Looking at Wiltshire Wills

I discovered yesterday that Dad's Cookies sold in Canada are actually made here.  That is good news as they are my favourite cookie.

To the best of my knowledge I have collected all the Blake Wiltshire Wills although will also check to see if there are more available from earlier but I think I have them all. All of these wills have been blogged by me and I generally put in anything that I found of interest when I blogged the will.

 Martyn/Martin/Marten (9.5 miles sw of Salisbury, 32 miles from Calne)

William Blake 1545 / Agnes Blake 1563 - Lived at Marten, Wiltshire. From the two wills their children appear to be John, Elizabeth, Agnes and Alys. Since I follow only the male line John is the one of interest.

John Blake 1582 / Elizabeth Blake 1583 - Lived at Marten, Wiltshire. John is the son of William and Agnes above and he and his wife had daughters so this line daughtered out. Marten is south of Salisbury so it is difficult to say that this is a line coming down from Calne or a line coming across from Hampshire or up from Christchurch/Southampton. But no one in the male Blake line is descendant of this couple. 

South Newton (19 miles WSW of Andover, 30 miles S of Calne).

The Blake family at South Newton continues from the 1500s  to the present. A freehold in Stoford (close to South Newton) was purchased by Henry Blake (between 1693 and 1704) and in 1704 Henry passed it to John Blake and John sold it in 1720 (British History Online). Could this be the Calne Blake family? Certainly Henry was a forename in the Blake family of Calne at the time of the destruction of the family home at Pinhills in 1643. But there were Blakes at South Newton in the 1500s.

Dental appointment interrupted my day and I am getting older as I found that I needed a long rest after that appointment. 

Last night heavy snow which we definitely need but it looks like it could be 40 cm so a fair amount but we are headed towards March when we do get our heaviest snows. 

Today more work on the Wiltshire/Hampshire/Berkshire/Dorset Blake wills. It is a number of years since I transcribed all of the Wiltshire wills and likely the same for the rest. It is good to have the blogs to review though as I put quite a bit of time into each one pulling out available data at the time. 

I am still thinking that I should write an article on the Blake yDNA for the Guild Journal in hopes of attracting more testers as finding one with a proven paper trail back to the Calne Blake family could prove interesting. I still need to find the work I did on the French yDNA. I remember doing it and not that long ago and I did find some interesting details when I did it I recall. 

