Saturday, March 9, 2024

Pencombe today and I am making a decision that affects the book

Today is a Pencombe day and I think a decision day perhaps. I can not really see any value in my researching the Pynkeham family that lived at Tawstock. Although it is in the area of Bideford/Barnstaple where the Pencombe family of North Molton also lived later in the 1500s I am not convinced that Philip Pynkeham at Tawstock as a wage earner on the 1524-7 Lay Subsidy (perhaps an apprentice to the person on the line above) and an individual named Philip Pynkeham paying property tax in Tawstock on the 1543-45 Lay Subsidy is related to John Pencombe and his possible wife Alice (a widow at North Molton on the 1543-45 Lay Subsidy). Interesting there is an Edward  Pencombe on the 1581 Subsidy at Tawstock. Is he a son of Philip Pynkeham who left his will in 1654 at Tawstock or a descendant of the North Molton family? By the late 1500s the Pencombe family had moved out of North Molton and out of South Molton towards Barnstaple, towards East Buckland, towards Filleigh and towards Bishops Nympton/Molland. I will look at Edward Pencombe to see if I am able to connect him to the line at North Molton. 

Is it perhaps time to start to work on the records collected in Find My Past and having the 40 year span either way around a date could prove to make it doable. For instance I would probably start with 1520 and a span of 40 years either way and that yields 13 results in all of Britain with the spelling Pencombe. One interesting record at Morwinstow (Morwenstow, Cornwall, Marriage Registers, Vol 17, 1558-1812, Page 79)  Richard Buse of Bridgrule and Mary Pencombe marrying 21 Jul 1670. I will start up my excel file collecting all of this data and entering it into my One Name Pencombe Study File in Legacy which I will use to create the descendant generational chapters in the book. In total, in all of Britain results, there are 866 using the spelling Pencombe. It is tempting just to work on those 866 now and get them listed in my files and then move on to the other spellings which must include Pinkham actually as some of the families in the west villages/towns/cities of Devon did use that spelling although mostly they did go to London in the 1700s and I actually have the records of a descendant of that family which he sent to me. Having now looked at the 866 results in one file I will stay with the 40 years + or - as I could get overwhelmed and distracted by the range in years from the 1500s to the latter part of the 1800s just looking at the first couple of records.

I am in somewhat of a quandary as I have maintained this study since 2007 when I picked it up as the Pincombe-Pinkham family study but events have occurred which resulted in my narrowing my search to Pencombe and the derivatives of that family at North Molton known to me and to be as thoroughly researched as I am able here in Canada over the next two years. I simply, at nearly 79 years of age, could not even contemplate taking on a book that looked at the Pinkham in any great details that I could not attach to the Pencombe family of North Devon. In the United States alone the family descending from Richard Pinkham at Old Dover is very very large. I will leave the revision and publication of Sinnett to others. The Pencombe family out of North Molton has never been published. 

I shall also continue working on the Latin Inquisition Postmortem of John de Pencombe of Herefordshire in 1433. Connecting back to this family would be interesting and I will continue with that thought in mind. Collecting the material and putting it down on paper so to speak does then provide some background for a future researcher to pick up the challenge and add what they find such as I did with the Siderfin family book. But truly I would never have done my Siderfin book without the first book.

I must also admit I never talked about myself to anyone before I started to blog back in November 2008. I was very much an introverted person around everyone including my children. But the blog has brought that out in me and my children will be able to read all of this when I am gone since I save the posts into files by years. Sometimes rereading them I think to myself; yes I really did think that way. 

Blogging is definitely an interesting way to look at family surname history.


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