Twenty chromosomes completed now for the re-phasing of my grandparents

 Just three chromosomes to go and I will have completed this project of re-phasing my grandparents. The changes were except for one chromosome and just one side of it were minimal just a little adjustment here and there to compliment all the testing centres. One small blip discovered on Chromosome 7 in one length only and I will check that out again one of these days; mostly waiting for a match in that area for that one individual. 

The phasing of my great grandparents will begin and lots of data for that especially for Blake, Knight, Pincombe, Rew, Buller and Taylor. There is a fair amount for Rawlings and the last one I still have to be sure I am not seeing the matches of my earlier marriages in the Rawlings line with Cotterill/Cotterell (spelling varies). I did trace the two lines of interest back to a common parent with my Rawlings line having married into the Cotterell line in the mid 1700s and again in the 1800s. A brother of this early Cotterell was the ancestor of the line at Kimpton where my great grandmother was working. The priest recording the surname as one of the middle names of my Grandmother did point in this direction and the matches are coming with the companies suggesting a possible connection. I would say that in general I will look at the data and see where it leads me for sure although in my mind is a young girl and woman who loved her family and really it was never mentioned as far as I know until I was helping to put together the family tree for my parent's 60th wedding anniversary and couldn't find her birth registration or baptism. At this time it continued not being mentioned but the answer was soon found in the paperwork and about 100 British pounds later and a number of documents I had the answer. Myself I loved this grandmother that I never knew and really it does not matter to me; I love her anyway just because she sounds like a lovely grandmother to have had but missed because she died when she was 64 five years before I was born. But my grandpa said she loved the two grandchildren that she knew and that is wonderful that she got to know two of us. The young man of interest in the projected position of being my great grandfather died at just 54 years of age and his cause of death was mentioned somewhere and I made note of it because I have made a medical history of the family. We were blessed with really good genes actually but an inadequate exercise routine life style has taken its toll in the past and one hopes that it stays in the past. They say the youth of today is much more inclined to a good life style and that is excellent news actually. Other than arthritis which both of our parents had and the two grandparents I knew meant that perhaps we would all have arthritis. My answer is to run and walk a lot. It does help. Staying out of the frigid is helpful as well but the walking is definitely good for an individual I think with arthritis. 

Back to the writing of the books to a certain extent now and I did spend a bit of time extracting any new matches but I shall be rather picky these days and just select matches that give me extra and new information.  The days of collecting vast amounts are in the past I believe. I will get my entire genome done once it is set up and I already have a kit that I want to buy but it waits for that. Other than that the DNA is just going to compliment the books where it is valuable. There are some sections of Blake that have passed down through the centuries and I am always alert for Americans with deep Colonial ancestry who match but the matches are so far in the past but they are large and in what is generally referred to as a common area or pile-up area in the chromosomes. I may get into tiny studies on that we will see. 

I have missed doing the Pincombe Newsletter and the H11 Newsletter and will get that done in the next couple of days. All my concentration was into those matches for sure. I learned quite a bit in tiny ways as the changes were, surprisingly except for one chromosome where I knew there were problems and just on the one length, very minimal which I hoped for but was prepared to be corrected if changes emerged. Collecting over 2000 matches during the past decade plus did pay off for sure in terms of a good phasing of our grandparents. 

Today the car goes in for its snow tires and I take it in soon. The radials are good tires and until 2012 we never owned snow tires. I shall be very cautious and the walk home will be lovely. Although it is pretty cold but I will be dressed for it. I had the flu and couldn't take it in two weeks ago I was too sick but someone else desperate for their snow tires would have gotten that appointment so worked out for everybody. I started it yesterday and ran it for about five minutes until is was part way warmed up so hopefully at minus 20 it is going to do the same today. I also have to pump the tire probably we will see if the light goes on. 

Tea drank and solitaire puzzles to do and then the day of research (and taking the car in) begins.  Still avoiding the news in terms of my thinking about it a great deal. We need to become tariff proof and that is the aim. I still think that we need to give some space to the car companies that are afflicted by tariff to do what they have suggested they will do - Canada is a huge market in terms of car buying and I suspect no company really wants to lose it and will try to work around the difficulties that exist and might just be solved when CUSMA comes up for renewal - really everything is a bargaining point. We have a great deal to offer for sure but we must be a more independent country but still every bit of best friend and neighbour to the United States. One cannot share the huge border that we do and be any other than best friends. We have a lot to offer each other for sure (during any cold spell any one in Canada does think about the warmth of the Florida beaches or so many other warm places in the United States). We can outlive the cold but the warmth is nice on occasion! Our two hundred plus year friendship has been something that God wanted to see between His people; I am very sure of that. They are a larger country and like a big brother really but big brothers want to see us be as successful as they are in order to have this continuous land mass stable and efficient and prosperous and best friends. 

