Pentecost and new life

 I love Pentecost and will always remember my Confirmation in the Anglican Church when I was 11 years of age. I was really rather young; most of the others were one or two years older than I was but there I was being confirmed. I was being confirmed by my school year - I was in Grade 7. I was always too young for everything it appeared so now I am very happy to be old like everyone else my age! But Pentecost was about a gift; a gift of the Holy Spirit. God has given us many things - the world we live in, His son Jesus Christ and now the Holy Spirit. We are reminded every year that this gift is given to us at our Confirmation as we take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Except at 11 I wasn't an adult far from it but it was a wondrous happening when the Bishop placed his hands on my head and the newness of life filled me at that moment. The Service of Confirmation is quite beautiful when one takes on the commitments of our godparents and becomes one's own person. No idea why I felt this so deeply at the time but it led to a life direction I never lost; following the word of God and His commandments. Thank you God for another beautiful Pentecost. 

 Working through the matches and discovered I can move between siblings with the Living DNA system of search but will do not do it excessively at the moment as I am liking working my way through the list of matches (genetic distance) and observing the frequency of particular grandparent results in each sibling. I would miss that if I try to do anything too different. My brother least like me continues to be primarily Pincombe in these matches outnumbering the others 2 to 1 for the most part. Interesting really how one receives the DNA from one's parents. I must work out his percentage of Pincombe in his 23 chromosomes. Interesting though that he received intact the Buller 23rd chromosome from our mother just as she received it from her mother who blended Cheatle with the likely Taylor/Roberts chromosome. This Buller chromosome is very interesting as a singleton and includes the Cheatle from my grandmother's grandmother  as well as the Brockhouse/Lea family. This solid line of ancestry back into Leicestershire is most interesting actually. I will continue with searching out the matches today. I have acquired 72 new matches thus far that will have to be placed into my database from my Living DNA extractions. I have assigned all of the matches to one of six categories (sometimes a match does have two categories as I can not separate them out at this moment in time). 

The smoke continues into today. Tea drank and solitaire games played. Breakfast next but first yoga. 

 

WDYTYA - Who Do You Think You Are 2013 Conference in London, UK

My husband and I attended the WDYTYA 2013 Conference in London, UK the weekend before last. Marvelous time that we had at the Conference which included our helping out at the Guild of One Name Studies Table on the Friday and Saturday (Sunday wasn't quite so busy and they had plenty of helpers so we carried on with our looking around instead of helping). Whilst at the table I was visited by Blake researchers from London, UK which was really a wonderful happening. They had joined the Blake yDNA project earlier and said they would drop by so really pleased. Unfortunately I was doing mapping of surnames at the time so couldn't chat with them for more than a hello.

We did visit all the tables that we had planned on visiting. Edward acquired a book of early maps for his Norfolk area where his 2x great grandmother Mary Anne Abbs was born and raised. Mary Ann was about 14 years of age when her family emigrated from Aylmerton Norfolk to East Gwillimbury Ontario. She married John Link (record known to exist but not located) and they had nine children with the last being Alfred Link  born circa 1861 and Mary Ann buried at Falkland before July 1862 when John Link remarried. His great grandfather William Henry Link would have been just 10 to 11 years of age when his mother died. Amazingly the children were all boys and my husband has traced down most of the children.

I was equally fortunate in finding material to purchase that rather interested me. There were a few CDs that I wanted and a book on Hampshire Villages published by the Hampshire County Federation of Women's Institutes published in 2002. Still on our agenda in the future is a more intense visit to Hampshire and this book has charming short stories on the Villages that my ancestors from Hampshire lived in. The Wiltshire Family History Society had a number of published Baptisms/Burials available and I acquired the publications for Woodford, Milston and South Newton where my Rawlings, Dove, Lywood and other related families lived. Devon had a lot of material but surprisingly I have purchased a lot through the years so did not make any purchases there which rather surprised me! Mostly we just had a really good look around and chatted with people at the various Family History Society tables. We also visited the ISOGG table where I had meant to give a few hours of time but that didn't materialize. I kept getting lured away to other tables. Our last day we did attend a few lectures which were most interesting and  we would go again. The next time to attend more lectures. These onsite researchers can provide a depth to time periods that I hadn't really considered. I listened to one on early London researching that quite inspired me to follow through on my idea to try to find Christopher Buller at the LMA which I had planned to do.

