Over a month on the Olympics and Paralympics and now back to genealogy. I have accomplished a little on the 1837 - 1950s marriages for the Blake family and am well into working on Devon marriages having completed Tavistock with just Tiverton, Torrington, Totnes, and Wellington Som remaining to be looked up in the census. Next county is Dorset and with the overlap between counties there is always a little done on the next county before I begin (Axminster and Chard are completed in Dorset already). For some areas I am quite lucky finding the couple on the following census but some I can simply not distinguish adequately to determine the appropriate couple from the marriage lists on Free BMD.
I had a number of interesting emails to which I will respond more fully. New people testing for both the Pinkham/Pincombe and the Blake/Bleake yDNA studies. Every new tester helps to add to the information on these two families. I am drifting away from my other family lines although answered a rather long email on the Routledge family the other day. It rather intrigued me as it was a John Routledge marrying an Isobel Scott. Not in my Oakshaw family lines but interesting none the less. A few other non one name studies queries as well to which I responded fully at the time knowing that I would not come back to them later. The Blake and Pincombe families do tend to occupy 95% of my genealogy time these days.
My fingers are itching to get back to working on the Abbots Ann fiche. I feel as if there might be answers to some of the Blake questions on the Abbots Ann family there. It is possible that someone will test for that family in the near future which should prove to be interesting. Published histories on this family link them back through my Thomas Blake and Mary Spring but I can find only one baptism for this couple at Andover namely their son Thomas and my ancestor. He was the father of Joseph Blake who later married his cousin Joanna King and moved to Upper Clatford. It is possible that this Thomas remarried when Joseph was about 8 or 9 and possibly this was the time when he moved to Upper Clatford to help his uncle Thomas King on his farm. I am a bit suspicious about that. Thomas King had three daughters (two survived) and one married Joseph Blake (my ancestor) and the other married John Blake, malster at Abbots Ann who left this wonderful will that I am still working through with regard to the kinsmen/kinswomen that he mentioned. There is a mystery in that will as he only mentions the children of the first wife of Charles Blake (Jane Gilbert) and not those of the second wife (Hannah Powell). I think Charles (married to Mary Prince) was a brother to this John but can not yet prove that. Charles is on land that was previously occupied by Robert Blake who was likely the father of John and definitely was the father of Edward but was he the father of Charles. I think he was. I need to try to discover more proof for this relationship.
Were Joseph Blake and John Blake who married the two King sisters related? Now that is a good question. I am suspicious that John is descendant of Robert Blake brother to Nicholas Blake from whom Joseph Blake is descended but they would be already about seventh cousins at that time. I am sure they would not have been aware of their relationship plus I am still toying with the idea that there were several Blake families at Andover that may or may not belong to the same yDNA line. That remains to be proven and only more people testing with ties back to the Wiltshire/Hampshire Blake families can help to prove these lines.
The nights are shortening rapidly now and I can begin to work on my fiche easily as the sun has changed its trajectory. I find it hard to work in the summer (although could easily move it all down to the basement) but perhaps one needs a long break from transcription every year and lots of fresh air gardening! A bit of a dreary day outside thus far but our outside cleanup is slowly getting completed. Just the patio stones to raise and panels at the front of the house to paint (stucco). The gardens to clean up as well and the drought has given us not quite as good a harvest of vegetables although still lots of broccoli, tomatoes and carrots to eat up before winter descends. We grew new grass at the front this past couple of weeks where we had repaired the brickwork along the laneway both sides. Backbreaking work that but looks great now that it is done. Just need to blacktop the driveway with sealant and we are finished with that.
We are in the national news with the road collapsing just at our exit and we have driven over that spots thousands of times. I can remember when they put the enormous tile in when they first widened the highway out here twenty plus years ago. It carried away the water from one of the tributaries of Green's Creek. The bed of the road literally dropped away and a car fell into it. Fortunately the driver managed to get out relatively unscathed.
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