The new ethnicity reports that My Heritage has created - Ethnicity Estimate v2.5: The Long-Awaited Improved DNA Ethnicity Model are now available and most interesting. There was also an Ancient Report which I did find very interesting as it located my grandfather Blake as a Western Hunter Gatherer in the British Isles very early on. Intriguing really and we do have to listen to these stories by peoples who lived in places for a very long time. Their knowledge base is huge and often so detailed as it was passed down through the families (and I do realize now in my old age that that was exactly what my grandfather was doing - passing it on because we were so far from where my Blake family lived in England).  As my brother next older to me in age and I met through the last 15 years of his life from 2007 on we met regularly (three to four times a year) in London (my home town) where we talked about our family and especially he was interested in the yDNA. It all sort of came together after my mother passed away. She had reminded me of my intense interest in DNA as a child and certainly it did drive me towards Chemistry at University. But she had also talked to him about DNA and that people were testing so the combination came together not long after she passed as we started emailing each other and then I spotted the Sorenson Genomics Testing and mentioned it and he was keen. In all Edward, my brother and I tested our DNA with Sorensen Genetics and I just started to collect all the data that came forward. At that time there were a couple of matches with Doug and other Blake descendants primarily in Australia as I recall but also in the United States. They did not carry it forward into FT DNA as that offer was suggested and I did do that with all three of our tests and then so much testing since on all of the kits. I must go in and have a look at my siblings also on My Heritage and Edward for the new ethnicity reports. It is amazing how differently we all inherited from our four grandparents - me especially as I am totally different from everyone except my brother next in age to me but younger. He and I are the most similar but he still does not match me that closely. Interesting how that happens - I simply inherited a very large percentage from my paternal grandmother and none of them did. I was around 36% ?/Rawlings and they all tend to be in the neighbourhood of 12 to 18% with all of them inheriting strongly in the Blake line. The same in the maternal line with me inheriting quite strongly in the Buller line and a number of them inherited in the Taylor line (which does have Irish matches) and then in the Pincombe they inherited far more than I did with me inheriting strongly in the Routledge/Gray side. I think it is mostly Routledge for me as my Scot percentage tends to look like it is a generation closer than actual. So always very interesting. My Heritage is growing rapidly and I still have not done the work of inserting all my new matches into my database to work on the phasing of my grandparents and great-grandparents which I liked to update every year but it is now three years since I made a big update. The reality is that it was really the DNA (and my cousin wanting the Pincombe Profile for his book) that brought me into genealogy finally in 2003. I did have the experience though through the years of helping Edward at the repositories as he searched for his family's records both in Ontario and then in the New England States. It took us simply everywhere in New England and then to Utah to the Family History Library and to the Allen Country Library in Indiana as well as the Library of Congress in Washington. I have seen so many of these repositories including of course NEHGS and NYGBS where we spent many days going through their collections. Our very first trip to the United States to discover information was in 1973 I think. We had exhausted all the information at the Ontario Archives and Library and Archives Canada by then. Then there was Kew in London, England - a fantastic resource which I occasionally toy with the idea of going and spending a bit of time there. But you can buy scanned records from them which at 79.5 years of age works very well for me.

Tea finished and the day is ahead of me.

 

New Match on My Heritage

A wonderful new match on My Heritage greeted me today. She is my second cousin twice removed on my father's side so a really great addition. Since some of the five siblings tested match Blake very well this has been a very interesting addition and a check on my re-phasing of my grandparents and every match worked so that is a good end to all of that or a beginning depending on the thinking around it. Mostly I think of each of these renditions (this was the fourth) as being just a step on the path because new matches are always coming in to help me to see that path forward. Again the temptation entered into my mind to work on my great grandparent's phasing but I still think that is a lot of work that I can not conclusively show to be true without more second cousin matches on all sides. I do have a lot of second cousins they just haven't tested or haven't tested where I can see the results. Always tempting to write and ask but I think DNA is pretty personal so do not add such information unless it is first mentioned by the person writing to me. 

All in all a very interesting New Year's Eve Day for sure. There were several other interesting matches which fitted into known patterns. I do like to check all of my matches every couple of days.

 

My Heritage - Theory of Relativity

I posted on the latest changes in My Heritage with respect to the Theory of Relativity on another website and decided to add it to my blog as well.

I have five siblings results on My Heritage with a varying number of Theories of Relativity for each one. 

For one of my siblings there are 21 sets of data with 12 confirmed and they vary from 14.5 cM shared to 97.6 cM shared. I have rejected six of the sets and they have all copied each other and given my father new parents with his birthplace in the United States (He came to Canada with his parents in 1913 from Hampshire, England.). That leaves me with three interesting ones that all relate to my paternal grandmother’s father and they are matching the likely father’s ancestry so is quite interesting actually. I do not particularly notice an increase in theories but I have not kept track of the number prior to this time. 

A second sibling has 19 theories with 12 confirmed varying between 14.5 cM and and 77 cM (and not all of these are the same matches as the first sibling mentioned). I have rejected four of them for the same reason as mentioned earlier. That leaves three that are once again interesting because they are looking at my paternal grandmother’s family lines where I have information but not as firm as I would like. 

A third sibling has 24 theories and I have confirmed 12 of these and they vary from 15.3 cM to 90.4 cM (again some are different from the other two siblings results). I have rejected eight because they are linking to my father and are incorrect. The other four are interesting and for a similar reason to the other two siblings. 

