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BLANKENSHIP ORIGINS - Home page Discover interesting facts about your family: First Name: Last Name: Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. —Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) This site has had a total of visits since Aug. 15, 2001 www.digital.com This home page was last updated February 11, 2004 Click Here to see Martha Blankinship's orignal 1724 handwritten land patent. http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~kallenbach/ (1 of 38)11/17/2005 4:44:55 PM BLANKENSHIP ORIGINS - Home page Click Here to see a February 2004 transcription of this 1724 land patent. Both graphics above have imbeded copyright signatures. They were computer enhanced and graphically rendered by the site author. Copyright © in 2004 by Donald L. Blankenship SHIELD: Red with a gold band between three gold wheat sheaves CREST: A gold lion Rampant MOTTO: "Dieu Defende le Droit" ("God defends the righteous") Click above to ENTER the web site There are more than 40 additional web pages containing history and genealogy on Blankenships and Blenkinsops http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~kallenbach/ (2 of 38)11/17/2005 4:44:55 PM BLANKENSHIP ORIGINS - Home page ——DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS—— Look up: Search: Dictionary Thesaurus Copyright © by Donald L. Blankenship To view this web site properly you should view it with LARGE TEXT. To do this click on VIEW in the top left portion of your Internet Explorer screen. After clicking on VIEW you'll see the drop down menu appear. Click on TEXT SIZE and then click on LARGEST. These web pages are intended for entertainment and research purposes only. They continually are being updated with new information. The content provides you a refreshing new look at the history of Blankenships and their knightly ancestors in England. As you read through these web pages please be reminded that the material you find on the BLANKENSHIP ORIGINS web site may at times be conjectural or employ deductive reasoning and logic to develop certain thought constructs where actual facts are missing. Although this style of scholarly research is somewhat different from conventional genealogical studies, it is used to provide interested parties an opportunity to explore ideas and information "out of the box" thereby opening potential new avenues of understanding. The author of this web site recognizes, acknowledges, and regards the numerous contributions of Blankenship family researchers who have been published in various books, journals, and web pages. The skill and ability of family research has a range from the hobby enthusiast to the more scholarly professional genealogist. The challenge for all of us is to keep an open mind, be willing to share, and pursue understanding. Over the past two or three years there have been serveral key pieces of historical data revealed that better illuminates the early history of the Blankenships of colonial America and the earlier Blenkinsop history of northern England during the Middle Ages. When we refer to key elements of data we mean specific information without which it probably would not have been possible to climb upwards to the summit from which we now view the landscape of historical facts collected and assembled. Key elements of data are like hand or footholds to the rock climber. It sometimes is essential to view historical data from a perspective and these key elements of information allow this to happen, albeit infrequently. Gratitude is therefore expressed to any and all who have offered their own insights and research data. Some of the Blenkinsop documents presented here were translated from Old French and Latin documents of the medieval period. These obviously would be identified as key data elements in this research effort. Some researchers have actually gone to England to acquire documentation which also is considered key data used in this study. Perhaps not surprisingly, I occasionally receive infromation from a researcher who has used an internet search engine to uncover some rare gem of information. It was in this fashion that we now have the earliest evidence of a Blenkisnop coat-of-Arms from perhaps the 1300's era. Almost certainly more information will be uncovered to further illuminate this subject. http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~kallenbach/ (3 of 38)11/17/2005 4:44:55 PM BLANKENSHIP ORIGINS - Home page Much of the research you'll read about at this web site was acquired using the Internet. Perhaps hundreds of on-line databases were examined. Literally thousands of genealogical and historical web pages have been gleaned for material which might relate to this study. However, a lot of books also have been scrutinized and many in-depth CD-ROM searches were conducted. There are simply too many sources to list them all and that is why the sources often are hyperlinked. These web pages are constantly being reviewed and updated with new information as it is obtained. There also is a continuing review of the textual matter to correct grammatical errors, spelling and the appropriateness of the material. These web pages are therefore evolutionary. This research is an ongoing project. This research has been a multi-year project. It has evolved over time. When the quest began in 1995 there were about 100 to 200 million web sites on the Internet. Today that number is well in excess of 3 billion and the number grows daily. The quantity and quality of web sites offering primary or original souce material has improved remarkably over time. The Internet represents an inestimable databank of resource material to present day researchers that never before in history was available to both lay public and scholars alike. It makes possible rapid advances in our knowledge of almost any subject. We can do very precise and very specific internet searches using boolean logic with Internet search engines and then examine the results of that data collected using correlation techniques. This powerful combination affords researchers today very privileged tools and methodologies with which to do their analyses. Both graphical and textual materials can now be examined in fine grain detail and the results of studies can be peer reviewed on-line using two-way email exchanges, chat lines and on-line telephony. None of this would have been possible before the Internet or before the age of the personal computer. A noted genealogical research firm in Scotland states that the Blenkinsop family can trace their ancestors back to the ancient territories of the English Border Ridings between the 11th and 12th centuries. Additional research done by a 16th century English historian states that this clan originally spelled the surname as BLENCAN. The research done by the Scottish genealogy research company states that the Blenkinsop clan has ancestral roots back to the Scottish-English border area where it first appears in ancient medieval records in Northumberland. It is further stated by another professional genealogy source that the first Blenkinsops came from Bernicia, the 6th century AD Anglian (Danish) Kindom lying between the Tyne and Forth rivers with its capital at Bamborough. Bernicia, the name given to the part of Northumbria north of the Tees (the Tees to Firth of Forth area) had very little Viking settlement of any kind. This area was probably a focus for 'Northumbrian' (Anglian) Nationalism' in the face of neighbouring Viking settlements. The Bernicians continued to speak the older Angle (Danish) or 'Anglian' language of Northumbria, in much the same way it was spoken before the arrival of the Vikings. Bernicia more or less corresponded to the modern day counties of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham and the northern half of Teesside - in other words the region we now call North East England. Bernicia also included what is now the Scottish Borders region and the Scottish Lothians - these regions were not http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~kallenbach/ (4 of 38)11/17/2005 4:44:55 PM BLANKENSHIP ORIGINS - Home page part of Scotland at the time of the Viking settlement. Yorkshire was therefore not part of Bernicia. Many people are surprised that the North East part of present day England (then known as Bernicia) was not a major area of Viking settlement. North Easterners often claim that their dialect is Viking in origin, even though the historic evidence and political events of the time clearly demonstrate that Bernicia was not a Viking settled area. The Vikings brought many new words to the English language as a whole and had a considerable effect on English spoken in all parts of the country - including those areas that were not settled by the Vikings. Another thing to remember is that neighbouring regions of Yorkshire and Cumberland County (now Cumbria County) saw extensive Viking settlement, so the likelihood of Viking words being introduced to the North-East from these areas would be very high. A third point to remember is that the Angles who inhabited Bernicia were originally from the region of land which now lies on the borders of both Denmark and Germany, where a language closely related to Scandinavian was spoken 1,500 years ago. It should be noted at this point that my own research and that of the professional genealogy firm in Scotland reflects a different understanding of history and suggests that the Blenkinsopp clan came from the area of Penrith in Cumberland (or Cumbria) County. This is an area just slighty to the west of the Northumberland border with Cumberland. My belief is that the Blenkinsopps took their surname from the Viking or Norse hamlet of Blencarn which lies along Blencarn Beck just east of Penrith in present day Cumbria County. It is my further belief that the family or clan that later came to adopt the surname "Blencan" or "de Blenkinshoppe" came into the Norman era of British history as a landed family of nobility of some wealth.