We did meet up with my fourth cousin Edward Baker, his wife Marie and their daughter Joane at the Victoria and Albert Museum. We spent a lively two hours chatting about families but I appear to be the expert on Christopher Buller and his wife Mary Beard and really couldn't add anything at that time that I hadn't already shared with them. It was nice to meet with them though. He didn't look a bit like my Buller family but not surprising. I rather think he looks like the Horlock family that the Buller line he descends from married into.

On the Tuesday and Thursday of last week we went to the National Archives and spent the entire day there each of those days. We were able to view nearly thirty mediaeval documents and image them for future study. Some were for Edward's family lines plus he did some work for the 100th/99th Regiment of Foot. For myself I was looking primarily for Blake and Pincombe documents plus a couple of Rowcliffe documents to try to help me link that line back in the 1600s. By the end of this year I will be working principally on the Blake and Pincombe one name studies and the ancestry of our son in law which is French Canadian.

On the Wednesday we went to the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA). We could have walked there from our hotel but took the bus and then walked back visiting the Society of Genealogist's Library as well. I joined the Society of Genealogists at WDYTYA as I had planned to do. At the LMA I had just one object in mind which was to review the microfilm for St Olave Southwark for the time period 1758 to 1769. The burial registration/death date included gave an age for Christopher which placed his date of birth circa 1763. This Parish Register is not yet up on Ancestry. I thought perhaps it was difficult to read but actually was quite straightforward. I suspect it will be forthcoming. I did not find a baptism for Christopher Buller but did find a couple of Buller families baptizing their children in this time period at St Olave. One was the Henry Buller family and another the William Buller family. There wasn't a Christopher. Christopher as a forename did appear in the register but not very often perhaps as much as once or twice per year with occasional three to four times. That was my only pursuit at the LMA as the history of the Beard family back into the early 1600s does appear to be fairly straightforward. We moved on to the Society of Genealogists Library where I wished to view the material that had been stored there for the Pincombe/Pinkham one name study that preceded my taking it on. I was rewarded handsomely with a set of typewritten abstracts of wills for the Pincombe/Pinkham family produced prior to the bombing of the Exeter Record Office in WWII. I now have a more likely date for the death of my 4x great grandfather John Pincombe as a couple of John Pincombe died in the time period. Plus I have the abstract of his will which provided details that I could only surmise from his children's wills but now have concrete evidence albeit a transcript of an abstract but nonetheless more than I had before. I spent a short time reviewing the holdings of the Society and then we moved on to continue our walk towards the Temple Church which we also wanted to visit and were successful in doing so. I found that I had tears in my eyes viewing the devastation that was wrought on the  Church during the bombing of London in WWII. It is amazing that so much of London did survive the bombing but sad that so much was lost. It just seems so totally unfair that future generations of British Islanders lost so much of their history during the conflict of WWII.

On the Friday, Saturday and Sunday we passed up our original timetable which was somewhat more ambitious with visits to various sites. I think we probably enjoyed that just as much as going to visit all the sites. Our minds were becomingly increasingly full of information and it was pleasant just to enjoy visiting items that we had passed up on our previous stays in London. We spent Sunday in Trafalgar Square looking around and as I stood at the foot of the National Gallery looking at Saint Martin in the Fields Church I thought about what it might have looked like when my Henry Christopher Buller and his wife Anne Welch attended Church here with their children which did not include my Edwin Denner Buller as he was born on their return to Birmingham in 1850. They do appear to have gone back and forth a great deal although quite a bit of the 1840s was spent in London where Henry ran a Pork Butcher shop.

Our trip home yesterday was long considering the day became 29 hours but we were greeted with no fresh snow and our laneway neatly plowed by our son in law. Now to get into all the images which we took at The National Archives. My fingers itch to get at the Blake Wills but will finish the Buller wills first and then proceed through the other hundred or so of my families before starting on the new set which is almost totally Blake. Once completed then I shall continue with the parish register work and the Civil Registration chart that I am working on Eventually I do hope to take the Blake families back from the Civil Registration and Census to the Parish Registers. It is an ambitious project and I will need to acquire many parish registers to accomplish it. I already have a lot of them plus they are coming up on Family Search as they scan their enormous collection.