A fourth sibling has 13 sets of data. I have confirmed 8 and they range from 16.6 cM to 77.0 cM. Again not all of them are the same as the other three siblings. I have rejected three for a similar reason as before. Two of them are interesting for a similar reason to the other siblings. 

For myself, I have 21 data sets and have confirmed 11 (again not always the same as my four siblings) and they ranged from 14.3 cM to 81.0 cM. I have rejected six for a similar reason to the others. The other three are basically interesting and again for a similar reason to my siblings. 

I may keep track of this now that I have started. All of the confirmed can be seen in my tree in terms of the most recent common ancestor. Overall I do find My Heritage Theories of Relativity quite interesting. 

Obviously the rejected individuals are matching somewhere since we share some DNA but I do have collapsing pedigrees in a number of lines at the 3x great grandparent level in several families and one at the 9x great grandparent level and they are likely matching me in the Knight, Butt, or Routledge lines although could be the Blake line which is a long way back though since in all cases the sharing is multiple segments (between two and four lengths) and they are small. 

It would be interesting to understand the considerations used by My Heritage in their assignment of these theories but this is a trademarked manipulation of data so one just has to go with the information and see if anything new can be gleaned from it.

Geneorama 2018

My husband and I helped in the Research Room at Geneorama which is the generally yearly genealogical conference held by the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society. We had a number of people use the databases which had been provided to the event by Ancestry, FindMyPast and My Heritage. Since I am a subscriber to all three I thought I might write up some of the thoughts that came to me when people asked which one was the best. I would say right off the top that none of these services are better than the other they simply offer material sometimes similar but often quite different and from different areas of the world.

Because my ancestry is 100% England itself thus far (i.e. all of my forebearers were born in the counties of England except for my mother, her father and his mother who were born in Canada but their parentage was English). Three of my grandparents were born and lived in England to adulthood and in the case of my father who was also born in England his parents were close to 40 years of age when they came to Canada with him as a child of nine years.

I will talk about the three databases in alphabetical order as that is the easiest way to present them.

Ancestry offers a lot of American records which is one of the reasons I do not use it as often as Find My Past. I do not have any American ancestors but do have a number of American cousins (2nd cousins) and their descendants. Ancestry also offers a lot of British Isles records and on occasion I do use the database when I can not find a particular record on Find My Past. There are some databases on Ancestry that are not on Find My Past. Ancestry has a DNA service with over 8 million subscribers. For me this is the greatest benefit that I derive from Ancestry as I have four of us (siblings) on Ancestry and I have had a few interesting matches that have been quite helpful. Ancestry does not have a chromosome browser limiting the value of this service to my research project for phasing my grandparent's autosomal DNA. The ability to create as many trees as you wish in Ancestry is also interesting. They do offer hints which can be quite helpful.

Find My Past is the service of which I make the greatest use. Their databases are extremely helpful in my family research but also for my one name studies. They offer the 1939 Register which I have found extremely handy in my DNA research as well as writing up my family history. The military records are quite extensive and I found my great grandfather wounded after the first Boer War which exactly matched the stories which my grandmother had mentioned. I had a number of questions about Find My Past yesterday. Find My Past does not offer DNA testing and one wonders if in the near future this service will offer DNA as their two major competitors do do so.

My Heritage has a lot of European records which makes it very handy for my husband's research. I do searches on My Heritage but I make the greatest use of their new DNA database. They offer a chromosome browser which offer triangulation of results a nice extra. This database got a lot of use at the Conference and there were a number of queries about My Heritage.

Find My Past

I have been a user/subscriber of Find My Past since 2009 and continue to really like this site. I subscribe because it is just easier to always have it at my fingertips whenever I am doing a standard search for anything (in my case all my ancestry is from England thus far on paper). Now that all the big search companies have taken on DNA projects I wonder if Find My Past will make that leap as well. It would be interesting to see Living DNA work with Find My Past I must admit and just wanted to throw that thought into the wind.