First ten chromosomes re-phased for the grandparents

Nearly half way through re-phasing my grandparents and some review of Chromosome 23 matches. So far they tend towards Buller proving that line quite early on to likely be as I had thought it; one entire Buller chromosome passed to one of my brothers intact from his mother and unchanged from her mother who received from her father and it came to Edwin Denner Buller from his mother Anne (Welch) Buller whose twin sister Sarah married to Edwin Withers had a huge family now found all over the world. Anne of course received it from her mother Sarah (Cheatle) Welch giving me a large length of Cheatle that is shared by many around the world. Quite fascinating DNA as it travels from parents to child through the generations. 

Other than the small glitch at the beginning of one sibling's chromosome in Chromosome 7 the re-phasing has been extremely smooth. I marvel at how close I came with that first phasing actually which I have updated a number of times over the past decade plus. The problem is one match that appears to be Blake but really not information to alter anything already in place. It waits for confirmation and perhaps will come one of these days. 

The basement cleaning all accomplished and everything back in place. The basement looks empty; it needs to look empty as it had been full to the rafters on occasion. More downsizing could be seen as I surveyed what is left. I remember telling my husband to be then and later husband that I never wanted to be left a widow; please do not leave me a widow I said to him after he asked me to marry him. It is a sad task to be a widow; to have to manage and be a caretaker of another person's dreams and possessions is the hardest thing in the world really. When a person is unwell you do not like to ask them how they want to manage items and he knew that about me and told me many things that he wanted me to do and they have been done for quite a while now. But the possessions he created that meant a lot to him are just massive in content and will not survive intact because so much of the material in them is about Edward's life. I would say that a comfort in his period of illness was that memory he created of his life from the early days of our marriage right up to the present at the time. He carefully preserved it all and regularly would collect one of those large binders and bring it up to his office and enjoy it all once again (including reviewing all the trip brochures collected and items purchased). Sometimes he would ask me to join him and I would but lots of times he just wanted to enjoy it all by himself. But the children and the grandchildren do not know all those people and the places are not something that mean anything to them and will not because he isn't here to make them live for them (Edward did do a lot of things on his own away from us). They belong to the moving generation these children and grandchildren. They will not create the kind of memories that my generation and those before me created. It will be different because recall is different. You can have it all just on a tablet with a big memory card. Life is and will change rapidly over the next century for sure. All of these pictures are scanned and in files and will never be lost in that way but the originals will have to go through the shredder because they are other people's memories and one just doesn't dump the originals for sure. They need to be shredded and that is another huge task. I am glad that Edward spent all those hours scanning and when he tired of it I scanned a great deal of material for him so all stored away just in case there is that inquisitive child in the future like Edward who wants to know everything about his ancestors. Edward is still very much in his grandson's minds; they loved him dearly.

 Today snow clearing as there is just a couple of centimetres. I will put on my cleats although I did put a mixture on the ice it is safer to wear the cleats for sure. The car in the garage so I do not have to clear it off or de-ice the windows which is a treat. Soon time to ski; the snow looks good and it will be perhaps a white christmas which we are used to having here in Canada. Soon all of Canada will be covered by snow. It is beautiful actually but it is also cold and there is a polar vortex. We are going through that period of shift when the polar vortex covers our area for weeks on end. 

 Tea drank and solitaire puzzles worked. It is early today as the puzzles went very quickly. Eyes a little tired today so will not do a lot of work but I will do some planning as it is time to return to the books. I will work on the phasing of the great-grandparents over the next few months. I am not in a rush but I have not yet pulled all the census material to aid me in my quest from Find My Past, Ancestry and My Heritage. I tend to a look at all of the databases and accompanying material just to see what has been collected by the companies. This is my pleasure for sure; subscriptions to all of these companies. 

The sky is lightening but no wind in the trees. God is watching over His world as always. His creation still intact in spite of the Satans in our midst. We learn so slowly we humans and it is time to move to that peaceful uplifted plain where war is no more; greed disappears and the world will prosper. 

