Cleaning will be finished today

Just the top floor to clean and then done once again for the week. Yesterday I cleaned the main floor as I decided to do three days of cleaning this week. I also shoveled the porch and patio at the front. I think that was a good plan not to have the company shovel the porch and patio as it does get me outside in the fresh air at least occasionally. 

I continued to work on the Pedigree Chart yesterday and may do some more today on the first image. I discovered British History Online is doing an upgrade to their system which allows me to continue searching but I could not become a member of the site although do have a login now. I did a little searching on Dorrant and Bellet. The Pedigree Chart has scant information on these two lines that appear to have married into the Blake family of Wiltshire. The Baynard family is well established and known in the Visitations and other documents as well as having wills for many of the members of the family in this timeline which I have transcribed. I wonder if that was the upward movement of the Norman family le Blak (still not yet proven the idea that the le Blak family of Wargrave, Berkshire was the Blake family of Calne) actually marrying into the Baynard family - Roger Blake and his sister Anne married into the family. Roger married Mary Baynard and Anne married  Robert Baynard but they are great grandchildren of Philip Baynard and Henry Blake (the second set of circles on the first image). This first image does proves to be rather interesting. There is also a Blake Pedigree Chart held by the Blake Museum in Bridgwater which is equally interesting and has ten images available online at the Museum site. 

First Image of the Blake Pedigree at the Blake Museum in Bridgwater:

I have discussed this particular set of data before on my blog. We can see the same or similar marriages and I think this was prepared in the latter part of the 1800s. The second image (referred to as Sheet No. 2) does have a slightly different look at the Blake family of Andover than this Pedigree Chart.

Second Image of the Blake Pedigree at the Blake Museum in Bridgwater (I have cropped it from the original image to show the Andover Hampshire material):

 In a way it is like the author of this second Pedigree Chart has anticipated and noted the problems with having a William Blake at Eastontown as the son of Roger Blake and Mary (Baynard) Blake and devised a connection further back descendant of Henry Blake married to Margaret (Bellet) Blake. There is actually a simpler connection I think even further back with a John of Enham marrying Alicia (la Blak) daughter of Richard le Blak who lived at Wargrave likely whilst they were living at Wargrave and that would have been in the early 1300s and that would eliminate the inconsistencies with the wills of the Blake family of Andover created by these two charts. I will discuss this chart line by line as well since I have a lot of information from the wills to help to simply and revise this portion.

So that is my purpose in the next month to examine the extant material and see what is available. I have really three sets of thought all based likely on family lore. The First Pedigree Chart created by the College of Arms with information provided by the Daniel Blake family using the Visitations and family data which is not found online was a simple direct connection back to William Blake of Eastonton but he is not given the right set of parents according to the wills. The Second Pedigree Chart created by I think Edward Blake of Crewkerne, Somerset who did provide information to Horatio Gates Somerby so likely why this information in the Second Pedigree Chart resembles that idea and the Blake is an unknown coming out of Wiltshire to Andover and a son of Henry Blake if one follows the traceback to the first page of this second Pedigree (great grandfather of Roger Blake said to be the father of William Blake of Eastonton). This second chart does utilize the power of the wills as far back as they would take you although I need to verify the information on this chart with the extant wills. I have transcribed all of them. This Second Pedigree Chart links the Somerset Blake family to the Calne Blake family and again this is hinted at in the first Pedigree Chart which we will reach eventually. My thought remains the simplest that the Andover Blake family is linked through a female line way back in the early 1300s. This would fit in with my grandfather's thought that such a relationship could have existed (as family lore did exist but he tended to be somewhat skeptical of it I think) but more likely with the Blake family of Berkshire as in retrospect he appeared aware of a relationship between these families from earlier times. As I researched I did recall his mentioning that (I was only eight when he passed although he was quite lucid to the end of his life; just fell asleep a lot while he was telling me stories!). I loved it though to sit and listen to him and would do that for hours as my father used to take me to the office and let me sit and chat with him whilst he was working. My grandfather used to keep the equipment sorted for him and he also built scaffolding when he needed that for construction. Proving the link between the Somerset Blake family and the Calne Blake family I will leave to others. I sometimes think where there is "old" family lore one has to look at it as a possibility but finding the information when you are looking back into the 1600s and earlier can be quite difficult. My grandfather though was quite positive that we were not related to Lord High Admiral Robert Blake of Bridgwater (I think that was still important in the 1800s but time tends to gloss over these things!). But that was likely more of a political statement clearly separating his Blake family from Cromwell. Isn't history fascinating really? Between my new found depth of vision and all of this history ( my cousin George Dekay (he asked me to write a Profile for the Pincombe family for the book he was editing) certainly set me on a different path than I had planned for my retirement) I am totally distracted for sure and the days pass by rather quickly. I continue to see more items in that oil painting of the winter scene in Canada. The painter is certainly obscure and the painting itself of little value but the picture is tremendous.