I have two sets of results at Living DNA - one for myself and one for one of my brothers (he kindly volunteered to do that as he has with all the other testing that I have done - AncestryDNA, FT DNA, My Heritage, 23 and Me, Britains DNA (no longer operating and they bought Ethnoancestry which I had also tested my brother at years ago; I also did a complete workup at BritainsDNA for him),   National Genographic Project and Sorenson. He and I have done a lot of testing through the years since we first got into DNA testing in 2005. I await one set of results I have waited for for a long time - Big Y. I always meant to just buy it but then something else would come up for testing and I just didn't do it but now I await those results. We already know from all of these testing companies that our yDNA is quite ancient to the British Isles. This will simply give me more detail in that regard than I have from National Genographic Project and Britains DNA.

The results at Ancestry from autosomal DNA testing have been really useful (especially in my husband's case but gradually as more and more English people test I am getting close matches). I have subscribed to Ancestry since 2004 and find it to be a very valuable service as well although generally more so in my husband's research but they do have some databases not on Find My Past.

My Heritage is also a very interesting service and the addition of DNA testing there may prove to be very handy as well. I think the option of just having it along with matching is a great service. I have been a subscriber to My Heritage since 2013 when we went to Who Do You Think You Are 2013 Live in London, UK. My husband has found a number of useful searches there with his European ancestry - namely Germany, France, The Netherlands and Denmark.

I used to buy fiche from the various Record Offices in England and then read them in a microfiche reader but I must admit it is a lot nicer to have these services create their large databases of all this material with a link to the original page. At 72 it saves me a lot of time and saves my eyes for other close detail work. 

200 Ancestor Hints (Shaky Leaves at Ancestry)

It is very interesting testing at Ancestry when you have fifty years of research on your family lines particularly if those family lines have deep American Colonial roots. That is the case for my husband and he now has 200 Ancestor Hints (and 705 fourth cousins or less). These hints are very interesting as one of them is a third cousin, 36 are 4th to 6th cousins and the remainder (163) are 5th to 8th cousins (indeed he does have some that are named as 8th cousins and 8th cousins once removed/twice removed). The third and fourth to sixth cousins were all readily known to him (they all have trees online and only 3 of the 4th to 6th cousins are private.

The fifth to eighth cousins are perhaps the most interesting. A number of these have more than one hint (i.e. he is descended from more than one set of common ancestors) and for a few there are three sets of common ancestors (he has a number of loyalist lines in New Brunswick). An amazing number of these lines are in the United States including descendants of the Loyalist lines.

Perhaps the most interesting for someone who has done genealogical research for fifty years is the verification of all that research. American records are scant in the period of the Revolutionary War (War of Independence) so linking back in this time period can be a very difficult process using various records and finding others who may have bible records has been a real asset to his research. He has been able to add quite a number of lines to his tree down to the present.

It is also very pleasant to find these results transferred to GedMatch as he has an ongoing project looking at phasing his grandparents DNA. Unfortunately his brother died in 1996 so he does not have any DNA for a sibling. His father died in 1945 and his mother in 2000 so again no DNA for either of them. A number of second cousins have tested which has been handy but it is amazing how quickly the amount of shared DNA diminishes.

For myself, I have acquired another Ancestor Hint bringing me to a total of 18 and for my siblings I have 16, 15 and 15 hints. Some of these we all share (I have four of us on Ancestry so three of these matches are us matching each other, we have four fourth to fifth cousins that we all share, we have  four fifth to seventh cousins that we all share thus giving us twelve in common). Three of us share three in common, two of us share two in common. There are three that are shared by one only of us giving a total of 21 different Ancestor Hints.

