Blish Genealogy

Blish Point, MA
Blish Point, near Barnstable, Massachusetts

Format, Timeline Concepts and Software Source
Copyright © 1999-2017 Charles Benjamin Blish

This genealogical compendium is made up exclusively of Blishes and those that are very close to the Blish line, either ancestral or as offshoots.

The initial linkage data for several thousand individuals was gathered from the 1637-1905 work by James Knox Blish. Additional information is now being gathered from the 1956 addendum published by Matthew Rhodes Blish. In addition to these works, I have added further individuals and a number of images to the genealogy, and have made many corrections in the listings with regard to indexing. More importantly, each and every individual has a record in my system, wheras in the JKB book, only about 8% of the members of the family tree are distinguished by their own records. Everyone else was mentioned only in the context of those with records - and believe you me, it's been quite a job to get that all squared away, but it's working very well now.

To get from the raw data to the three thousand five hundred (plus) HTML pages (160 million bytes of HTML!) you'll find on www.blish.org, my custom genealogical software processes all relationships, generates family trees (also known as pedigree charts), lifespans, historical timelines, and a number of different types of indexes.

This compilation of the genealogy accounts for both married and unmarried partnerships. It repairs many of the linkage errors that occured in the James Knox Blish and Matthew Rhodes Blish books. It incorporates many photographs of family members and provides supplementary pages where important events are described in some detail. I have also extended the genealogy further back, to a known date of 1518, and added quite a few new members to the earliest generations. These entries can support considerable additional research - especially along the lines of the female family members, which unfortunately suffered from the inherently male-oriented view of genealogy common in the past.

As of April 10th, 2000, I have 100% of the basic data set entered from the JKB book, at 3,213 individuals, which also includes several hundred new people I've dug up.

We're probably looking at about 4,000 to 5,000 web pages for the genealogical data I have now, at a very rough guess, for the JKB book and the MRB book both. I've been able to add about one hundred new entries a day, on average. I post these on the site the same day. Sometimes my job takes all of my free time, and then the site languishes a bit, but rest assured, I'll get back to it as soon as I can when that happens.

The Matthew Rhodes Blish book is much shorter, and some of it consists of corrections and additions to the records in the JKB book. Although I've not made a comprehensive survey of the MRB book, I believe it will take only a month or two at the most to enter the connectivity data therein. So I think we're looking at a summer 2000 date for a complete set of connected records on-site.

Having said that, even once the full complement of individuals is entered and online, there is simply a huge amount of data still to be entered that extends beyond the linkage information. Biographical, speculative, etc. Because of this, this will always be a work in progress. As such, some parts can (and will!) get ahead of others as I get time to work on various aspects of the genealogy database. I have every intent to turn the genealogy here into a veritable showpiece of what an online genealogy can be.

Please keep in mind that the vast majority of this ongoing data entry I regularly do is for generations past. I would be delighted to update, or insert, your specific family line and get it online immediately (that means, within a week or two of receiving the data; it's still a big job!)

James Knox Blish
James Knox Blish

Beulah Wilcox Blish
Beulah Wilcox Blish

Lillian Martha (Blish) Purmort
Lillian Martha (Blish) Purmort