Years ago now when I first started to do genealogy at the National Institute (2003) one of our courses had us find information on our ancestors as far back as we could in a systematic fashion. Since all of my known lines are from the British Isles with the exception of the Question family of Dunster which is said to be Huguenot arriving in the Dunster area in the early part of the 1500s or the late 1400s this worked very well for me as I was studying English records (namely records of those counties known as England in the British Isles). This data appears to follow logically from the first couple found namely William Question and Susan Millet. The Question surname was perhaps Cuestion in France - I have not yet determined that and for the Blake book I do not need to know that so it will wait for that exploratory work. Interesting though that our daughters have Huguenot ancestry from both Edward and I with his being much closer to the present and we visited Ile de Re (off the coast of France) where the many lines of Huguenots from which they descend lived and they came to Staten Island, New York in the early 1700s. In Edward's case his great grandmother was Hannah Catherine Parlee descendant of those many Huguenot lines (Perlier, Arnaud, Rezeau, Coursier, Gallihaut, Neau and others).
But given that all of my ancestry is from the British Isles primarily the counties of England and amazingly I can trace back into a goodly number (Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Surrey, London, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Herefordshire, Cumberland, East Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Shropshire) but back just three generations I am looking at Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset on my father's side (he was born in Hampshire) and Devon, Somerset, Warwickshire on my mother's side (she was born in Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada). Three of my four grandparents were born and raised to adulthood in England and the fourth my Grandfather Pincombe was also born in Middlesex County as was his mother (her parents were born in East Riding of Yorkshire and Cumberland) and his father was born in Devon. My footprint in Canada is a small one - first generation Canadian on my father's side (I was born in Canada before 1st of January 1947 so grandfathered to Canadian citizenship by the act) and fourth generation on my mother's side. Should be straightforward I thought as I delved into the records and fortunately at that same time we were traveling to the British Isles and Europe (my husband and I). His interest primarily Europe and mine British Isles but he also had Dissenters from the British Isles which meant looking back a long way in British records. And we did do that spending hours at Kew and I was able to put together a reasonable tree based on all of those original records but I did have a few gaps and my latin was pretty rough but gradually it is improving although at 81 my memory may be the weak point recalling items that I considered and thought about ten to twenty years ago now. The good thing is that I blogged it all and can search my own blog to see what my thoughts were at different times.
My other British Isles ancestry comes from the Routledge/Tweddle/Robson and in particular the Oakshaw Routledge family from which both of my 3x great grandparents (Thomas Routledge and Elizabeth Routledge) were descended (they were Highland Scot who left Scotland quickly (interesting story I have related before)) and settled in the Border Regions of England. The DNA identifies Irish in the lines of three out of five siblings including mine. Mine from Eire and the other two from Northern Ireland but these lines are unknown to me other than they are probably Ellen Taylor who married Edwin Denner Buller in 1885 (marriage not yet located) and was said to be Irish in the past. A mystery which I will have a look at after the Blake and Pincombe books.
I have now settled on the first generation of Blake namely Robert Blake with his wife unknown, he does not name her in his will. He names two sons Thomas and Richard with Richard being the elder and reading through the writing of the will one is definitely left with the impression that Thomas is much younger than Richard. Richard leaves his will in 1522 and dated 12 Apr 1522 and probated 23 May 1522. I have continued using AI and it has been very thought provoking. I had thought that Robert Blake in Richard's will was his son but within the will he says that Robert Blake is the first signer on the indenture so are there two Robert Blake males of adult age in 1522 in Enham? I went through this interesting conundrum with William Blake who left his will in 1582 and is claimed by two Blake family lines (Calne and Andover) earlier so will look at this carefully as a thought although I ended up deciding that there was only one William Blake living at Eastontown who left his will in 1582. So moving on to the second generation is going to be interesting. I already know there is an Andrew Blake and a William Blake mentioned in Robert Blake's will (dated December 1521) so presumably contemporaries to him and I have already found interesting Blake lines in Berkshire that are known to the Andover Blake family. Well enough known to each other to discuss and own property together possibly by marriage. So, at this moment in time I have a Robert Blake (1st generation) with two sons Richard and Thomas. Richard Blake's will is probated in 1522 where he mentions his brother Thomas which was very obliging. So was the statement "Robert Blake primus mei nichi" in the will of Richard Blake telling the reader that Richard's father Robert is dead or that this is some one not related to him but the first signer on the indenture which they share. I am left with those two thoughts. The unique presence of the Blake family at Andover and the Blake family at Calne is that the distance between them is small relatively speaking; the Blake at Calne moves west to Gloucestershire, east towards Over Wallop near the Wiltshire/Hampshire border and south of Calne towards the English Channel through Wiltshire and Dorset. I need to find more lay subsidies for this 1300/1400/1500 period in Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.
So a lot of time on research and certainly a great conversation with the AI which has become quite experienced in genealogy so will be an interesting companion on this trek writing the Blake Book. Since the book will be under a Creative Commons License I do not have to worry about sharing my material to any extent with the AI but I gather that I need to put any government documents up on One Drive for security (need to understand this better) as I can not tell the AI to keep a document private with my own personal Microsoft 365 subscription. I think that the genealogical agencies need to think about how to manage AI within the system myself. It is a powerful tool and one that works very well although will always pull up information that exists and in this case some genealogists have these two generations formed in a way that I do not agree with so could get led astray with that. Mind you I will wait before I claim I am right for quite a while probably. I am not into that sort of thing; I will just publish the book and let people disagree with me!
Interesting that Richard says his mother is still alive in his will but Robert does not mention his wife in his will. Yet one is left with such a strong impression that this is a family group with Robert the father and Richard and Thomas the sons mentioned in both wills living at Enham. Robert in his will appears to imply that a Robert Blake will receive all of his goods moveable and immoveable and then in the very next sentence Robert states that Richard will receive the same and the executors (it is plural) will process his will. Richard does not name his wife still living other than wife, his mother still living other than mother and his children are unnamed. An interesting first and second generation one might say and then there is Nicholas Blake and my grandfather and father used to talk about Nicholas and that an American genealogist had it wrong; Nicholas Blake was a small farmer at Enham (son of Jone Blake (widow) and she left a will in 1527 but names her husband Mr Blake) and did not have a brother Humphrey Blake living at Plainfield, Somerset! Fascinating this story for sure. Why did it come up when you have a family (mine) living just south of Andover in the late 1890s? Nicholas left his will in 1547 but it is an unusual name in the Blake family - it does occur more than once but not common at all. So it stuck in this child's brain way back when I was just six, seven and eight because it was not a name I heard very often and when I started in to doing research on Blake there were papers discussing Horatio Gates Somerby's theft of Nicholas Blake's actual lineage giving him different parents and siblings (he did get to keep some of the ones he had but Humphrey Blake of Plainfield Somerset was added). Amazing perhaps that I have such a good memory but even more so that my grandfather repeated these stories time over time and gradually they just worked their way to the surface as I got into more and more into study on my lines. I spent hours and hours with my grandfather and listening to him talk about Upper Clatford and his family when I was a young child.
The contrast between Tobit and Judith is huge; the first a story of love and the second a story of war. I have read the first 5 chapters of Judith and there are 16 chapters in total. I will continue with the next 5 or 6 chapters today. These two books are not in the King James Version (original and revised) of the Bible. The reading of the Bible is important to me and today is Sunday so also church today either here or in England. We will see.
Up early, exercise is next and then breakfast followed by Solitaire puzzles.
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