Compared to my husband I have very few Ancestor Hints but our ancestries are very different. With his overwhelming American Colonial ancestry going back to the 1620s/1630s and early 1700s plus one 2x great grandmother and parents from Norfolk, England and one set of great grandparents directly from Germany, Ancestry has proven to be the best place to test for him although his matches at FT DNA and My Heritage are also interesting.

Gradually I am acquiring new matches as more and more people in the British Isles test. My own ancestry is totally British Isles going back as far as I can trace and indeed only England as the Irish/Scot ancestry in terms of actual names other than Routledge remains hidden to me. DNA may reveal it as my maternal grandmother's mother's line remains unknown to me other than she was likely born in Birmingham in the mid 1800s.

Living DNA may prove interesting for both of us as my husband has so many dissenters from England in his early colonial ancestry and with both my brother and I testing there as well I am hopeful that many many people in the British Isles have tested as well and will take part in matching.

Comparison of ethnicity over several testing companies

Looking at my ethnicity testing over several companies. My Living DNA Results have really proven to be significant in my trek backwards and leading up to that test was the presence of Irish DNA in other testing companies results. I always knew that I would test primarily British Isles and would anticipate being strongly from the counties of England since all of my ancestry back many generations in some lines and at least back into the mid 1700s in most lines is English.

That does support my idea that I am primarily English many generations back but other companies have picked up a European component and I might assume that it is fairly ancient because of matches that I have with people living in European countries with lengthy trees dating back there. I still have my Christopher Buller who lived circa 1764 to 1832 mostly in the Bermondsey Surrey area and close to Tooley Street, Bermondsey Lane and Long Lane whose parents are a mystery. His Slop Shop was on Tooley Street; slops being the name for the uniform that sailors wore. With a name like Buller one might think that he is descendant of the Buller family of Somerset or perhaps of Warwickshire (are they the same family? have not yet found that link) but I can not find a link back to either of these families for Christopher. The hint of European and my DNA matches with people of German ancestry (and no other) led to to wonder if the name was anglicized from Buehler to Buller. That still remains a thought as immigration from Germany to England was ongoing especially during the times of the Georges (George I, George II, and George III in particular). This family also was involved in the confectionary business in Birmingham lending more credence to this thought as early German immigrants to London were in the confectionary business.

The Irish ancestry is interesting as some claim that my Charley/Charlie line (my 4x great grandmother Mary (Charlie) Pincombe)) was Irish but this is too strong at Living DNA to just be the influence of Mary one would think! As a 4th great grandmother she would contribute slightly more than 1.5% on average so I do have to keep her in the back of my memory but in general this does look like my maternal grandmother's mother who also quite handily carried my mitochondrial DNA which is passed on to me. The mitochondrial DNA H11a2a1 in the Blood of the Isles Database was found in Ayrshire/Argyllshire Scotland and Northern Ireland. Hence my thoughts did quickly go back to her.

The Scandinavian component (Germanic perhaps) has been picked up by most testing companies in various percentages ranging from a high of 37% to a low of 0%. Certainly the east coast of England has a component of Germanic races and I do have Yorkshire ancestry but always suspected it was a long way back. I still think that but I do have matches come in for fifth cousins or greater who live in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland and have, where they have family charts dating back for a long time. 

 Living DNA

Great Britain and Ireland 96.5%
South Central England 31.7%
Central England 14.6%
Devon 14.6%
Southeast England 7.2%
South Yorkshire 5.4%
Southwest Scotland and Northern Ireland 4.8%
Northumbria 4%
Northwest England 3.5%
North Yorkshire 3.5%
South England 2.7%
Aberdeenshire 2.5%
Lincolnshire 2%
Europe (North and West) 3.5%
Scandinavia 3.5%

Ancestry DNA

Great Britain 64%
Ireland 14%
Europe West 11%
Scandinavia 6%
Iberian Peninsula 1%
Europe East (less than)1%
Italy/Greece (less than) 1%
Finland/Northwest Russia (less than) 1%
Melanesia (less than) 1%

