Friday, May 12, 2023

Continuing with the Pencombe project

 I have discovered it is much easier to just refer to my mother's surname book as the Pencombe project. That way I am not reciting a long list of other alternatives. She would be surprised that the original name was Pencombe as she knew from her father that the spelling of their surname was absolutely Pincombe (no variations in that spelling (you could leave off the e as his grandfather had written it that way but over time the e crept in and remained)). 

Today I continued with the extraction project from the images that I was given. I have completed page 3 (my numbering) and will probably do one page per day as my eyes tire quickly these days as it is intense work. However, I did do a second one later in the day. I have 188 entries now in the file.

There was a PWRDF Service today which I attended. I found it very interesting and a priest in the London, Ontario area died recently and we remembered him today. I grew up in London, Ontario and my brother Doug and I shared a strong interest in our birth Church (and we both stayed Anglican all of our lives although I did attend my husband's United Church with him as a family for a number of years. As children we were both at St Andrew Memorial (my home church as a child). But Doug was very involved in both the Church, Huron Church Camp and Scouting. His great loves for sure and he had many friends - Doug was a great friend to so many people including me his sister (he was my next to older brother and I so remember him teaching me to tie my oxfords) and as a child I quite adored both of my older brothers (now deceased) and COVID made visiting him once again impossible. We emailed back and forth and sometimes I would call him but he was pretty busy and did not always catch him. My two younger brothers are still living and I do email with them as with my two sisters. We all live a long way from each other for sure. 

The afternoon has gone quickly and I did not get into Find My Past today but will do that tomorrow for awhile. The weather is beautiful today and rather warm - our usual jump from winter to summer with a few days in between that remind us of winter but not lately. A bit of rain in the night and much needed hopefully more next week. My garden soil was just a little late for all that nice rain a couple of weeks ago. But next week will do as it is sure to be cool and rainy again before we launch into the dry spells in July. 

Today another two pages of images to enter into the excel file through the day and working on Find My Past entries for Pencombe and its derivatives. Initially when I picked up the dormant Pincombe study at the Guild of one name studies I wondered why it was actually the Pincombe/Pinkham study as I had never heard that surname before other than my great grandfather being very annoyed when the census taker used the Pinkham spelling on one of the census (would have to look it up). It was an interesting early introduction to the varieties of spelling that occur in a family line. But being a newbie I decided to take the one of two routes offered really by the study - one you could just throw out what was done before or two you could just go with the earlier work and build on it. I chose the latter and my Pincombe cousin in London, UK had gone into the Society of Genealogists library and found material on the Pincombe study which she then copied and sent to me. She did not see the wills abstracts which I did find on one of my trips to London and copied. I was able to eventually prove to her satisfaction that her ancestor George was indeed a younger brother of my 2x great grandfather John Pincombe. Now atDNA results have given that the extra proof that is always interesting and what attracted me to family studies in the first place along with my cousin George DeKay's desire that I write a Profile for the Pincombe family for the Westminster Delaware History book that he was editing. More than a desire as it involved a bit of arm twisting on his part to get me to do it. Genealogy was at the bottom of my ideas of how to spend my time personally. 

The Bible Reading today was rather interesting and I sort of saw it in a different way today. When we received the gift of the Holy Spirit it did give to the Christian community this peace that passeth all understanding when one reads the historical facts of the growth of Christianity in the then Roman Empire. Christianity survived the downfall of the Roman Empire and flourished and is still the dominant religion in the world today with Islam a fast growing second religion of the world. Both are based on a belief in God and the omnipotence of God in the world. The two largest religions Christianity and Islam represent almost 5 billion people worldwide. Judaism also believes in the same God of Abraham and Isaac although their numbers were considerably reduced by the Nazis in the Second World War (an estimated 6 million Jewish people were murdered). There are a number of other religions of whom my knowledge is very limited numbering over 2 billion and those professing no religion number around 1 billion.  But the Bible Reading from John 14: 15-31 is an interesting one.

On to the day and breakfast first.



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