Friday, December 31, 2021

Blake Newsletter and the end of the old year

New Years Eve Day and it is cloudy and overcast. Not sure what the weather will bring our way but we are all nestled snug in our homes these days with Omicron about. We will make a Fish Soup for dinner tonight as that has become our custom the last couple of years. It is quite interesting beginning with onion and garlic in butter and then add four kinds of fish (we usually choose small scallops, shrimp, salmon and cod but it is actually meant to be just ends of fish you pick up at a fish market). Once browned a little add a can of diced tomatoes and spices to suit and let that bubble away for 35 minutes. Then serve over crusty bread which has been browned in the oven drizzled with olive oil. A tasty and healthy meal to end the Old Year as well as being a good hot soup after a day spent outdoors although not so much me these days. 

The Blake Newsletter is complete and I will publish it tomorrow on the website. I have been concentrating on my own line as it is perhaps the most mis-used line of all by genealogists over the years. Clarifying the ancestry of Nicholas Blake of Old Hall, Enham will probably be one of my life's works although I never intended to do genealogy. For me this is a one-name study and more of a personal history project than genealogy. My sister enjoys pulling out all the names in a family and reconstructing them. I only do that if I have to to make a path back in time looking at my one name studies. Although I have done a lot of work on all of my lines mostly just from the point of view of verifying the tracebacks with the DNA. I do know that my paternal grandmother never really thought about her actual father; her adopted father was so much more important to her and her actual mother had raised her anyway since she remarried. My paternal grandmother spent the first six years of her life with her maternal grandparents and uncles who were still in their teens when she was born. I may move to the Blake family in Devon next as there were thoughts that this line was descendant of the Andover Blake line but I have not been able to see that yet. I have quite a bit of material for this line so is perhaps a good place to move to next.

I am moving on to The Kip-Kipp Family Newsletter with its inaugural issue the first of February. I also have my H11 Newsletter on that date and it is the big issue of the year but does only take a day or two to put together. Although I will continue with the H11 Newsletter it has diminishing value in that my project is quite large as projects go but still only about 10% or less of all the H11 tested by FT DNA and hence not as meaningful as it could be. On the other hand if all of those people joined I am not sure I could keep up with it so there are blessings with every way you look at it. 

God Bless.

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