Mary Chandler/Blacklee/Peaks ca 1740-1818 - Hunts

[mick cooper]

Hello - Can any kind soul help please? I am trying to find a Mary Blacklee who married Francis Peaks 28/10/1766 in Bluntisham. There are no obvious Blacklee candidates on the LDS site.

However, a very helpful Individual Record on the LDS site submitted by a Trevor Bellamy suggests she was born Mary Chandler and had previously married a John Blacklee 19/9/1760 in Somersham, albeit I could not see this on the IGI records. I can however see the christenings of a John Blackly 15/7/1762 & Mary Blackly 3/1764 in Bluntisham to parents John & Mary which seems tio tie in.

There is also a burial of a John Blackly 18/8/1765 in Bluntisham which has been attibuted to young John. There are no linked details about John senior although he was probably the chap born in 1743 in Calne to parents Peter & Sarah. In view of the suggested re-marriage of Mary Blacklee nee Chandler in 1766, it seems logical that her first hubby, John Blacklee, died sometime between late 1763 and late 1766. It may be that the recorded 1765 death is actually his rather than his son's. There is also an attached record of Mary's burial (presumably as Mary Peaks) in Bluntisham 26/3/1818. I do not know if there are any further details (like age) shown at either burial site.

So, in summary, was my Mary Blacklee born Mary Chandler?

Assuming that Trevor is right, then there seem to be three possible Mary Chandlers in the area. Christened 24/3/1733 in Godmanchester to William & Mary; 20/7/1734 Godmanchester to Thomas & Mary Robinson; 30/3/1742 Easton to Henry & Ann. Although not so very far away, they all seem further from Somersham than I expected. There is no obvious evidence that any of these families moved. Also, I cannot see any record on the LDS site of any marriages or deaths other than the above for any of these. I wonder if there are any Mary Chandlers closer to home.

Has anyone got any bright ideas?

Any help will be much apppreciated, thanks, Mick

[bedfordshire boy]

You won't find any extracted Somersham entries on the IGI or BVRI because the LDS was refused permission to film the parish register. You either need to go to Huntingdon Records Office to look for baptisms, or use their research service to look for you (or the Society of Genealogists in London).

However Somersham marriages are on Hunts Marriage Index, and there is a 1760 marriage between Mary Chandler and John Blackley in Somersham, both otp, so that part of the member submission (which I NEVER trust) checks out. There's also a 1766 marriage at Bluntisham between Mary Blackley widow and Francis Peaks.

The NBI has a burial of John Blacklee on 18 Aug 1765 at Bluntisham, but there are no subsequent burials of a John Blacklee in Bluntisham, up to 1900. It was unusual to find burial ages pre 1813. You'd need to check the parish register for any other detail eg son of John & Mary, or John, labourer, which should help confirm which John it was who was buried. Looks like the husband rather than the son though. A John Blackley married Masse White in Bluntisham in 1785 which may be him, although there's another John Blackley baptised in Bluntisham in 1769, who looks a tad on the young side, but who can't be ruled out. John and Masse had a number of children in Bluntisham, and as if Hunts isn't difficult enough to research they appear to have turned Baptist!

The Mary Peakes buried at Bluntisham on 26 March 1818 was aged 82

You cannot make assumptions based on the IGI in Hunts, as so many parishes are not extracted. You need to be looking at Somersham PR for Mary Chandler's baptism.

David

Cross posting can duplicate effort and waste peoples' time

Edit   PPS Thanks for note on other board. For very specific requests such as yours, a county board such as this, is more likely to bring a result than on a general England board, which tends to be OK for Americans seeking information about their ancestors where they don't know where in England they were from. I look at all the genealogy boards and have to say that Rootschat is by far the best for the breadth of knowledge of the researchers.

[mick cooper]

Dear David

Thanks for the info on Somersham, I presume there will be other parishes, presumably in both Hunts & Cambs which have refused access to LDS.   Are these listed anywhere?    I was aware of the inadequacies of this site the gaps, the errors, the guesswork on dates,  the guessed linkages, the grab-a-granny syndrome particularly from our friends in Utah, the sealing of baptisms a few hundred years after death, and the rest.   I am quite cynical about it and pay rather more attention to their IGI data with specific dates and specific batch numbers.   For the rest, I do find a number of clues of course and it is fair to say that much of it has been entered in good faith.  It remains a powerful database with a good search facility & for someone in my position I am a bit stuck with it.   I would of course love to be able to travel to all these local places and to spend time in whatever county or other record centres there are, but this is sadly outside of my scope at present.  Be reassured that I do heed your warnings however, and do, as you can see, search out those kind & friendly souls like yourself who are both expert and have some access to some good data upon which I can more readily rely.     

My problem also, as you have probably guessed, is that I am a relative novice at this business, I live abroad (I got old one day so I had to go to try & scratch a living to send my kids to uni and the like) & the only record centres I have had any chance of accessing is the LMA & the Guildhall and even then only in passing to & from the airport or St Pancras (yes with my luggage - I  joked that I have brought my great great granny in!!)  I probably get to England two or three times a year for a couple of days only.   I am also poverty-stricken enough to not even contemplate using research services.   

Thank you for confirming both the Mary Chandler/Blacklee marriages with the crucial new info otp & widow.   I agree that there seems a good argument that the John Blacklee death was the father and that the John who married Masse White was the son. 

Thank you for unearthing (sic) the age of Mary Peaks at death, implying a yob ca 1735.  This at least rules out the Mary Chandler of Easton but leaves the two IGI-inspired Godmanchester ones.     Obviously, as you know, I had expected to find her somewhat closer to Somersham than this, especially as there is every chance that John Blackley came from Colne.   Are you aware of the omission from the LDS recordsof any other parishes in the immediate vicinity?  It sounds like I need to find someone with the Somersham and surrouning area cd or fiche!

I thought I was on the Hunts Board by the way, am I not?  Yes,  I have found the responses from RootsChat to be more numerous & very good albeit I have also had some isolated pieces luck on GenForum where the email addresses have still been live and where I have found living relatives - a real bonus.

Regards  Mick

[bedfordshire boy]

Hi Mick

I was referring to the other board that you posted on, the England board, not Rootschat where, yes, you're on the correct Hunts board

There are numerous parishes in Hunts where the LDS was refused permission to film. A laborious method of finding out is to get a list of Hunts parishes - http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/HUN/ - then check them all on www.familysearch.org - hover over Search Records, click on Library Catalog, then on Place search. Under the Genealogy section at the genuki site it states that only 15% of Hunts parishes are on the IGI.  Cambs doesn't seem to suffer from the same problem of PRs not being filmed. You can see from their web site that there are transcriptions of most parishes available

Unfortunately where they haven't been filmed there's usually no transcription, which is why I say Huntingdon Records Office or their research service are your only options. You can check which transcriptions are available at http://www.huntsfhs.org.uk/Pubs.html . There may be a correlation between the transcripts and what's been filmed by the LDS. Most of the parishes around Somersham haven't been filmed, nor is a transcript available, so I'm afraid it's Huntingdon Records Office or shelling out for their research service, which is what I had to do with my gg grandmother who was from Somersham. It wasn't expensive and was quick and friendly

regards

David