's mother died when she was just eleven years old. Her memories of her mother were so very sweet actually. They must have been a very happy family. Her father worked at two full time jobs which always amazed me but was apparently quite common at the time. If one was slow then he always had the other one to fall back on. Then other times he was just really busy my grandmother would say. Life was very different in those days. Each time they had a new baby they would move house it appears from the early records of their births and my grandmother had mentioned that they did move several times. They lived in the new housing areas of Birmingham which have now all been replaced by newer housing !
I have had a few interesting emails on the Blake family and continue to put in a few hours working on my flat file of the Blake marriages from 1837 on. I have had good success in finding the couples in the census so that I am able to match up many of them. I have now completed Buckinghamshire and working on Cheshire. Discovered Merseyside yesterday and decided that I will not move beyond 1974 so that I do not have to get into Merseyside just yet. I will stick with the old counties for the moment and besides it seems like an invasion of privacy to go beyond the 1920s to me because of Canadian restrictions on access to Information!
Made an interesting discovery that the Taylor family in Birmingham that interests me lived in St Philips District and on Bull Street. This is rather an incredible discovery because Henry Christopher Buller (father of Edwin Denner Buller who married Ellen Taylor) was a provision dealer in the 1830s living on Bull Street. Coincidence or a remarkable breakthrough still remains to be seen. My only true brick wall is Ellen Taylor my great grandmother and my mtDNA line. That particular set of mutations (H11a2a1) says that I am likely Scot so was my great grandmother the daughter of Irish parents who were originally Scot Planters in Ireland. My grandmother's favourite song was "Danny Boy" and that was because her mother used to sing it. Everytime I hear the lyrics it reminds me of my grandmother.
Unfortunately my grandmother's mother died when she was just eleven years old. Her memories of her mother were so very sweet actually. They must have been a very happy family. Her father worked at two full time jobs which always amazed me but was apparently quite common at the time. If one was slow then he always had the other one to fall back on. Then other times he was just really busy my grandmother would say. Life was very different in those days. Each time they had a new baby they would move house it appears from the early records of their births and my grandmother had mentioned that they did move several times. They lived in the new housing areas of Birmingham which have now all been replaced by newer housing !
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