Pincombe marriages after Civil Registration in 1837

I have now gone through all of the marriages on Find My Past where I can readily connect the correct spouse with the Pincombe spouse. I have 150 of 450 left to find through the census. Some of these are in my Legacy file and I will tease them out next and then the task of going through the census to find the matching spouse plus it lets me now look at the births and death and match them into families. How to label each family is uppermost in my mind at the moment. I have heard of a number of different methods and I think I will go for numerical since the Pincombe family is not that large and it doesn't matter which County. I can make that reference within the family grouping. I need to also work on the Pinkham family as I have them partially linked with the marriages. The Pincombe records outnumber the Pinkham records about 2:1 in most cases but there is sometimes a crossover where the Pincombe name is used in one set of records and Pinkham in another set and it is the same family. I must learn more about the origin of the Pinkham family name. It arose spontaneously within the Pincombe family it would appear and as noted earlier is by far the greatest occurrence of the surname in the United States of America.

Working away on the marriages I have discovered two new variants of Pincombe that I hadn't really noticed. The numbers are sufficient to merit thinking about adding them to the study and they include PINCHAM and PINKAM. Looking at Free BMD there are 181 records for Pincham between 1837 and the 1950s; for Pinkam there is only one but more on Find My Past.  It seems like a long stretch from PINCOMBE but if I look at PINKHAM as a variant then I need to consider whether or not to include these two new ones. Occasionally there is also a PINKCOMBE entry (11 in total on Free BMD which I have also ignored to date). If I move to including these three spellings I am wondering about Tincombe (87 records on Free BMD principally in the Exeter Devon area but moving into the London area especially in the 1900s)  which I am asked about as well - is it a variant of Pincombe? Listening to the Forum others go through this experience once they are heavily into data collection of whether or not to include the "rarer" variants of the surname.  Pincombe itself has 427 marriages and Pinkham has 293 records on Free BMD. If I include Pincham, Pinkam, Pinkcombe and Tincombe this would yield for my study around 1000 marriages between 1837 and the 1950s. Certainly doable as I am looking at that many marriages per county for my Blake one name study! But are they derived from the Pincombe (and originally Pencombe name).

Checking out these variants on the Public Profiler for British Names and they are less than 100 on the 1998 electoral list which I have already noted with the BMD records. Perhaps what I should do is take one of these variants and I think it should be Tincombe as that is the one most people ask me about with regard to being a variant of Pincombe and see if I can find the point at which a name change occurred.

The Tincombe name occurs (for marriages) in the following 34 Registration Districts from 1837 up to 1955:

Alresford
 Brighton
 Clerkenwell
 Crediton
 Croydon
 Devon Central
 Devonport
 Elham
 Essex S.W.
 Exeter
 Falmouth
 Gravesend
 Hackney
 Hampstead
 Holsworthy
 Honiton
 Lewisham
 Newton A
 Okehampton
 Plymouth
 Romford
 S. Molton
 Shoreditch
 St Thomas
 St. Saviour
 Surrey N.E.
 Swansea
 Tavistock
 Tavistock
 Tiverton
 Uckfield
 W. Ham
 Wandsworth
 Woolwich

If I look at 1837 to 1911 only the number of Registration Districts is now 19:

 Clerkenwell
 Crediton
 Croydon
 Devonport
 Exeter
 Falmouth
 Hackney
 Hampstead
 Honiton
 Newton A
 Okehampton
 Plymouth
 S. Molton
 Shoreditch
 St Thomas
 St. Saviour
 Tavistock
 Tiverton
 Woolwich

I can see this is primarily a Devon/London name and the Pincombe family up until the mid 1800s was primarily a Devon/London name. Point one in favour of Tincombe as being a variant of Pincombe - similar locality.

I then went to the IGI to look at the Tincombe family surname and with the new search I am able to bring up a box of information on locality:

Canada, USA, and Mexico 13,135
Europe 1,717

I excluded the other five entries as they were all less than 20 individual entries.

