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 There are still unpublished ones that I need to look at.