The return of the Indigenous articles from the Vatican ensures that the memory of this great land mass will always be visible in this country and part of its heritage. Thanks to the Pope for making this happen.  Thank you to the Thomson and  Weston families for their winning bid to purchase the original charter of the Hudson's Bay Company with plans to donate it to  four museums here in Canada. This document from 1670 will be part of the historical background of colonial North America. 

 

Finally Chromosome 1 completed

 I did complete Chromosome 1 yesterday and I knew I couldn't resist working on the re-phasing of my grandparents. I did the first three chromosomes. I set up a slightly different set up using Excel instead of Powerpoint. Powerpoint really isn't set up to do this type of table although I liked it early on but gradually could see the advantage of using Excel so I did start that. I still have to work on Chromosome 23 and will probably do some of that today. When this is all completed and I have recorded everything I will give it to my siblings in case they have a descendant that is interested but my daughter will also maintain the files in her lifetime just with regard to actually making sure the files still work! She has her own items to work on. Once I have finished that will be all that I will do likely. I am more interested in constructing these books and will use all of this information as I prepare the family trees. 

Continued today working on the chromosomes and I have discovered a slight blip in Chromosome 7 as I rephase. I will have to re-look at it but the matches do not appear to be there to truly reveal the slight blip. We will see how that goes. I have three sets of crossover data and will see whether there is a blip or not since I can compare the five siblings (thus far nothing points to a change but I have only checked one sibling whose crossover point just didn't quite strike me as correct - fussy old woman I guess. Sometimes it is perhaps how the test flowed for one sibling as occasionally I will see a slight difference between companies in how they interpret the data primarily because they use different points. When whole genome becomes universal then these blips will disappear as there is really only one result that is correct. But as I said this is not yet pure science it remains as citizen science where the proof relies on incomplete information in some cases simply because not all the companies choose the same testing regimen. 

This is also basement cleaning day and I shall go and start the robot to do its chore on the rugs. They are old rugs now although considering I have run on them for years and they had a family of four and their friends on occasion moving around on those rugs they barely look worn. But they were good rugs and I will take them with me when we move. It was one of the first items I bought when I went to work proofreading at home in the early 80s. My a long time ago now and wages were significantly smaller in those days. I never drove the car anywhere that did not involve my work and my husband biked to work and our children walked to school or took a bus. Although I eventually did have two trips a day to take my oldest daughter to Middle School and back in her last year there. It was quite simply a better idea and we could stop and shop at stores and so two trips a day were not part of my working regimen. I used to record all those things; amazing really. But I am that sort of a person and completely converted my husband who did not keep accounts at all when I first knew him. I taught him to do bookkeeping and he was Treasurer at his United Church for around ten years. He loved doing that as his father had done that at his Church. It was sort of a memory thing for him as he went through life since he did not get to have his father after two years of age when his father died in a farming mishap. 

Tea drank and must go and start the Robot; checking to make sure it is fully charged although I do glance at it through the week these days as it does slow me down to have to charge before I use it.  

 

Accomplishment yesterday

Yesterday was a good working day as I accomplished all of the cleaning in my schedule and worked on the matches. I am now down to just  22 matches to do and then Chromosome 1 is complete. When I checked the total in the "too small" category for this chromosome I was surprised to see it was just slightly over 20; I thought I had eliminated more than that. So still a large number in that particular chromosome but more rigorously placed into, in this case, Blake or Buller and primarily Buller which is not really a surprise given the size of the families in the mid to late 1800s. Occasionally Rawlings or Pincombe was a challenge but mostly the matches tend towards Pincombe for whatever reason - a lot of Pincombe have tested worldwide. 

Today the main floor is the designated cleaning area today. It will take all of the morning likely although I have already begun moving furniture to get it out of my way. I like open spaces when I am cleaning. The exercise doesn't hurt either. Laneway all nicely cleaned out for the next storm and a good layer of snow on the ground which will help to protect the plants that have survived my guardianship. Last year we had such a cold spell and no snow cover in December that a number of plants simply did not make it this past summer. The roots may still be strong and they might come up next year; time will tell. 

A couple of discoveries with the matches that were helpful and all the cross over points have been proven so I can start anytime now on the re-phasing of the grandparents which could well begin today. Twenty two matches is not a large number unless I need to sort them out. I do recognize a number of the names as known so maybe a quick trip through these twenty two matches and they are all S, T and W nearing the end of the alphabet. I do love the logic of all of our learning that began so young and stays with us all our lives. Some of us think alphabetically others are more numerical - I like both systems depends on what I am doing and perhaps that is the case with most people. 