FT DNA

West and Central Europe 46%
British Isles 38%
Scandinavia 12%
West Middle East (less than) 1%
Finland (less than) 1%
Oceania (less than) 1%

National Genographic

British Isles 48%
Germany 33%
Southern Europe/Middle East 19%

My Heritage

English 53.4%
Scandinavian 33.3%
Irish, Scottish, and Welsh 2.1%
Iberian 10.3%
Italian 0.9%

23 and Me

British and Irish 54.7%
French and German 15%
Scandinavian 2%
Broadly northwestern European 26.9%
Broadly southern European 0.3%
Ashkenazi Jewish 0.2%
Broadly European 0.7%
Broadly Oceanian (less than) 1%
North African (less than) 1%

23 and Me offers an interesting Ancestry Timeline with their ethnicity reporting which places all of my Ashkenazi Jewish, Oceanian, North African ancestry as dating back to a 4th to 7th or greater grandparent likely born between 1680 and 1770. My Scandinavian ancestry from a 4th to 6th grandparent born between 1710 and 1800. My French and German ancestry from a great grandparent to a 3x grandparent born between 1800 and 1860. My British and Irish ancestry from a parent, grandparent or great grandparent born between 1860 and 1920 and of course my father was born in 1904 in Eastleigh, Hampshire, England (and three of my grandparents were born in England in 1875, 1876 and 1886).

My Heritage Site and the Blake one name study

FT DNA was offering a special 14 month membership to My Heritage for $69 (US) so decided that I would take advantage of that offer. I will try to link it to my one name Blake study page.

http://www.kipp-blake-families.ca/blakegoons/

I would like to see if it would be possible to manage a number of Blake trees on the My Heritage site. It will give me the opportunity to link up with the many Blake families who are using the site and have done their DNA.

The latest results for yDNA in the Blake study have resulted in a good deal of thinking on my part especially with regard to the origin of the Blake surname. I am not sure at this time how many trees I could put up on the site and will probably concentrate on the trees that I have in hand for the various Blake groups in the yDNA study.

I continue extracting the Blake data from the Calendar of Patent Rolls with just the last twenty six to be done and I shall go back and pick up the group that I passed over in the first set of 100. There were just so many Commissions with regards to "small incursions" by lords and their liege men that I decided to skip past them and move on to the more interesting entries but for the sake of completion I will go back and pick up those entries. Then I will build a table of occurrence and place just to see what comes out of that bit of research over a 250 year period when the Blake name was gradually moving from le Blake to Blake and it would appear that their prospects rose and fell during this period and in some cases rose again.

As mentioned earlier I am allowing my imagination full range on the surname Blake and its origins but must admit I am starting to consider that this was a name given to a group of men who served perhaps at the Norman Conquest but will certainly leave that up in the air but definitely they started their history as liege men serving a lord and the name given to them/chosen by them although that is harder to see was based on their facial/hair colouring which would appear to indicate that they were very fair skinned and blond haired. But would this also be true for every group of Blake? Well that is part of the intent of gathering all this information from the Calendar of Patent Rolls. The locations of the many named Blake individuals are from all over England.

I will be returning to my transcriptions and marriage extractions now that Christmas is coming to a close. This is the longest Christmas/New Years Season that I have experienced since childhood when it didn't really end until after Epiphany and always began with Advent I at Church. It has been a fascinatingly busy time but my accomplishments with respect to genealogy have been rather weak.

I spent yesterday working on the Rashleigh family document and it now works with respect to moving from endnote number to endnote as does the document for the lately posted Baynard family at Lackham house. We  visited Lacock on our British tour a few years ago and it was fascinating going through the article on Lackham house. Lacock is a very delightful village in Wiltshire/Somerset which takes you back in time in a very beautiful way. We enjoyed our time at Lacock and now being involved with the DigVillage project at Dunster can appreciate the work that is done by these many groups in keeping alive the stories that there are to tell in these wonderful old villages.