BLAKE - Origin of the BLAKE families along the Cornwall/Devon border

This week's blog will look at the initially small number of BLAKE  marriages in the localities along the Cornwall side of the Cornwall/Devon border. I mentioned last week that up to 1600 there were seven marriages in total in this area along the border with five marriages having BLAKE as the groom and two marriages having BLAKE as the bride.

In the second blog of ten blogs on my BLAKE one-name study I mentioned the England's Immigrants Database 1330-1550 and the individuals who emigrated to the south-west of England from Breton.

This is the citation for this particular set of documents.  England’s Immigrants 1330 – 1550 (www.englandsimmigrants.com, version 1.0, 15 February 2015).

In my search of this database I found two individuals mentioned as emigrating to Devon:

 Surname    Forename    Nationality    Day    Month    Year    Residence

BLAKE   John                   Fleming            24   Jul    1484               Devon, Exeter

BLAKE   William             Breton                 4    Apr    1524            Devon, Morchard Bishop

I have blogged a number of times on the BLAKE family in the North Molton area of Devon. The earliest BLAKE records in the parish registers of North Molton are for a Thomas BLAKE buried 8 May 1542 and a John BLAKE buried 5 Dec 1546. There is through the years an extensive BLAKE family at North Molton and the next BLAKE family noted at North Molton:

BLAKE    Mighell    married Agnes Squire    1558    Dec    2  
BLAKE    Johane    daughter   BLAKE    Mychell    baptized    1560    Sep    1  
BLAKE    John    son    BLAKE    Mighell        baptized    1564    Dec    10 (buried  1565    Dec    6)
BLAKE    John    son    BLAKE   Mighell        baptized    1565    Dec    6  
BLAKE    Mote    daughter    BLAKE    Mighell    baptized    1565    Dec    6 (buried   1565    Dec  7)
BLAKE   Anne    daughter    BLAKE    Mighell    baptized    1568  May  16 (buried  1568    Jun  17)
BLAKE Michael, husbandman, will probated PCC 13 Nov 1619

Of interest,  it is 36 kilometres from Morchard Bishop to North Molton and 73 kilometres from Exeter to North Molton. I have transcribed all of the BLAKE wills at the National Archives (UK) known to me for Devon and links to them can be found on the Devon Genuki pages (https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/Probate).

The entries of interest along the Cornwall/Devon border include (Sheviock, Botus Fleming, Landulph, Marhamchurch, Launceston St Mary Magdalene):

Thomas BLAKE married Elizabeth (unknown) Sep 1551 (Landulph)
Patrik BLAKE married Sedwell Truskot 15 Oct 1570 (Botus Fleming)
Francis BLAKE married Jone Wills 15 May 1586 (Marhamchurch)
William BLAKE married Elizbeth Gyngar  5 May 1588 (Marhamchurch)
John BLAKE married Sybblye Holman 21 Oct 1591 (Sheviock)

There were two marriages with a BLAKE bride in this time period (Botus Fleming and Launceston St Mary Magdalene) but I do  not trace down any further than marriage so did not add these two in. The five marriages listed above do not trace down in the area in which they married.

Are there other Blake families in Devon in the border area with Cornwall?

Plymouth, Devon is the closest large city to Sheviock, Landulph and Botus Fleming.  Holsworthy and Okehampton are across the border from Landulph. In my studies of the BLAKE family in Devon thus far I have not located any families that would coincide with these marriages.

One of the oldest BLAKE lines (to the present) in this area of Cornwall was at Landrake which is about 14 kilometres from Plymouth.

Henry BLAKE married Margery Bake 22 Jun 1605 at Landrake with St Erney. Henry was buried 21 Jan 1664 (Landrake) and Margery was buried 29 Mar 1665 (Landrake). They appear to have had eight children and a number of them had descendants. This line is continuous in this general area to the present. But I could not discover any BLAKE members in this particular area prior to their marriage in 1605. I then moved to the Bodmin area working on the BLAKE family in that area.

Although it is tempting to conclude that the BLAKE family in Cornwall is composed of two distinct lines of BLAKE only yDNA testing could really verify the earlier ancestry of this family.

This concludes my look at the BLAKE family in Cornwall. I have extracted all the records and built all the reasonable trees from these records if anyone is particularly interested and I am most willing to share any of this information.

My next blog in this series of ten blogs will examine the oldest BLAKE will that I transcribed from the set of over 700 at the National Archives under PROB/11.That is the Will of John BLAKE probated 24 April 1504, PROB 11/14/117. There are two earlier wills both from 1487 that I have not yet completed (they are in Latin).

Blake wills in Devon

Although I have transcribed a number of wills for Blake in Devon, I have only just scratched the surface. There are over 300 wills for Blake in Devon that were destroyed during the bombing of the Exeter Record Office in WWII. Devon Genuki Wills has extracted from various publications all of the wills that ended up being mentioned as well as including the PCC wills and the IRW wills. One of my projects is to collect all the Blake wills from on the Inland Revenue Wills (IRW) film held by Family Search on our next trip to Salt Lake City.

