Author Topic: help with London families  (Read 298 times)

Offline hunterterri58

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help with London families
« on: Thursday 17 April 25 19:26 BST (UK) »
Hello
I am hoping someone here can help with my problem.  I am researching my mothers paternal line and have got back to 1754.  When I got there, in London, I thought I would try to find all Blackburns in that area and then try to match them up. This worked very well in a village in Suffolk, but is a very different task in London!
I have two questions. One is that there are very few marriages amongst the many names I have gathered.  I have checked and apparently all churches in London are now digitised except for All Hallows Bread Street.  So surely the marriages should be there somewhere? They can't have all married out of London surely?
My second question is a mystery.  A Richard Blackburn has quite a number of children.  Among these are a Paul and a Lancelot.  England select Births and Christenings have Paule baptised at St Peters Cornhill on 10.12.1658.  There is no parish record for me to review.  However, Lancelot is baptised apparently on 10.11.1658 at the same church and this time you can view the entry in the Parish records. (this is on Ancestry).  When I go to the record there is no November entry, but there is a December entry and that is for Lancelot on the 10.12.1658!  No Paule is around there.
I then have found the Boyds inhabitants of London and decided to look for any information on any Blackburns in it. I found Richard and in the list of children there is a Paul baptised 10.12.1658 apparently not included in his father's will!  Lancelot is listed but only with the date he entered Oxford Univeristy in 1676 aged 17, again taking his birth to about the same year.  Lancelot became an Archbishop and his information shows his birth to be 10.12.1658!
So I have googled the England Select Births and Christenings and it is reportedly accurate.  The Boys inhabitants of London is also considered very accurate. The Parish records are of course able to be verified. So I am very puzzled and unsure what to make of it all.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you


Offline Little Nell

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Re: help with London families
« Reply #1 on: Friday 18 April 25 18:10 BST (UK) »
There do seem to be some oddities in the records that you have cited.  Boyd's contains huge amounts of information, but it is a secondary source.  Looking at the list of children and the baptisms dates, it is obvious that whoever wrote out that list did not question the dates. 

Assuming the children were baptised within a few weeks of their birth, it is not possible for there to be two children born in late 1658 to the same parents.

While Boyd specifically notes that there are some children not mentioned in Richard's will, it is still possible that they did not survive: the burial has simply been lost in the records.  (Don't forget, the Great Fire of London wreaked havoc on 87 churches in 1666.)  That said, I suspect that Boyd got some of his information from a secondary source: the transcription of the parish register published by the Harleian Society (published 1877), which has the following entry on 10 December 1658:

Paul late sonn of Richard Blackburne, draper, borne same day

Looking at the original register entry, it has clearly been mistranscribed in that printed transcription.  The rather elaborate 'L' has been read as a P and the last four letters have been read as a separate word - 'late'  So this is why transcriptions are not necessarily the best source and the original should be checked where possible.

One a general note: the 1650s was the time of the Commonwealth and many parish registers are deficient or messy.  While it may be true that the complete extant register has been digitised, it does not necessarily follow that every event was faithfully recorded in the register.  I was looking at a parish register earlier where it is obvious that various slips of parchment/paper have been stuck on new(er) backing sheets, presumably because they had fallen out or were not bound in properly.  Some may well have been missed.

Nell
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Offline hunterterri58

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Re: help with London families
« Reply #2 on: Monday 21 April 25 15:44 BST (UK) »
thankyou for your reply. It is a real mix up and I feel that you are right. Perhaps there never was a Paul even!

There is very little information back in these time periods.

Thanks