My search is a little easier as it has been going on pretty much continuously since the late 1930's by one relative or another, and I was recently given copies of literally hundreds of documents to put online for the large population of Blogate/Blowgate descendants out there. We are all descended paternally from the same Thomas the emigrant, thanks to the Black Death.....
My Smith family research had a similiar break in the early 1400's, but we used genetic testing and months of online research to connect Stephen Smith of Bath NH to Samuel Smith of Nine Partners NY/Sharon CT, and from there the back to ancestors in England...Months of work,,,
Then two weeks ago I was walking around in downtown Rapid City and I saw a little used book store,,,cue the music from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the knights see the Castle (or a cut out of a castle) on the Hill, choir voices rising,,,,so I went in and the first thing I see in a little locked glass display case, is a mint first edition of " Colonial Ways and Days" which is really a family history of my mother's paternal ancestors,,,popped it open and there was the link, in type, that we had spent alot of time proving..
Plopped my 8 dollars and 95 cents down on the counter and ran with it. It is even signed by a Smith descendant and dated for the year it was printed,1901,,, a real keeper.
(it also contained a very old deposit slip for the First National Bank of Gordon Nebraska, completely filled out, used as a bookmark I guess, but no cash...)

The amount of info now available online is amazing, google book search is loaded with old English family information. The oldest actual reference to a confirmed de Blogate ancestor that I have found myself,and which is the oldest yet found, came from google book search, Gilberti de Blogate, Magistiri of the Eye Priory in Suffolk, 1215.recorded in the cartulary...he may have also been Gilberti de Jakele when he was younger......
Now to find how the family surname was styled before de Blogate, as de Blogate was the name of their feudal farmstead between Eye and Athelington, perhaps in the Cranley/Redlyngfield area,,,,The British Library has been very helpful, (you Brits are exceedingly good record keepers, aren't you), though their online search engine is a horror, no fuzzy search at all, either get it exactly right or no hits. A real pain with so many variations of spelling in the documents.

This week I am working on finding a good template for the FHCO pdf, something with a D and D that will work in Open Office, as my just plain template that I used looks like pig poo, according to Ol' Horsehair, teach them to be critical and they will, but he is right.

SeerBlue