Staying away from the news again; it does tend to dominate my mind on occasion and at 80 one can just watch and pray really for the best outcome. It does surprise me somewhat, although it is possibly logical if you are a satanist bent on control and destruction, that the world has not moved beyond the barbarism of a thousand years and more ago. It is done to frighten people but we should not be frightened; God handled the barbarians of the past and He will handle the present ones I am sure. The sight of Russia breaking up and bankrupt saddened us in the early 90s but  now we would just watch and pray that there are good sensible people in Russia (if Putin hasn't removed them all) who will eventually lead that country to the glory that should be theirs but is constantly undermined and stolen by gluttons - gluttons for money and land who care nothing about the people of Russia. Gluttony another one of those great sins of the Christian Church and possibly others - I am not that knowledgeable on religions other than my Anglican for sure.  

 Nose to the grindstone and on to breakfast. The workday begins once again; the traditions of our youth weigh in in our old age as we just do the work that needs to be done and carry on. It is Giving Tuesday today and sometimes you can make your money multiply where generous donors offer to match or even double or triple the donation. Good time to donate where you can find that in your set of donations. 

Why following the commandments Jesus brought us are the best answer

It is all about respect for our fellow man; loving our neighbour as ourself. Without it we are just like the animals in the wild protecting their territory and expanding it whenever they felt they could when the other side was weaker. That is really what NATO is all about; creating a line of respect and fighting back when the respect isn't returned. It was a beautiful aim when it was created at the beginning of the Cold War and has served Europe and the members who support the belief that this world can be a better place where wars no longer happen. It was so simple those words when Jesus brought them to us and created the foundation stone of the Christian Church. But two thousand years has seen viscous wars fought and so many deaths; it is time to move to that uplifted plain of peace. One prays for that every day. 

The sermon yesterday at Church was very very interesting and I thank the priest for his delivery of it. It was especially a really excellent Advent I sermon I think. Advent is the time of watching and waiting for the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; the memory of his birth comes to us on Christmas Eve year in and year out as we celebrate God's gift to mankind. A gift that keeps on giving through the centuries as we slowly adjusted our societies to a more equitable system but it does take so much time and respect has to be learned by all for all around them. Just because you think everything should go as you want it to go doesn't mean that that would be the way God wants it to go. God wants peace for us and we have to move in a way that creates that peaceful society in this world. The rhetoric has to be for peace not for ownership especially not ownership of people which includes telling them what they can and cannot belong to or how they have to speak; or who their friends are. Peace in our time was the motto that carried our young men and women into a battle where too many laid down their lives for that very peace. We must have it in this century; too many have died trying to give it to us.  Prayers for peace as always. 

Mostly yesterday was a working day - washing clothes and working on matches (just a little, Sunday is a rest day and that includes my eyes which had had three days of research). The day passed quickly and I also cleared the snow from my porch and patio and the top of the laneway so that the company could clear the rest of the laneway and especially the end of the laneway; I am getting too old to move that for sure. It was heavy snow absolutely made for snowman building although I do not see any out the window. The children are mostly all grown around this house although there are a few. Most of the matches going into the "too small" folder because I can not really be sure whether they are Rawlings or Pincombe/Blake or Buller. They are all in that very long length (20 to 40 cM) with either two siblings matching or three siblings matching but without any other match to help or a match in common (and I like there to be a couple of those matches in common) they are probably very ancient in our Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA). They are still interesting and mostly American colonial descendants actually so no more than 10th to 11th great grandparent for the MRCA but that makes us 11th or 12th cousin and who would expect to share DNA that far back that one could actually see as a reasonable length. It is simply a common area shared by many with ancestry back to the British Isles likely and before that to the European Continent and before that to Africa thousands of years ago. We are still learning very much about all of that. So into the "too small" folder but still painted on DNA Painter in each sibling file. 

