2010 - New Year and first post

The New Year has arrived and it is already the fourth day in before my first post of the year. We have had a few snowfalls of mostly 5 to 10 centimetres so our ground level is gradually building up. The advantage of the cold is the more compacted snow falls :) The snow will now build up (unless global warming hits us) until mid April when it will rapidly decrease yielding the green fields of May. It is always that way here and the green generally survives until mid Summer (and all summer if no drought) when we start watering a little. I can only remember a couple of years when water was rationed in our area. With the Ottawa River only steps away we always have plenty of water.

Our Christmas Tree is waiting to come down on the 6th although I may take it down today. This is the shortest season on record for us as the tree did not go up until after the wedding on the 19th. We just never got to decorating it. The last of the wedding cupcakes are being eaten and there is just 1/4 of the golf cake left.

Last night I backed up my machine on my external drive so I am ready to start once again to search through the records but I shall concentrate for the moment on our son-in-law's families. I want to complete the chart for his paternal grandmother. I am hoping that we might be able to get some pictures as well to add to the tree.

I will also spend some time on the Siderfin family with the new information which I received from a descendant of the elusive Thomas Siderfin baptized 1777 and the youngest brother of my 3x great grandmother Elizabeth (Betty) Siderfin baptized 1759. Grace (their mother) did not mention Thomas in her will but she wrote the will before he was born. Why she didn't add a codicil is a mystery. His father Robert mentioned only his three sons in his will (John, Robert and Thomas). Robert died at Selworthy and Grace at Knowle but she was widowed 11 years and I suspect was living with her eldest son John at Knowle. She was only 68 when she died. The published book on this family has done a rather interesting thing. First of all the father of my Elizabeth (and her siblings John, Mary, Grace, Elizabeth, Ann, Robert and Thomas) is said to be Robert brother to Augustine. The father of John, Robert and Thomas is said to be Robert son of Augustine. They both have Grace Kent are their wife. I have searched the records for Selworthy and do not find two Robert Siderfins married to Grace . Since Robert brother to Augustine would have been 67 when he married and 74 when my 3x great grandmother was born I have always been somewhat dubious but being new to Genealogy I did not feel that I could challenge the book without a good deal of proof. My 2x great grandmother Elizabeth Rew was born at Bratton (property which had been given to Robert and Thomas by their father Robert) and in 1841 we find John Rew and Robert Siderfin with Ann sister to Robert and Elizabeth living at Higher Upcott Farm (Wootton Courtney). Finding them together is quite fascinating. We know at this point John Rew traveled back to Devon with his son Thomas and his daughter Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe as he died at Thomas' farm Sheepwash in 1848. Unfortunately Robert Siderfin didn't live to 1851 to show us the relationship but one would hardly expect to find him living at the Nurcombe farm if he wasn't related to Ann. Interestingly the Chapman family that is found there is also related to the Nurcombe family. These were difficult times for small farmers as the land was being reclaimed by land owners and many of them were without land to farm. John and Robert though were quite elderly and could simply have decided to no longer farm.

However, I digress. My correspondent finds that her ancestors were born at Derby whereas I have them born in Somerset. I was incorrect and made those corrections. That is a project for today aside from the work on French Canadian ancestry. I do want to eventually get back to my Blake family and the records I was transcribing. The new DNA Blake webpages are excellent and I hope will lead to a discovery about my Blake line. Thus far no one has tested other than my brother for the Hampshire line as far as I can tell. Most of the individuals testing are for the Irish Blake lines, the Devon Blake lines and the Norfolk Blake lines. I am still not sure that anyone has tested that can trace back to Somerset or Wiltshire. The new site though is dedicated to the Blake family and an excellent resource for anyone searching out their Blake ancestry.