These IRW wills (18 for Blake) were retained by the Estate Duty Office for the time period 1812 - 1857:

Blake    Ann    North Molton    DEV        1816    W    co        IRW    B 1007
Blake    Ann    Kenton    DEV        1833    W    co        IRW    B 1008
Blake    James    Diptford    DEV        1854    W    co        IRW    B 1009
Blake    John    Plymouth    DEV        1814    W    co        IRW    B 1010
Blake    John    North Petherwin DEV  1832  W    co       IRW    B1011  
Blake    Josiah    Stoke Damerel    DEV        1856    W    co        IRW    B 1012
Blake    Mary    Diptford    DEV        1856    W    co        IRW    B 1013
Blake    Richard    Woodbury    DEV        1844    W    co        IRW    B 1014
Blake    Robert    Sampford Peverel   DEV        1851    W    co        IRW    B 1015
Blake    Samuel    Devonport [Stoke Damerel]    DEV        1841    W    co        IRW    B 1016
Blake    Thomas    Kenton    DEV        1824    W    co        IRW    B 1017
Blake    Thomas    Little Torrington    DEV        1832    W    co        IRW    B 1018
Blake    Thomas    Woodleigh    DEV        1842    W    co        IRW    B 1019
Blake    Thomas Symons    Woodleigh    DEV        1853    W    co        IRW    B 1020
Blake    William    Tiverton    DEV        1825    W    co        IRW    B 1021
Blake    William    Holsworthy    DEV        1828    W    co        IRW    B 1022
Blake    William    Brixham [St Mary]    DEV        1832    W    co        IRW    B 1023
Blake    William    St Budeaux    DEV        1833    W    co        IRW    B 1024

They are listed on Film Number 1278811 and I could use the short-term microfilm loan and will think about doing that in the winter so that I can locate the page number for these wills. I will try to photograph them but it is possible to request a scan of the particular will from Family Search and have it emailed to you. They permit you to ask for five a month. I have already requested one for Hampshire from them and received it. The copy was excellent and I have transcribed that will already in as much as it was possible at the time. I shall revisit the will of Richard Blayke 1522 for Enham Hampshire one of these days!

I ordered a further five wills for Blake in Hampshire and I would be finished with Hampshire by the end of the year so could consider ordering them as well but first need to get the page numbers to help simply that search by them. The title of the film is:  Wills for the Diocese of Exeter (County of Devon), 1812-1857.

I now have a flat file set up with all the Blake wills in Devon that I am missing and the various publications in which some mention is made of them. As I work through the family charts for Blake I will consider ordering these books from Family Search on Interlibrary Loan through their Research Centres. There still remain just under 300 wills for which the original will is no longer available.

Full Genetic Scans on mitochondrial DNA

I continued working on the subgrouping of the T_FGS study group and completed the assignments to subgroups. I now need to add the mutations that belong to the particular subgroupings to the description and decide on a colour scheme. Although this isn't my mtDNA, the sample is my husband's line, it was an interesting couple of years spent looking at the grouping for T haplogroup.

 I think that if you are interested in testing your DNA and in particular the mitochondrial DNA the most practical and efficient way is to do the Full Genetic Scan. Overall the cost has diminished greatly and it is a very practical way to test in that there are no further tests in this area. My family finder results amazed me as I have a fourth cousin or greater match with someone whose family has always been in England. I still need to sort through the material which she sent to me. I suspect that the attachment is through my mother's Buller line - perhaps Christopher's mother was of German descent. Living in London as he did plus being executor of so many wills has left me wondering about who he was. My Buller day will look some more at the Buller records at St Olave where he buried his wife, two of his children and then himself although they attended St Mary Magdalene Bermondsey and baptized their children at St Mary Magdalene.

Now having published the paper, it has freed my mind up to look at the H11 mtDNA haplogroup which is my line. Having this likely "resting spot" for my mutations in Agryllshire Scotland has set my thoughts towards how my line ended up in the Midlands of England. I remember my mother talking about her thoughts on her ancestry and she suspected Irish but could that have been Scot-Irish! Would my ancestor have emigrated from Ireland to England looking for work at some time in the past? My grandmother's mother used to sing an Irish lullaby to the children. But it was a popular lilt and a lot of people could have sung that particular tune I suspect. I really have very little to go on with my great grandmother Ellen Taylor's family other than her father being a shoemaker in Birmingham. As far as I can ascertain none of Ellen's possible sisters had daughters so any matches would have to be more distant. Ellen's likely mother did not have any sisters so I am back to her mother Ellen Lawley who was born in 1819 in Wellington Shropshire England. Other than knowing that her father was Joseph I do not have any further information yet. I am  hoping that she might have had sisters with descendants.

The Devon Genuki pages updated with the index of wills prepared by Beckerlegge, J.J. (Ed.)  Index of the Wills and Administrations relating to the County of Devon proved in the Court of the Archdeaconry of Barnstaple, 1563-1858. Since my mother's paternal family comes from this area I pulled out my families from the index: Blackmore, Bray, Burges, Charley, Harvey, Hobbs, Manning, Moggridge, Pincombe, Pearse, Rew, Rowcliffe, Snow, Stanbury, Tapp, Thomas, Upcott, Vicary, Whetson.  I also pulled the Blake entries for the Blake one name study. It would be interesting to discover the ancestry of that particular Blake family in Devon - there appears to be a thought that it might be the Hampshire Blake family from Knights Enham.

I must get back to transcribing Abbotts Ann once again. I shall put a high priority on those parish registers to complete them.