The Blake Newsletter due 1 Jan 2013 is in preparation and I hope to complete it today or tomorrow for publication on 1st of January 2013. It has been an interesting year for Blake research as I worked my way through the Blake wills which I photographed at Kew on our last visit. I wanted to complete my transcription of Blake wills before we go to Kew once again and photograph another couple of hundred wills. Many of the wills can be linked into family lines and that task lays ahead but will be done in conjunction with the parish registers for individual places.
My hope in this year is that I will be able to localize Blake lines and that more individuals will test their yDNA to help with that task. Having come into genealogy after internet made vast amounts of material available and the advent of DNA testing, my approach is decidedly into the nuclear age. I have read many of the published works on the ancestry of Blake families written by people around the world so that I am aware of the prior thoughts on Blake ancestry. But I come into this study with no preconceived notions on the origin of the Blake family. My own line as mentioned before was most recently at Upper Clatford and before that Andover with the family appearing at Penton Mewsey, Knights Enham and Eastontown at various times in the past. Jone Blake (widow) left her will in 1527 mentioning her children: Robert, Nicholas and Elizabeth (married to Mr. Mylne) but her husband's forename is not yet known but that is perhaps available once manor records and all those Blake wills at the Hampshire Office are read. A task for the future and I hope to acquire researchers in England who will go into the Hampshire Record Office and photograph those wills for me over the next year. Then I hope to be in Hampshire Record Office in 2014 to have a look for myself. But that is only one line of Blake and there are at least seven distinct lines thus far determined by yDNA. Was it ever one family with sons of Blake females taking on their uncle's surnames? And perhaps for me the biggest mystery of all are the three members of the group in which my brother's yDNA falls and amazingly two members exactly match thus far with one having deep roots in Ireland and the other with deep roots in southern Hampshire. A puzzle to look at in the New Year.
I will as usual publish the Blake newsletter on the Blake website and also in my blog.
All the best of the New Year 2013 to those who read my blog and I hope that you have had a very pleasant holiday.
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