Why would the Tincombe surname be nearly ten times as frequent in the United States/Canada/Mexico than Europe (which is probably England primarily)? Perhaps transcription error of Pincombe which is fairly uncommon in the United States - the usual spelling is Pinkham in the United States.

I need to decide if this is a variant that I should include in my study? How far back does the Tincombe surname go in the Family Search records?There are almost 4000 results between 1400 and 1800 in the new family search. Narrowing this down to 1400 to 1600 gives fourty results which is quite a bit easier to work with.

Surname Forename Event Year Month Day Location Surname Forename Burial
Tinkombe Elizabetha C 1582 Jun 22 Bovey Tracey, Devon Tinkombe Willmi
Tinkcomb Wilms C 1577 Feb 25 Bovey Tracey, Devon Tinkcomb Willmi
Tinkham Richus C 1575 Dec 22 Bovey Tracey, Devon Tinkham Willmi 17 Jan 1586
Tynckombe Richardus C 1585 Mar 15 Bovey Tracey, Devon Tynckombe Johannis
Tingcombe Willms M 1592 Jul 15 Bovey Tracey, Devon Sprie Ebutta
Tinkham William C 1550 Nov 6 Bridford, Devon Tinkham Richard 30 Nov 1550
Tinkham Walter C 1552 Aug 13 Bridford, Devon Tinkham Richard
Tinkham Wilmot C 1563 Jan 21 Bridford, Devon Tinkham John
Tinckum Christofer C 1577 Jan 21 Dean Prior, Devon Tinckum Willm
Tynckum Margery C 1575 Oct 7 Dean Prior, Devon Tynckum Willm
Tinckum Joan C 1581 May 16 Dean Prior, Devon Tinckum Willm 24 Oct 1585
Tincombe John M 1593 Nov 12 Farway, Devon Perry Elsabeth
Tincombe Ede C 1589 May 11 Hatherleigh, Devon Tincombe Richord
Tingcombe John C 1587 Nov 21 Landrake, Cornwall Tingcombe Walter
Tynckom John C 1572 Feb 18 North Bovey, Devon Tynckom John
Tinckom Andrew C 1600 Aug 5 North Bovey, Devon Tinckom Pancrasse
Tynckom Johane C 1573 Feb 19 North Bovey, Devon Tynckom John
Tincumbe Henry M 1600 Oct 20 Saint Andrew, Plymouth, Devon Freende Anne
Tincome Christian M 1578 May 28 Saint Sidwell, Exeter, Devon Hill John
Tinkcombe John C 1584 Jan 19 South Tawton, Devon Tinkcombe Walter
Tinkombe Richardus C 1588 Jun 5 South Tawton, Devon Tinkombe Walter
Tinckcombe Walter M 1584 May 8 South Tawton, Devon Hoode Elizabeth
Tincombe Willmott M 1576 May 12 St Edmunds, Exeter, Devon Poole John
Tinckam William C 1600 Feb 8 Stepney, London Tinckam Robert
Tynckham Rose M 1573 Apr 13 Tedburn Saint Mary, Devon Ponsford Thomas
Tyncome Rochard M 1576 Nov 18 Totnes, Devon Masser John
Tincombe Henry C 1594 Mar 16 Whitestone, Devon Tincombe Gregory
Tinckham Robert C 1595 Feb 20 Whitestone, Devon Tinckham William 1 Mar 1595
Tynckeham Matthew C 1579 May 3 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Tynckeham Augustine 10 Jun 1579
Tynckeham George C 1590 Jun 25 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Tynckeham Augustine 19 Nov 1591
Tynckeham John C 1575 Feb 8 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Tynckeham Augustine
Tynckeham Susanna C 1573 Aug 20 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Tynckeham Augustine
Tynckeham Judith C 1582 May 11 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Tynckeham Augustine 31 Jan 1586
Tynckeham Augustine M 1568 Sep 4 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Polseland Beaton
Tynckeham Augustine M 1572 Oct 20 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Wyndett Elizabeth
Tynckeham Margaret M 1591 Aug 30 Wolborough and Newton Abbot, Devon Derante John
Tynckame Edward C 1569 Jun 26 York Tynckame John