Our next trip to the British Isles will be to look at the countryside of southern England and visit the Record Offices also East Anglia for Edward's Abbs families and his early dissenters came from these areas as well around London. Then up into the Midlands for a visit to the newly created Birmingham Library and then trips into Yorkshire and Cumberland. It is a massive undertaking that may be two trips but along the way we want to cruise the Rhine coming up from the Palatinate as Edward's ancestors did in the early 1700s and see the Battlefields of France/Belgium where so many of our Canadian soldiers gave their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy today. To do that in 2014 would be our desire as the commemoration of the war of 1914-1918 begins.

We also want to do some research in France looking for the birthplaces of the ancestors of our son in law. So I can see at least three more trips back and possibly four to look at the genealogical history of our families. Edward would love to visit the area in Germany (Mecklenberg-Strelitz) where his Schultz/Niemann/Dusing/Passow/Staffeld/Germer/Hagemann ancestors lived. His great grandparents Johann Friedrick Wilhelm Schultz (born 18 Mar 1833 at Schoenbeck, Brohm) and Wilhelmine Fredericka Johanna (aka Rachel) Niemann (born 15 Dec 1835 at Staven) were emigrants to North America.

Still on London time as it would be 10:38 a.m. but will probably get a couple more hours of sleep since it is only 5:38 a.m. here in Ottawa.

Brockhouse of Rugeley, Staffordshire

Margaret Brockhouse married John Welch 16 Feb 1783 at Rugeley Staffordshire UK with witnesses Mary Crutchley and Thomas Ward. Neither of these two people have been applicable to my research on this family to date. Margaret was baptized at Rugeley 22 Sep 1754 the daughter of Charles and Ann Brockhouse. Charles and Ann baptized eight children at Rugeley:

Charles baptized 8 Jul 1750 and he has one son baptized at Rugeley 30 Jun 1771 (no marriage details yet).

Sarah baptized 14 Mar 1752 at Rugeley

Margaret (as above)

John baptized 15 May 1757 at Rugeley

William baptized 7 Sep 1760 at Rugeley

Hannah baptized 7 Feb 1762 at Rugeley

Esther baptized 4 May 1766 at Rugeley

Joseph baptized 10 Jul 1768 at Rugeley

The marriage of Charles Brockhouse and Ann Lea was celebrated 23 Jan 1748 at Rugeley by Bans.

There wasn't a baptism for Charles Brockhouse at Rugeley but I did find a baptism 12 Oct 1721 at Saint Mary Parish in Lichfield, Staffordshire. The name of his father was given as John Brockhouse. It is possibly significant that the second son was named John. Interestingly there were four baptisms with John listed as the father in this time period with three at Lichfield and the fourth at Rugeley.
 
William baptized 26 Mar 1719 at Saint Mary, Lichfield
John baptized 2 Aug 1719 at Saint Mary, Lichfield
Charles (as above)
Margaret baptized 3 May 1724 at Rugeley

Possibly he is the John Brockhouse baptized 7 Apr 1695 at Rugeley Staffordshire and the son of John Brockhouse and Margaret Wood who were themselves married 27 April 1692 at Rugeley and the following four children are baptized at Rugeley as children of John and Margaret Brockhouse.

Margaret baptized 31 Dec 1693; buried 15 Jan 1693/94 at Rugeley.
John (as above)
William baptized 26 Nov 1697 at Rugeley
Joan baptized 14 Jul 1700 at Rugeley

This family does not appear on the Land Tax Assessments and I have no idea of their occupation. I have not followed the Brockhouse family down further other than noting the son of Charles (brother to Margaret who married John Welch).

I have not checked Find My Past for the Brockhouse family for a long time. The 1841 census has 63 records, the 1851 86 records, the 1861 has 75 records, the 1871 has 75 records, the 1881 census has 126 records, the 1891 census has 161 records, the 1901 census has 161 records and the 1911 census has 202 records. There are 829 records in births 1837 - 2006. There are only three baptisms recorded two in Derbyshire and one in West Riding of Yorkshire. There are 513 marriages between 1837 and 2005 and 37 in the parish records collection which include Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, London, Yorkshire, Essex, Cornwall, Durham, Surrey, Shropshire, Northumberland, Lancashire. The earliest is 1560 in Shropshire which might be interesting in the future but I am back in the late 1600s at Rugeley. Deaths include 526 between 1837 and 2006 and 137 parish records which do actually include Staffordshire so I shall extract them for my future use. This will let me look at the Brockhouse family and help to determine if Charles at Lichfield could also be my Charles at Rugeley. The distance between these two parishes is eight miles. I have not really investigated this family name at all. I discovered this connection whilst we were at Salt Lake City.

