The Gray family has suddenly thrust itself forward after sitting dormant in my mind for quite a while. Meeting another researcher studying the line gives me a lot of ideas on my own line. They appear to be farmers (not well to do just small farmers I expect). They rent Glebe land I think as the Owner is a priest. They move about somewhat from Cherry Burton to Etton over a period of 140 years which is maybe not a lot of moving. Where they are before Cherry Burton is a mystery that reading all of the parish records can only solve. I need to look at Skerne and Watton for the name Gray as well. I know my ancestry for my Gray line back from my great grandmother who was a daughter of the emigrant Robert Gray Junior and my first Canadian born ancestor in 1839. Robert's parentage was known in my family as my mother knew that Grace's parents were Robert Gray Junior and Mary Routledge and that Robert's parents were Robert Gray and Elizabeth. She also knew that the Gray family was from Cherry Burton. This family lore proved to be true when I investigated the land records/parish registers for Cherry Burton and Etton. The Holme on the Wold registers are quite small (Robert and Jane only appear to have had two children). It is curious why they were baptized at Holme on the Wolds and not Cherry Burton. Robert was the only baptism in 1774 on the Bishops Transcripts (father listed as Robert Gray Husbandman). There were five baptisms in 1771 when Ellen (older sister to Robert) was baptized. I will continue to investigate as I did not find Robert Gray at Holme on the Wolds in the tax lists. My cousin wrote up the family in the 1970s and has the baptism for Robert Gray (our mutual ancestor) as Holme on the Wolds. Robert indicated on the census that his birthplace was Holme.
My youngest daughter started her clinical year at the hospital. She has wanted to be a physician since she was a young child and I have listened to her talk about it all these years. My personal preference for my daughter was that she do a Ph.D. like her older sister (she did do her MSc). However, I have only hinted at that, encouraged the idea of research and supported her every tendency to follow an academic/research career. But in the long run her main interest has always been healing. I am happy for her that she is doing that. Canada has a desperate need for physicians which will still be with us for another ten years or so simply because it takes a long time to graduate doctors (4 years of medical school, minimum of three years of residency for Family Medicine and longer for other specialties). It is a full time career really having worked in medicine in the 1960s and again in the 1990s-up to mid 2006. The difference in medicine between the 1960s and the 1990s is amazing. I worked in the lab in the 1960s and the miracles of the 70s, 80s, 90s and on into the present have created an enormous difference in the ability of medicine to solve problems and give people a longer lifespan where it would have been much shorter. They haven't cured everything but the inroads they have made into debilitating diseases is tremendous.
Occasionally people ask me (I always think it a bit rude to be honest) when we are going to have grandchildren but honestly there are enough children in the world and if my daughters decide never to have children they have my 100% support. Both of them are in full time careers that require a full time commitment and having children is not a particularly easy option. In the case of my youngest I can not even begin to say how proud I am of her taking on health care even if I would rather she was doing academia/research. Physicians are so desperately needed. They also have my 100% support if they decide to have children but that would be for them with me helping if they need help. The idea that one must have children is somewhat foreign to me. My husband and I enjoy our children now adults but no driving need here for grandchildren. We both have absolutely oodles of cousins/siblings all having children/grandchildren. I already have 4 neices, 3 nephews, 5 great nephews on my side and they are just starting into their child bearing years most of them. Five great nephews from my oldest neice and nephew alone already!
Although we are home all the time and could help out 100% we keep very busy bringing together our genealogies to pass on to our siblings and their descendants; our cousins and their descendants. I have proven back to all of my 3x great grandparents (with the problem discussed below) and I am in the process of proving the 4x great grandparents ( I am now down to missing the full names of 5 and the surnames of 2 of my 4x great grandparents in 7 of my great grandparents lines and for the eighth one (my maternal grandmother) I am missing three but need to find paper proof for the link between my great grandmother Ellen Taylor and the likely parents Thomas Taylor and Ellen Roberts - once that is resolved and if I am correct then I need to find 3 4x great grandparents)). Solving my maternal grandmother is a slowly evolving situation. I have my mtDNA Full Genetic Scan done and still no perfect matches. That may be my clue back along with paper data. I am working on family lore at the moment and where it was easy to locate the information I have accumulated it but do not want to make great expenditure on lines that are not mine.
Just back from an 11.6 km bicycle ride. It is starting to rain now so we were lucky that we went early. Now to bake the cakes and cupcakes for tomorrow. I will wait until tomorrow to ice them so that they have dried out a little but will still be tasty.
Cakes all baked and cooling. The day has passed quickly.
Tomorrow I will ice the cakes and that might just occupy quite a bit of my day.
No comments:
Post a Comment