Blake Newsletter, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2017

Blake Newsletter, Volume 6, Issue 2, 2017

Table of Contents

1.    Blake Surname Study - Progress
2.    Family Finder Study at FT DNA
3.    yDNA study
4.    Looking for Country Organizers
5.    Expanding the Newsletter
6.    Galway Blake family yDNA study

1.    Blake Surname Study – Progress
January saw a return to my blogging of my will transcriptions of the Blake family. I completed the Blake wills for Gloucestershire and moved on to Hertfordshire. I am back to a logical alphabetical process but that could change if I find that doing adjacent counties is more beneficial. Huntingdonshire, Lancashire are now also complete. Of course this being in terms of the Wills probated at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. Moved on to Lincolnshire and then into the Locations Miscellaneous folder which included wills for testators in America (now the United States of America). There an interesting article in the South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine on the Blake family caught my eye and I blogged it as well. Then on to the Bengal, East Indies and some wills in England fitted into these wills and they were done as well. Moved on to Ireland Blake wills and then Isle of Man and Jamaica). At that point I diverged from Blake wills but will return once I complete these few wills that belong to my husband’s one name Kip/Kipp family study and my own family lines other than Blake.

2.    Family Finder Study at FT DNA
We continue to have Blake descendants join the Blake DNA study and at some point I will try to write up the results of this study in a way that protects everyone’s anonymity but does make some use of the interesting results that are arising. For instance I actually match an Irish Blake family on Family Finder but not likely as Blake. I suspect this is along my maternal grandmother’s mother’s lines which appear to be Irish but no known information in that regard at this time.

3.    yDNA Study (https://www.familytreedna.com/public/blake?iframe=yresults)
I again thank all of the members of the study for submitting their samples to the Blake yDNA Study. The yDNA members continue to grow slowly but steadily. Two new members at the moment have me contemplating how to fit them into the study. I do need to have a family tree to go with new members and would mention that here. I will be blogging the Galway Blake family trees that I managed to construct using the excellent published works on this family. I am still adding in the Irish census where available and births, marriages and burials that are now online.

4.    Looking for country organizers
The Blake study is huge and as I work my way into my 70s I am looking at how this study can continue into the future and continue to build up a repository of known material that is available online for Blake researchers. I suspect that we need people whose main interest is their own country or even a smaller area (the United States of America has a number of distinct Blake families in particular areas for instance). Gradually as I move through my 70s (I am now 71 and will be 72 later in the year) I would need to gradually narrow my focus to my own Blake line in Hampshire (and even there in the UK there are at least three distinct Blake lines tracing back into the 1500s and earlier).

5.    Expanding the Newsletter
I have maintained a strictly two page policy on the Blake Newsletter these past six years but gradually I am coming to the idea of expanding it and including details of information that I have collected and I invite any of the Blake members to contribute to the newsletter if they wish to do so.

6.    The Galway Blake Family yDNA study
I had intended to write up an interesting article on the Galway Blake family with the research that has been done by this particular set of testers but time has escaped me to do that for this issue. I will certainly do my best to write that up for the next edition.

Elizabeth Kipp, kippeeb@rogers.com
Member #4600: Guild of one name studies
Blog: http://kippeeb.blogspot.ca/