The Blake family of Galway

I did begin my extraction of the Blake family material in Martin Blake's excellent set of records on the Blake family of Galway. I am entering the information into Legacy and have added 197 individuals which includes 98 families. This is an extensive work on his part and will also include the Blake family that came to the London, Ontario area in the 1800s. As children people would ask if we were related to this family as I grew up in London, Ontario. The recent release of the Immigrants Database to England with a Richard Blake coming from Ireland to the Salisbury area is rather interesting. Richard Caddell alias Blake who is the head of the Galway Blake family had two sons that are not traced down thus far - Nicholas and Valentine. My ancestor who left his will in 1547 was named Nicholas with his father being Richard and his father Robert and they lived in the Andover area but I have not yet had a look at the Manor Books to see if they can be traced back further on paper.

Our yDNA says that our haplogroup occurs around 2% in Connacht Ireland and 3% in Munster (just to the south of Connacht). Connacht is the larger area in which Galway is a unit. Could our Blake line be Irish after all? That would be a surprise. I must admit that I am becoming very very interested in the Irish Blake family at Galway. Why did Richard Blake come to Salisbury in 1440? Who is this Richard Blake? Of note though our haplogroup also can be found at the rate of 2% in South West England which includes the area from Hampshire to Cornwall. 2% in East Anglia and 2% in Leinster, and 1% in Ulster. These figures coming from our testing at BritainsDNA.   But this is for I-S185 known as the Deer Hunters so we are talking about a group of hunter-gatherers who probably arrived in the British Isles when it was still attached to the Continent via Doggerland and the British Isles was one landmass.The time period as much as 8000 years ago.

In my entering I have now come across an unlinked Blake line in the Galway family (perhaps it will be linked in later or it could be a separate Blake line). In 1745 Margaret Blake daughter of John Blake and Eveline Lynch married Mark Blake of Knockmore, Co Mayo in 1745. When I extracted the Blake records from the Calendar of Patent Rolls I found a number of references to Blake members going to Ireland. Would a descendant of one of these Blake members then become an Immigrant when he returned to England? All very interesting and I feel compelled to begin this work at this time along with my Cornwall extraction of information.

I must get back to doing a few wills a week as well though! And gardening will soon be part of my life again! At least one hopes so but yesterday's snow certainly put that timetable somewhat in the future.