The earliest entries were as expected in the mid 1500s (some parish registers do go back to 1538) but in general mid 1500s is fairly common. All of the entries with the exception of one are in Devon. The locations are in general around the Plymouth area. I do have a Pincombe family in the Plymouth area but the earliest is towards the end of the 1600s. In general they have used the surname Pinkham but not all; the Pincombe surname is certainly found there as well especially in the 1800s. This might appear to indicate that they are a separate family.

Looking online for a meaning for the surname Tincombe:

http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Tincombe

"Recorded in a very wide variety of spellings including Tincomb, Tincombe, Tincam, Tinkum, Tinkham Tinckombe, Tingcombe, and no doubt others, this is an English surname. From early recordings which we have discovered in surviving church registers, the original spelling could have been the pre 7th century Olde English 'tynincel' meaning a small farm, plus either 'cum' meaning a valley or 'ham', a hamlet or village."

I will continue to look at available information but it would appear that this is a surname that arose spontaneously and independent of the Pincombe surname.

I will look at the other two surnames as variants of Pinkham at another sitting.

Blake Marriages 1837 to 1950

One of the projects for the Blake one name study is the location of Blake families in England by decade beginning with 1840s decade and ending with 1940s decade. I have extracted all the Blake marriages from Free BMD and I am slowly putting them into a form that I can use them to produce my charts and eventually maps of England. For the moment I have not touched Wales or Scotland. I will do that at a later date though. Eventually I will also continue this backwards into the early 1800s and 1700s and on back into the 1600s and even 1500s with the Parish Registers. Another ongoing project is extraction of Blake entries from the Norfolk Parish Registers which are online at the Family History Site. This will allow me to move forward with the Blake family there. Another researcher has researched the Blake family in Suffolk and I must be in contact with her again now that we have taken on the Blake one name study.

In total there are 30,993 records on Free BMD for marriages in England, Scotland and Wales between 1837 and 1956 although the last decade (1950s) is only just now coming in. Once I have completed all the counties of England then I will be able to determine the number of Blake marriages in the English Counties as they were in 1840. One of the problems with such a study is small changes that occurred over time in the record keeping in areas that overlap in more than one county and parishes that end up being counted in a separate county for historical reasons. However, the overall view will be an interesting one.

As the yDNA study develops with Barrie Blake and Bill Bleak, there are a few interesting Blake lines emerging and certainly they do not share common ancestry in thousands and thousands of years being from different haplogroups. I am working both forward and backwards in time with Blake families. One of my forward studies is the Blake family at Andover and I am looking at the descendants of Nicholas and Robert Blake (and their sister Elizabeth who married (unknown) Mylne). Their father is thus far unknown to me although other researchers claim him to be William Blake a son of one of the descendants of the Blake family of Calne Wiltshire - there is some discrepancy in just which son he is (several different researchers attach this family at different points in the Blake family there). I still need to prove the yDNA line at Andover but I am hopeful that that will happen in the near future as more and more people become interested in testing their yDNA and in particular Blake descendants.

Once I have completed my survey of the decades I will put it up on the Guild of one One Name Studies website for the Blake study:

http://www.one-name.org/profiles/blake.html

The maps I will likely place on this blog although time will tell on that. This is a long term project as I am only about 1/3 of the way through the Blake marriages at this point. A county file generally take me several hours to organize if it is around 400 Blake marriages and some of these counties have 1000 marriages and even as high as 5000. I would like to complete all the counties before putting the information together but if I find that something interesting is emerging I will relate that on this blog.

As mentioned I am returning once again to the Blake family after my hiatus with my Pincombe family. I will still continue transcribing the Pincombe wills but the focus of my research now will be Blake primarily. Once North Molton parish registers (what I own in fiche anyway) are complete then I will return to Abbotts Ann. The darkening evening is an open invitation to sit at the fiche reader by the hour.