There were 127 distinct burials records for Brockhouse on Find My Past with 15 of then at Rugeley. All "Charles Brockhouse" were buried at Rugeley. Sixty four of the 127 burials were in Staffordshire with 19 in Warwick and 20 in Worcestershire and all other counties were seven or less. Sorting on the year is interesting and I am suspicious this name is a singleton with people moving out from Staffordshire and Lancashire towards Warwickshire and Northumberland and the area south of Warwickshire.

The next Brockhouse research day I shall see if anyone has now put up family trees for this family. It would appear that with the accumulated evidence having Charles baptized at Lichfield being the Charles at Rugeley and tracing back to the earlier Brockhouse family at Rugeley should be considered.

Genealogy

The long awaited wedding day is now past and I can see myself returning slowly to Genealogy!

I have been in discussion with Barry Blake the last few weeks as he has taken over as co-administrator of the Blake DNA project at FT DNA. He has updated the webpages for this site and done a marvelous job.

http://blakeheritage.synthasite.com/blake-family-dna-project.php

I still have just the one match (8/12) on this site but it is an interesting match. I am hoping that Barry will be able to persuade this individual to test to 37 markers. With the extra 25 markers I should have a clearer picture of whether or not it is feasible that this person also descends from the Hampshire Blake family (or possibly the Wiltshire Blake family). Various posts later I am left with the thought that I originally had on the Blake family of Somerset. It is a combination of the spillover of the Blake family from Wiltshire and a Welsh Blake family that moved to Somerset. When Increase Blake visited a John Blake in Somerset in the mid 1800s and he learned that the Somerset Blake family shared kinship with the Wiltshire Blake family I suspect that over time these two Blake lines thought themselves related and their Welsh ancestry was lost to time. One individual feels that he can trace his line back to Sir Robert Blake, Lord High Admiral and he is R1b1b (the Welsh line is also R1b). His line back though goes to Norfolk which makes this even more interesting. There are already two distinct Blake lines in Norfolk at Wimbotsham (R1a1 and I2b1). These two lines are related although the original linkage is through a daughter of the Blake house which has resulted in two distinct haplogroups. This third line was located in another part of Norfolk and appears to go back into the 1500s as well.

I am hoping that the visibility of the Blake DNA project may encourage more Blake members to test and have their results put into the study. There are now at least ten distinct lines for Blake in the study and one could now relate to one of them and share ancestry.

I also said that I would work on the French Canadian ancestry of my daughter's husband's brother's wife. Half of the table is now done with our son-in-law's ancestry so just need to do the other half of the table. French Canadian ancestry is quite fascinating. I would only take it out to the 8th generation thus far.

I have the Christmas Tree all decorated and as usual it looks a little lopsided when I do it. My husband and children are much better at it. But it stood empty for nearly a week with all the rush for the wedding so I decided to do it today before Christmas is actually upon us. We are in countdown mode. We have purchased very few presents and need to do that by Thursday. Since I always did my Christmas shopping in the last two days I am not too perturbed but others around me are in a rush!

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 17 Nov 2008

I completed the Rugeley Land Tax Assessment and combined the two files for sorting. I acquired some information on my Lea and Wood families but nothing new on the Welsh family. I moved on to the images from the Rugeley Parish Registers and extracted the pertinent information as well as saving the images to the family files for my proofs of my 4x great grandparents which will be my next steps on my Legacy family tree file.

I moved on to the Cheatle family at Ashby de la Zouch. I had photographed the baptism of my 3x great grandmother Sarah and saved that one to her file. I then prepared a chart of all the Cheatle wills in Leicester noting that all the Cheatle families in the 1600s and early 1700s lived within 10 miles of Loughborough. Reviewed the Leicestershire Records Office webpage and I am able to purchase parish register fiche so have inquired about purchasing Loughborough, Long Whatton and Castle Donnington from the earliest to 1800. Perhaps I will hear tomorrow as to the number of fiche this will entail.

My order for the Devon fiche was received today and the fiche are now ordered. I will receive these in the next six weeks. This should give me some new thoughts on my family lines in Devon before 1750. I will also be able to add to my Pincombe one name study.

