Andover Parish Registers - 9

Today, I completed the first fiche of the first register and started on the second fiche which is really a surprise as the bottom row turned out to be very difficult and badly eaten. I am now up to 1998 baptisms as of November 1626. A couple of answers to queries in this last set of transcriptions as I found that the Nicholas Blake baptized at Andover is the son of William Blake at Eastontown. Other Blake baptisms are equally interesting in this time period as it turns out.

I also joined Library Thingy as a lifetime member. I can now continue entering my books into the database as I had reached 190 and at 200 you have to join. I am really pleased with this program as it will give me a *.csv file that I can bring into Excel or Access and prepare distinct files by subject matter having all the pertinent bibliographic information already entered.

Our car is finally back and it has been a pricey spring - $1500 in the US to fix the car and another $800 when we returned and now $1500. We were going to buy a new one but we haven't decided what to buy yet. Perhaps this one will run another year now! Then we can decide. We usually buy Dodge.

Tomorrow I shall continue working on the Andover Parish Registers. Although I do want to get back to working on wills and manor records that I have for this area of Hampshire. I am busy learning Latin so that I can transcribe the manor records with a good deal more accuracy.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 12 Dec 2008

Three images of the 40 for Chittlehampton left to complete today. Over 1100 entries to give me a birds eye view of Chittlehampton in the 17th century with respect to the Pincombe family. Their occupation was woolcomber which was unexpected from the charts that I was given which implied that this family was yeoman class in this time period at Chittlehampton (similar to members at South Molton/North Molton and Bishops Nympton). I had hoped to learn more about the Pincombe family when I was in Salt Lake City and did find a number of films and books that gave me a visual of this family's spread during the 1500s and 1600s since they are known to have arrived in the North Molton area in 1485. DNA testing on two samples now shows the line at Bishops Nympton may be related to the line at Barnstaple but further testing and more testers is needed to really make any conclusions in that regard. However, the line is the anticipated R1b1b12a which marks them as West Atlantic Modal Group. Early records appear to indicate that this family had lived at Pencombe Herefordshire prior to 1485. Why they moved to the North Molton area with Lord de la Zouch could perhaps be explained by historical events. Richard III was defeated at Bosworth Field and Henry VII became King of England. In 1598, John Pincombe became Sheriff of South Molton (appointed by Queen Elizabeth I).

The next set of documents to look at transcribing will be the Manor Books for Upper Clatford. These are in Secretary hand and may yet wait until later but I will spend a little time on them today as I am keen on having them transcribed. I would also like to do the Protestation Returns for Wiltshire that I photographed as they will be quite helpful in tracing back on the Rawlings and perhaps even Blake line.

Watched the movie "The Black Knight" and it is quite a change from the Batman movies of the 1950s. It is the first modern Batman movie that I have seen. We rented four movies in total for this weekend. We are movie watchers having purchased about 1000 VCRs when they were so popular (and fortunately we still have machines to play them on!). We have purchased DVDs but not in nearly so great a quantity. I had planned to watch a movie a day when I retired which was why I purchased so many. I was watching a movie a day but this last year I have been totally distracted by genealogy. I think though that I will start to set aside a couple of hours every afternoon for a movie.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 20 Nov 2008

Today was supposed to be transcription of the Manor Records of Upper Clatford but I decided to take a look at the Protestation Returns for Cumberland. I already have Bewcastle translated as I purchased it from the Carlisle Record Office a few years ago. I quickly transcribed the Bewcastle Return just to refresh my memory on the earlier writing in this part of the country. I then decided to do Lanercost as that parish is my other strong interest in Cumberland along with Farlam and Arthuret. Lanercost was ten images and all but one were quite sharp. Fortunately I overlapped quite a bit so was able to compensate for the one slightly blurry image. I set up my headings in Excel - Ward, Quarter, Status (Sworn or other), Surname, Forename, Suffix and Standing/other information. I have all the Tweddle and Robson names already from this parish which was about 50 names but the time that I completed the transcription (4 hours later!) I had 271 names from the four quarters - Lanercost, Askerton, Triermanie, and Burdoswell - and Kirkcambeck was also included in this return. I will go back and carefully proofread as there were about 20 that did not fit into the usual names and the letters were not well formed. There were a number of aliases (about 25) and a few locations noted. The number of different surnames was likely close to 70 and will determine that later after proofreading.

I am thinking that this would make a good submission to the Cumbria Newsletter and will think about doing that in January.

I will get back to working on the Manor documents for Upper Clatford this evening. We are putting together a slide show of our trip to England to show to some people who had us over to see their slides for Ireland and another couple. We had over 5,000 images which have been reduced to 1,200 images which is still quite a few but they cover a lot of territory. We will likely go with that many. Our family has over time watched all 5,000, sometimes just glancing!

I am now accumulating the evidence for proving the 4x great grandparents - I actually have four done already of the 64. I am missing material on 8 people although I have ordered fiche and books to help to do so. I have at least 1 that I will not be able to solve likely as the father of one of my 3x great grandmothers is unknown unless it is in the Bastardy Orders which I have not yet checked.

Taking 4 hours to work on 10 images lets me think that working on the 2500 images from Salt Lake City will take me all winter. Certainly the 30 slides for the Upper Clatford Manor Records are going to be a challenge. The writing is Secretary Style and is one of the hands that I have not done a lot of work with although the letters are very well formed.