I also want to get back to my son in law's family which traces back to 30+ of the early families in Quebec (and some Acadian further back with some of those lines now in New Orleans). I do have a Pedigree Chart for my lines back which includes my son in law's lines but I still need to extract more data that is available. Most of the families I have taken back to France at least one generation. With all of Edward's work on the Kipp side (his early colonial ancestors are many and for the most part they remained in the United States until the 1820s/1830s when free land became available in Upper Canada although his Kipp line came in 1800 from Northeast Town in Dutchess County New York (on the 1790 census)), the lines for my daughters tend to be mostly in North America back into colonial days except for my father being born in England and coming to Canada as a nine year old with his parents in 1913 (my mother's family arrived in 1818 for the earliest settler but each subsequent marriage in that line was with an English immigrant - amazing really). A link between the Kipp family and Thomas Horner does give one a thought on why Isaac Kipp made the move to Canada in 1800 (free land was available then as well for settlers although a lot of them tended to be loyalist but with a father in law that was patriot I think that was unlikely (Isaac was born in 1764 and finding his birth parents knowing his baptism/birth has been impossible but the yDNA match with descendants of the Kip family of New York/New Amsterdam did make the way back obvious!). I am not an expert though on the Kipp family and his work is online on Edward's website. Interestingly many members of this Kipp family are now back in the United States have gradually moved back from the middle 1800s to the present.

I also worked extracting more atDNA matches from My Heritage and this will be a long process as I found at least ten new ones on the first page of my matches alone. I figure that I need to read through the first 35 pages of matches to eliminate anyone who does not match me by at least (or one of my siblings) 20 cM on one length. Many of these matches are in the fourth cousin range with total matches of between 40 and higher cM. But I am back into working on what I wanted to do although I do need to send the Companion Charting Book for the Siderfin Family to repositories and the Guild. So will also get that done soon. 

Teatime and then breakfast. The day moves quickly. It is minus 11 degrees celsius and cloudy. A sort of normal January although not quite as much snow cover as usual. It is this lack of snow cover which is the largest problem.

Somerby's errors still reverberating in Blake family research

I strongly suspect that Horatio Gates Somerby had no idea of how far reaching his genealogical frauds would eventually be. At a bare minimum sixteen books have been published on the Blake family of Boston (can be seen at the New England Historic Genealogical Society Library in Boston) which either use his results or contradict those results. For the most part though these books accept Somerby's work as correct and simply connect their families back to the information which he created in the mid 1800s.

Usually his connections were back to royalty but in the case of the Blake family, he took them back to the Blake family of Calne, Wiltshire known to be there in the late 1200s. He did this by connecting them to the Andover Hampshire Blake family (my own line) with a fraudulent marriage between William Blake and Mary Coles giving them children Humphrey, Nicholas and Alice. In reality, Nicholas at Enham, Andover, Hampshire was the son of a Mr. Blake (forename unknown thus far) and Joan Blake (his widow). Joan Blake (widow) left a will in 1527 where she mentions her children Robert, Nicholas and Elizabeth (married to a Mr. Mylne). No mention of a Humphrey. Nicholas and Robert in their turn also left wills mentioning their children and the witness to Robert's will was Nicholas (Robert died in 1542 and Nicholas in 1547).

The interesting part of Somerby's creations is that he may have seen the Pedigree Chart which I have mentioned earlier and is located at the Swindon and Wiltshire Record Office (can be purchased from them as images at a very reasonable cost). However, the furtherest back ancestor he names as Robert de Blakeland and the chart shows Richard Blague/Blaake/Blake as being the furtherest back. The interesting question for me is were these men the same person? Robert de Blakeland is a bit of a red herring in all of this. He is supposed to have paid a subsidy in 1286 on Blakelands (now Blacklands near Calne Wiltshire). I haven't pulled up that information yet to look at it. All in Latin and my skills are at best rather weak in Latin so it has waited whilst I improve.

How to rid the world of Somerby's errors though is an interesting dilemma and one that has been discussed in The American Genealogist (TAG). Fortunately, the author Paul C Reid has written an article in 1999 exposing the fraud of Somerby with the Blake family and others. Clifford L Stott in the NEHGS Register has written an article on Humphrey Blake and his descendants also mentioning the fraud of Somerby. By constantly writing articles and blogging on these errors it may yet be possible to undo the fraudulence of Somerby's genealogical forays. That he did it solely for money, is perhaps the greatest crime of all. To have done it innocently could at least be understood by future genealogists but simply to make money is such a crime perpetrated against all of us who try to do a competent job of our family history.