With the Cheatle family I had the confusion of three William Cheatles having children at Ashby de la Zouch in the 1790s - at least it appeared there were three. One married to a Sarah, one married to an Ann and one married to an Elizabeth. Reading the register at Salt Lake City I was able to show that there were indeed three William Cheatle and that it wasn't a matter of one wife dying and his remarrying. While I was pursuing this information I discovered a will for one of the Cheatle families at Ashby de la Zouch on The National Archives site. I downloaded this and it helped to prove that two of the lines at Ashby de la Zouch were brothers (not mine) and the third was not mentioned in the will. Could still be related but not siblings.

Tomorrow I will switch to the material that I collected for the Andover Manor, the Upper Clatford Manor and a couple of smaller manors. These documents are from the 1500s and 1600s and I think will be helpful in looking at my families there.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 16 Nov 2008

I am continuing to transcribe the information that I accumulated at Salt Lake City. I have now completed the Protestation Returns for Devon (1641-1642) and a quick sort revealed a total of 23 Pincombe/Pencombe/Pinkcombe signers with 1 Bartholomew, 1 Henry, 3 John, 2 Philip, 3 Richard, 4 Robert, 1 Roger, 4 Thomas, and 4 William. The locations include: 2 Abbotsham, 1 Alwington, 1 Great Torrington, 4 Bishops Nympton, 3 Chittlehampton, 3 Chulmleigh, 1 Knowstone, 3 North Molton, 2 Satterleigh, and 3 South Molton. Thus giving us a cluster of Abbotsham, Alwington and Great Torrington and a cluster of Chulmleigh, North and South Molton, Bishops Nympton, Knowstone, Satterleigh and Chittlehampton, The Tax Rolls for Devon 1544-1545 include 10 Pencombe/Pincombe/Pinkcombe listings including 1 Alice (widow of Thomas), 1 Christopher, 2 John, 1 Philip, 3 Richard, 1 Thomas and 1 William. The 1581 tax subsidy lists 9 Pincombe heads including 1 Christopher, 1 Edward, 1 Emma, 3 John, 2 Richard and 1 William. The Hearth Tax of 1664 lists only 1 William at Filleigh. The Hearth Tax of 1674 lists 1 Richard, 2 Thomas and 2 William.

With the addition of the Protestation Returns we have a fuller picture of the Pincombe famly which is known to have arrived at North Molton/South Molton in 1485 with Lord de la Zouch - perhaps they received this land because of their loyalty at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Queen Elizabeth I later appointed John Pincombe, South Molton, as the Sheriff of South Molton (1598). He was the Pincombe who bore the coat of arms attributed to this family. My suspicion is that the Pincombe member who arrived in 1485 likely had two sons with him and it is these two sons from whom the Pincombe family of Devon is descended (lending credence is the distribution of family members in the Protestation Returns with two distinct groups - one centered around Barnstaple and the other around South Molton). The elder son probably settled in the South Molton area as an adult and then his descendants were found at Barnstaple/Bideford with the other son at North Molton and his descendants were found at North Molton/South Molton/East Buckland/Bishops and Kings Nymptons in the 1500s. Looking at the 1544-1545 tax subsidy the locations include: 1 Bideford, 1 East Buckland, 2 Kings Nympton, 3 North Molton, 2 South Molton and 1 Tawstock. Family lore says that the Pincombe family initially at South Molton did move to the Torrington/Roborough/Barnstaple/Bideford area in the 1500s. Our DNA study thus far includes just one person who traces back to the Bideford area and he matches an online Pincombe result at ysearch 23.5/25 who is known to be a descendant of the North Molton/Bishops Nympton family. Hopefully, this winter I will complete my conversion of the earlier data to my Legacy one name Pincombe study file.

I have now begun my transcription of the Rugeley Poor Tax Rate looking for my Welsh/Brockhouse/Lea/Linn/Wood/Diram family lines. These interesting records from 1783 also include the overseer Account book. Thus far I have entered 208 properties with likely another 700 listed. I did not realize how large Rugeley was in the 1700s. It is a mystery to me the occupation of my ancestors although I suspect the Welsh family were Innkeepers. This transcription will occupy me for another week since I collected several years worth of data.

I spent a short period of time reviewing the Parish Registers for Rugeley and need to incorporate this information into my Family Legacy file. I rather think that I will put my Lambden one name study into hibernation since I have not had time to pursue it at all. Perhaps even withdrawing my commitment will result in someone else taking it on. Doing the Siderfin and Pincombe one name family studies is likely all that I can manage at the moment.