Blake Marriages on Free BMD

I continued working away on the Blake Marriages on Free BMD and have now managed to pull the spouse name back to the marriages beginning in 1928 (up to 1951). There were ~900 marriages in Hampshire in this time period and only ~500 between 1912 and 1927. Then there are ~1500 from Sep quarter 1837 to the end of 1911 in Hampshire. This is an enormous task and will take quite a while to complete the entire collection of Blake marriages on Free BMD. In my lifetime I will never be able to collect all the Blake information worldwide but I will attempt to collect as much as I am able. The frequency of the Blake name worldwide from the World Profile site:

Country    FPM
AUSTRALIA    546.24
IRELAND    519.41
UNITED KINGDOM    475.47
NEW-ZEALAND    391.15
UNITED STATES    274.12
CANADA    257.19
SPAIN    4.82
BELGIUM    4.59
SWITZERLAND    3.83
DENMARK    3.74

Since the population of the United States is about 307,000,000 and that of the United Kingdom is about 62,000,000 (about 5 times larger) then the largest number of Blake surnames can be found in the United States. The ethnic origin of the Blake surnames includes England, Scotland, Ireland (Eire and Northern) and Wales. I have a number of books published by different branches of the Blake family although primarily those descended from the Massachusetts and the Carolinas colonies. Unfortunately most of these books are following the erroneous book first published by Horatio Somerby where he took Nicholas Blake (died Old House, Enham near Andover, Hampshire, England in 1547) and invented a brother Humphrey (who subsequently became the head of the Somerset Blake family) and completely ignored the will of the mother of Nicholas (and his brother Robert). He then attached Nicholas directly to the Blake family at Calne through William a supposed son of Robert Blake and Avis Wallop. Eliminating this error is going to be a major job although recently NEHGS has published three papers discussing the errors made. More on this discussion later as I start to collect US Blake information and organize it.

I continue proofreading the Upper Clatford Parish Registers and as soon as they are complete I will submit them to the OPC Hampshire website but will also post them on my webpages. The files are in excel and being all text fairly small. Posting Andover will be somewhat of a challenge as it is quite a large file but I haven't even started to proofread it yet and at least the first 100 years needs to be done before I release it. The Registers become easier to read after that time period.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 11 Nov 2008

I have a feeling that this title will gradually change to English Research from Canada and the date which is the name of my blog. But I will carry on with what I am doing with my information that I garnered at Salt Lake City from the Family History Library.

Today I continued to transcribe the Protestation Returns of the South Molton Hundred of Devon. I have two other complete Hundreds to transcribe plus a few other miscellaneous parishes where my one name study members could be found in 1641-42. That fits in with my one name study of this family which is progressing. I inherited the study from two people who had worked on it from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. They both felt the need to give it up and were most happy to pass it on. I actually wasn't the original recipient but he too, after a couple of years, found that he simply didn't have time to work on it as he had other lines he wanted to investigate.

I tend to be a glutton for work and so I took it on from him. There are 12 large charts each occupying half of a metre square sheet. I have entered four of these large charts into Legacy and I continue apace doing so. One of the items that slows me down is that I have the original parish registers on fiche for a number of these places and I was (and continue to) checking each entry with the register where I had the information (or at least the IGI). All of these charts were prepared (hands on) with people in the various areas where this family moved during the 1800s and late 1700s. One of the original people was in the United States and he had a good handle on his family there. He had actually contacted my uncle in the late 1960s for information but my uncle was not willing to do that. I can remember the conversation with my mother on that (his only sibling) and whether she wanted to write to this person. They both decided not to become involved which was a shame really as I didn't get to correspond with him until just five years ago and he has lost some of his earlier enthusiasm. The other person in charge of the One Name Study lived in England and I never did correspond with him but the other gentleman who took it over did do so and passed the correspondence to me by the marvels of a CD across the Atlantic. Marvelous inventions all of these especially the world wide web.