I am often having to deny people who write me asking for a genealogical descent chart particularly for William Blake and Mary Coles who never existed as far as I am able to determine. Certainly William Blake is not listed as a son of Robert Blake and Avis Wallop his supposed parents. His supposed children William Blake and Robert Blake along with their widowed mother are not in the Andover Hampshire area living on supposed Wallop estate (Eastontown). There is a Robert Blake at Enham just as there is a Nicholas Blake at Enham but they are the sons of Joan Blake (widow) and forename unknown Mr. Blake. It is the son of Nicholas Blake, William who first notes himself as living at Eastontown in his will. Nicholas and his wife Margaret have only four children: William the eldest, Edmund (minor at the time of his father's death in 1547) and two daughters Alice married to Mr. Godwyn and Elizabeth married to Mr. Monday. Edmund does have a son Steven but I have not been able to trace this line down. William's line is very large at Andover; he and his wife Elizabeth (unknown) have ten children. Robert, brother to Nicholas, is married to Agnes (unknown) and they have six sons.

My initial thought was that all of the Blake lines at Andover traced back to these two men, however the pedigree chart at Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office gives another William Blake also at Eastontown but married to Avice Ripley. Since the eldest son of William (John) married a Margaret Blake daughter of William Blake I was not surprised to find that there could be another Blake family at Andover and I am pursuing this notion that there was another William Blake there at the same time as William son of Nicholas since William does name his wife as Elizabeth. Could they be the same William? It would mean that his eldest son John married his half-sister Margaret. I doubt that happened. It was frowned upon by the Catholic Church and it is unlikely that one would record it on a Pedigree Chart.

My strongest suspicion is that there is a small error in connection on the chart and that Margaret was the daughter of William Blake and Avice Ripley and able to trace her line back to the Blake family at Calne. John who is shown as connected to this marriage was actually the son of William Blake and Elizabeth also of Eastontown (there were several farms at Eastontown according to ancient maps) but the connection back for him was to William and then Nicholas and unknown Blake married to Joan (widow in 1527). The Visitation which was used to create the chart is somewhat unclear on the parentage of William and it is from these Visitations that the chart was created.

The desire to have the male Blake line go back directly to the Calne Blake family may have been just too tempting (the female Blake line through Margaret definitely did do so I believe). Hence this small error crept in and allowed the descendants to use the coat of arms of the Wiltshire Blake family which included the Blake/Baynard/Bellet/Durrant family crests. It was Richard Blake Esquire, Captain of the Trained Bands in County Middlesex in 1662 who first used this crest on his Visitation although by then the Baynard crest had been forgotten and assumed to be an unfinished Blague/Blake crest. John is correctly identified as the progenitor of the family from Essington, County of Southampton. The Visitation is also signed.

How to prove that I am correct is the mystery at the moment. I am searching out material to either support my hypothesis or eliminate it. That is all that we can do as the successors of Horatio Gates Somerby's frauds.

Blake family chart - 2

I continued looking at the Blake family chart I purchased from the Wiltshire Record Office. I have now concluded that the first two couples on the chart in two of the lines (Blake and Baynard) are continuous generations. It would appear that the Blake family can be traced back to this Richard Blaque als Blaake als Blake who gave land to the Knights Templar (since they were disbanded by the Pope in 1312 this may well bring the Blake line back even further since it is known that Robert de Blakeland paid taxes at Calne in 1286.

According to the other researcher (I have not done the work) Barrie Blake in Australia, Robert Le Blake was b c 1190 and he d after 1272. He married Johanna La Blake and they have two sons Adam Le Blake and Richard Le Blake. On his webpages (http://blakeheritage.synthasite.com/iframe1.php) can be found this lineage and from him I have the information: "Whilst my records show Richard as the Sub-treasurer to the Dean of Wells Cathedral, they also show his father, Robert, as Bailiff to the Bishop of Wells." On the chart there is the statement: R[ichar]d Blake gave certain Lands in Essex to the Knights Templars in the Reign of King Edw[ard] I which may be seen by the Records in the Tower of London _____ E_??_r. 31 Ed I a? 77. Edward I reigned from 1272 to 1307. The subsidy paid to Edward I by Robert de Blakeland was in 1286. I now need to check the records to see if this was actually Richard Le Blake paying this subsidy. The land that Richard gave to the Knights Templar was in Essex which is a good deal away from Wells and from Calne.

I suspect if I have the time and ability to collect Blake records that we could find out a great deal about this family in the early history of England at least back to 1000 plus. However, I am still concerned with finding a little more proof for my linkage from William Blake (the Clerk) to John Blake (his son) and to Thomas Blake (my known 6x great grandfather and the son of John Blake at Andover). That is in the 1600s! I am still curious about William Blake attached to the Roger Blake family. I am now noticing that the crest attached to the Blake/Blague family at Surrey which is quartered is using the Blake/Blague crest in the top left, the Durrant/Dorrant top right, the Bellet/Billet bottom left and the Baynard bottom right. However, the Visitation notes (put in at a later date as they are in square brackets) that the lower right is unknown calling it an incomplete Blake/Blague crest. Since the chart was made from the Visitations, the College of Arms would have recognized the lower right crest as Baynard and attached William to Roger's family as this is the first time that the Blake/Baynard family married. That works for the dates. Interesting actually and with it being over 150 years earlier there would not have been anyone living to really answer that question.