Our time in West Country went very quickly. We visited the Bodmin Church in Cornwall and the Eastlake Farm in Devon, both places we had visited in the past and have significance to the family name. We also did research in Truro and Redruth in Cornwall, and Sowton, Devon. I will try and write an article on both the church and the farm when I get home.
We also arranged to meet another researcher of our family name(s) in Bratton Clovelly in Devon. She has concluded that all of these variant names will most likely date back to the name, Byestelake (loosely, east by the stream or water) in Devon, and identified in the Assise Rolls of 1244 in the Broadwoodwidger Parish. This connection of the variant names is certainly what I hope our DNA project will confirm… that we share a common ancestor.
Researching in the Devon Heritage Center at Moor House in Sowton (near Exeter), I found it unbelievable how many more records have been digitized since we were last here in 2010. I hope to share a list of websites when I get my research organized at home.. All of us interested in this name can now do so much online from the United States. Seeing digitized copies isn’t like holding the old documents, but sometimes the translations are much more understandable, both because of the language (often Old English and Latin) and because of the aging of the documents. We left Devon on Sunday, May 26th, to continue research on other family names in Sussex. When I get my photos organized, I will post some additional pictures to summarize our trip, but this will be my last post while traveling. What a fascinating journey it has been!