So today I continue to transcribe Protestation Returns but reading my email I had a request from an individual in England looking for one of his ancestors in Bishops Nympton. I looked it up on my transcription of this register (400 pages from 1556 to 1812) and the IGI had transcribed one particular name as Agnis but that didn't work for what I was seeing on the microfilm and I had transcribed it as M_ry and indeed he was looking for a Mary in this time frame so worked very well. These distractions from my intended work are quite welcomed as I am the online parish clerk for Bishops Nympton.

Today I think I shall complete the transcription of North Molton and South Molton for the Protestation Returns which is a lot of names. I have quite a few family lines from this particular area in Devon and the opportunity to actually produce a list of all these individuals sorted by hundred and then by parish was exceedingly tempting as I am back into this time frame with a number of the lines. What started with just the one family at Bishops Nympton has grown by leaps and bonds.

The other item I am continuing with is the transcription of the Land Tax Assessments of the Twitchen Parish having completed Bishops Nympton.

How did I get into Genealogy is perhaps an interesting topic? My husband has been doing genealogy for over 45 years. I have watched him, read census for him, read land records for him and walked through hundreds of graveyards searching for his ancestors in the past 43 years. Never once did a quiver of interest in my own family arise through all of this exploration. I helped with the OGS table for the branch that we belong to at a number of Seminars/Conferences through the years but again no interest in actually doing all of that with my own family.

Two items occurred within about one year of each other that resulted in my taking on this pursuit of ancestors. I did it in my own unique way as well in that I took 42 courses from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies which is a certificate course offered through the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto and is an online course (with some testing through the media of the telephone interview).

The first item that occurred was my daughter and I flying off to Rome in November 2001 which was an adventure in itself. On our way back we had decided to stop in London (UK) for a couple of days. I had never been in England before that and on arriving I had this incredible feeling of being "home." Our Hotel was very close to the British Museum and we saw a great deal in just that short time period. As we walked back from the Underground to our Hotel I had this incredible desire to walk past towards another street and did actually do so before we left England. For another year or so I watched as my husband continued to work away on his many ancestral lines that all ended on the American side of the Atlantic - most lines going back into the 1620s, 1630s and 1640s. American research, I must say, is very difficult and you pretty much need to go to the areas and have a look around and we continued to do that.

A second item occurred in 2003 which was my fourth cousin (I didn't know the exact relationship at this time) writing to ask me to do the profile on one of my emigrant lines (I have five actually as I mentioned earlier with three ancestors born here). Coincidentally my eldest daughter was doing her PhD in the same geographic area he wanted me to write about. I decided I couldn't do it without taking some sort of a course on how to do genealogy and this profile wasn't due for two years. So I signed up for one course on Methodology which, after just one month, turned into an entire years worth of courses and just a couple of months after that I had signed myself up for the next four years taking courses (I graduated in May 2007 with a certificate in Genealogy in English and Canadian sources - double certificate actually).

Surprisingly, I had quite a bit of information at hand as my mother felt that the one person who would take care of all the material that she herself had collected (I think she eventually wished she had contacted the individual looking at family history) was my husband and he had put it all away thinking that when I retired I might just take an interest! Even he was amazed at the gusto with which I went at my courses working hours and hours every week on each lesson and using my family as an example to put into practice all the tools. I soon had everyone back to my 2x great grandparents with the aid of material that my mother had accumulated. Going to the 3x was not overly difficult as I simply purchased records from England but a few places do not sell the records and for those I had to be very inventive - I joined Genes Reunited and met many many cousins on line including for the areas that I needed real records and I became a Free BMD transcriber.

But back to the feeling of being at home. As I researched my family, I discovered that just around the block from our hotel in England had lived my 2x great grandfather and he had a pork butcher shop there. Intuition, serendipity or whatever you want to call it - my ancestors were making themselves felt in my life.

Tomorrow perhaps a discussion on the value of One Name Studies as I belong to the Guild of One Name Studies.