I read an article published by Nature Communications on the five stages of homo sapiens' brains in terms of age - Infant lasts to 9 years and adolescent from 10 years to 32 years, adult from 33 years to 66 years when early aging begins around 67 and then late ageing begins around 83 years.An interesting compilation by the scholar Dr Alexa  Mousley who led the research. It does reinforce the idea that living with one's parents well into one's 20s is a good idea. I was thrilled to have our children stay with us so long for many reasons; I thought it helped them by not forcing home ownership on them so young and just having to worry about their studies whilst time passed. Then there were the surprises which blessed us as well as we grew in family size (of course I grew up in a house with nine people in it so space was not a big deal with me (plus I lived in the attic all on my own until my baby sister joined me when she was two years of age and I was ten and it does strike me that assigning adolescence to ten seems very logical in my opinion as I became somewhat of a little mother to her). The traveling that Edward wanted to do fitted so well into all of that as he was always conflicted leaving everything behind like that but the house was always full so he happily traveled about the world (when I finally got him to cross the ocean) and enjoyed every moment of that travel. He couldn't get enough of it finally and wanted to travel to Europe every year but I needed time to prepare for each trip so that we saw and did the absolutely maximum we were capable of seeing and doing. Did we miss anything? Well he wanted to go to the opera in Budapest I think it was and we didn't do that but if time had been on his side we would have. But we did do all of the items that he had on his original check list. My only aim was to go to England for the most part and meet with my cousin but I am a bit like that; I do not have a long list of things that I need to see. A picture is good; I am really not much of a spender in that way; neither of my time nor of my monetary expenditures. But having lived through a bankruptcy as a young child it formed different ideas in my mind I rather think. As a young child I was not bothered that I wore my brother's shoes or even clothes on occasion and I rather liked all of that family time when we would sit and listen to my father read a story. New clothes were not something that I missed at all; after all I was the fourth child with an older sister whose hand me downs I wore until I was six inches taller! By then I was babysitting and making my own clothes or buying them. Once  his business was back up and running we would scarcely see him again as he was busy from dawn to dusk so the memory of that short period of time stayed with me as more of a fun time than the slightly perilous time that it actually was. People are definitely a product of their upbringing in many ways but life shapes how we live it I think. 

Cleaning day today and it begins around 9 as that seems to work very well for me. The top floor is the beginning as that is where the vacuum is. I am still using the shop vac and it works very well; actually the suction is great but it does sound like a rocket taking off for sure. The morning will mostly complete it and I will have some time to work on the matches and other projects. I have a meeting at 1 which I will try to remember; I have written a note to myself. 

I am more than 2/3rds of the way through Chromosome 1 matches. Possibly there will be just around 200 matches for this chromosome when I have completed this review. Then Chromosome 23 still to do just for a cleanup as there are  96 there and some are quite small - generally I can work them into grandparent readily especially with two of us so clearly separated into one with an entire Buller length and mine which is 60% Buller and 40% Pincombe with just the one crossover point. The other three are more varied but also easily work into their result. Cleaning that file up will be handy when I move to the great grandparents. The Pincombe comes intact from my great grandmother Grace Gray (blended Routledge/Gray) to my paternal grandfather and then to my mother who blends it with Buller or doesn't as it turns out as it came intact to one of my brothers; the Rawlings comes intact from my Paternal Grandmother Ada Bessie Cotteril Rawlings (aka Edith Bessie (Taylor) Blake) to my father who then passes it to his daughters (it is a mixture of Rawlings and the unknown Cotterill it would appear to my mind still; having Cotterell already in the family with two repeats in the cousin lines at the 4x level and 2x level does lead one to be cautious in how one regards the matches (however there are a number of Rawlings matches in the Chromosome file). It may never be solved; who knows but I am feeling less like I am intruding on my grandmother's life (she was very happy in her Taylor family and grew up with her mother as her mother and her three half siblings as her siblings and especially the bond with her step father was very strong - nice that all of that passed to me as a child from my grandfather) which I didn't want to do but life doesn't always flow the way you think it might. Buller is a mixture of Welch coming from my 2x great grandmother Anne (Welch) Buller who passed a blended (Welch/Cheatle chromosome) to my great grandfather Edwin Denner Buller who passed it unchanged to my maternal grandmother Ellen (Buller) Pincombe and the other part of the Buller passed by Ellen to her daughter Helen (Pincombe) Blake is mixed with Taylor passed to Ellen (Taylor) Buller from her father Samuel Taylor and her mother Ellen (Roberts) Taylor. I must check all of that but the gist is that the chromosome passed from a father to a daughter comes directly from that paternal grandmother without change whereas the chromosome passed from a mother to her child is blended but in significant way which gives matches with a 3x great grandmother of a good length on occasion as I can see the 23rd chromosome portions from Sarah (Cheatle) Welch in my 3rd cousins where our 2x great grandmothers were twins as rather a good length in that Buller line as they are in the Withers line. Interesting really all of this chromosome passing. So one can see the necessity of maintaining this 23rd chromosome as well although it is not used by all of the testing companies in their matching. 

Tea completed and solitaire puzzles to do. November all completed and December begins. A very orderly brain workout each day as it begins.