I did find 53 Wills to look at for the Blake family at Knights Enham/Kings Enham/Enham although some of them are for villages/parishes nearby since the family did live in various places around Andover and in Andover proper. I am entering in the genealogical information found in the wills. The intent is to find the line for James Blake. I believe he is descended from the brother of Nicholas Blake (PCC will probated 20 Jun 1547) namely Robert Blake (PCC will probated 22 June 1542) who had six sons and did live at Enham. Nicholas lived at Old Hall also in Knights Enham but tended to refer to his home as Old Hall. The interesting part about Old Hall was that it was a pile of rubble in my great grandfather Edward Blake's time as a child but apparently the family did make a regular trip to that place perhaps to remind them of their genealogical lineage - no ideas on that but my grandfather certainly could trace his family back at least in my memory but I was just eight years old when he died and although my father did mention Old Hall at least once in my memory there wasn't any particular reinforcement of that memory of the list of names after that time. As I searched back towards the little that I did remember - Edward's father was John; John's father was Thomas and Thomas' father was Joseph; I did indeed find that line at Upper Clatford which was known to me. Moving back with Joseph was only possible because the priest at Upper Clatford recorded in the Parish Registers that Joseph Blake was of Andover. I knew there were Thomass, Johns, Williams and the furtherest back that I recalled clearly was Nicholas but I also knew that I was not remembering all of it or very well. My grandfather had actually put more significance into remembering the Kings and Queens of England which I could recite quite well all the way back to King William I, Duke of Normandy although I also knew of the earlier British Kings Alfred the Great and Canute but he seemed to see the Norman line as the Kings/Queens of England.
By the time my grandfather first saw Old Hall even the rubble of stones was gone but he did pass that memory on to me and so I pass it on to my Newsletter readers since some of them are my cousins. I always hope that others will send me remembrances of their Blake line to publish and some have and I have published them. I do check them out though.
So my project is to extract all of that information from the wills which I have mostly transcribed (there are seven that I felt I must look at that I have not yet transcribed) and list the parents, siblings, children, grandchildren mentioned in the various wills. There are a few wills for wives and one for the remarried wife of Nicholas Blake (Margaret (Blake) (Blake) Munday). I believe that Richard Munday married Silys Blake (daughter of Thomas Blake) and when she died he married his sister in law Margaret Blake who had first married Nicholas Blake. Likely they were protecting the property inheritances of their children by bringing the two families together as Richard's will was probated in 1551 just four years after Nicholas' will was probated and Margaret Munday's will was probated in 1558. It is a huge task but should be able to accomplish it in the next week before the next issue of the Newsletter is due. I am watching the snow continue to fall outside of my workroom window. The roads are heavy with snow all around the area and the company that clears my laneway and walks has not yet come today but we bought all of our groceries to last into next week so not a problem plus we are doing a Harry Potter long weekend - the first film already watched. It is something that we used to do (Edward and the girls along with me) when the girls were growing up along with yummy food to eat whilst we watched. It was the only time we did that - normally we always sat at the table but those weekends were treasured by us as 100% family time.
Time for my run - 40 minutes. More work later.
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