Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Cleaning accomplished and working on Andover history

 Cleaning all accomplished for the basement and today it is the main floor and the top floor so not a lot of work going to happen on the Pencombe book today. 

I have been sending my Siderfin Book revision to various repositories and it is up on the Guild of one-name Studies site (visible to members only) as well as my website and the blog. I will keep sending it in to repositories but it likely, if accepted as an online item, takes a while to have it online. Perhaps someone will take up the Siderfin one-name Study once again. Time does not permit me to do that at the moment and being a 3x great grandparent I do not see that happening for quite a while.

I often think about Edward telling me that Gordon Riddle had asked him to go to the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch meeting way back in the early 1980s. He was quite pleased and likely he did not know it existed before he asked him. I would never have dreamed that Edward would become so taken with that and devote eventually most of his spare time to it. I think that Gordon was perhaps going there at the time (I did see a copy of one of his genealogy articles in the library there) and they did go together for a while (no idea how long, life was busy as I was working on various items, then had a small baby plus my eight year old, and was volunteer secretary at Edward's Orleans United Church plus helping him with Edward's Treasurer duties there, I helped one day a week at school teaching Remedial English to French Immersion students (they were mostly boys around ten years old I think, they did very well over the three months that I worked with them)). So remembering precisely when they went and how long is dicey. But they used to have long chats after downstairs as they went through all of Edward's stuff on the Kipp family. I see that Gordon's paper online mentions the Kipp family which was how I came across it. Edward had a couple of strong aims in his life when I first knew him: he wanted to be a scientist, he wanted to be like his father who had been very active in his Church as an Elder and Treasurer, he wanted to be a father, he wanted to sing in the Choir and he wanted to trace his Kipp family lines (his mother asked him to trace her side as well). Edward did like going to all these things - Choir Practice at Orleans United, the Ontario Genealogical Society (now Ontario Ancestors), the United Empire Loyalist Association and then his French classes twice a week. My when I write it all down I wonder if he was ever here in the evenings! He actually read stories most days to the girls after dinner which they loved. He was very sociable (at least I thought so but probably I am not the best judge of people being sociable!) and he always knew I wasn't and was happier just staying home with my interesting books or scientific articles or knitting or sewing. I think people are happier if they are doing the things that they like (and I always supported him doing the things that he liked).  I still find it strange that I am so busy writing all of these Surname Books now. Never would have dreamed that I would do that. But I am sure my grandfather and mother are very pleased as it was what they both wanted to do but did not have time to do so.

Yesterday was quite successful working on Andover as I read through archaeology papers and reviewed the Norman period in that area. There are a lot of sites actually and a number of papers viewable these days. I discovered that the Roman village of Leucomagus was 3.2 km NNE of the present day town centre of Andover and that would place it at the far side of Knights Enham and interestingly enough on the land that belonged to Eastanton Manor Farm as well as on the east side of A343 (Newbury Road between Viking Way and Smannel Road). I think that Eastanton Manor Farm is Eastontown  where William Blake lived in the mid 1540s on and dated his will there in 1582. Some interesting material on line mentioning William's father Nicholas (left his will when he was located at Old Hall, Enham in 1547). It is mentioned that Nicholas farmed the Lammas Lands in the Enham area. Lammas Lands I discovered were owned by the hereditary Burgess from Candlemas (2 Feb) to Lammas Day (1 Aug) and used for growing various foodstuff. The fences were removed after the 1st of August and the land was used for anyone in the area to pasture their animals. 

There are a number of archaeological sites (mostly burials during the Anglo-Saxon times) that are known as well in this area. 

I will continue my push back before the Roman times if I am able. But it does appear that there was not a village called Andover until later after the Romans left. 

Latin Lessons finished for the morning; likely another session later in the day, drinking my tea and enjoying a fresh new day. Robert Blake's will (1521) is in Latin and perhaps next weekend I will re-transcribe it just to see if I made any mistakes with my rudimentary latin of a few years ago. I intend to keep the Latin training up whilst I am working away on these books as many of the records I wish to look at are in Latin. I also want to take the French lessons on duolingo (I did take French at High School and University (had to take one course to finish my degree) along with German at University (offered to Honours Science students as Scientific German)) in the Fall in preparation for returning to the families of my son-in-law who were very early to New France or Quebec as it is called. I would like to re find my spoken French and improve on it plus it makes it easier to look at the documents in French to review that. When one contemplates the early settlers coming to North America they were lucky to be greeted warmly by the First Peoples. Certainly the French colonials had a lot of help from them and many many French Canadian families have First Nations peoples in their trees. I think it must be rather exciting to know that you have family lines that reach far back into the early history of peoples on this continent and on the continent that you left. I will be forever English in heritage but Canadian in citizenship but I am proud of my ancestors too.

Discovering that there is one match in the public view for the yDNA of this English Blake line from which I descend that is Irish is amazing really. Since my brother was probably around ten and I around seven when Grandpa saw the book about the Irish Blake family (and this was likely the Richard Caddell family of Galway that took the name Blake since the Blake family in the mid 1800s in London, Ontario was descendant of that family (our line did not arrive until 1913)) I think he probably said this was not our Blake line which it is not. But I am beginning to wonder if we are both remembering that he said he was of the Andover, Hampshire, England area and also an Irish background. I saw the emphasis on Andover but I was pretty young and he being older noted that he said both. We certainly had some interesting conversations about yDNA as well as the atDNA and mtDNA. He loved hearing about it and I do miss him still. I bought him a tablet so that he could see more of the results that I was sending to him. Time will tell if that interesting person, Richard Blake, who arrived in Salisbury in the 1420s came on to the Andover area and named his son Robert. Robert did name his son Richard as mentioned in his will along with his other sons Thomas, Andrew and William although I want to re-read the will to see if all three of these were sons - Thomas definitely was. I think I live far in the past in my mind although definitely do know what is happening in the present. Chromo2 though does find fifteen matches including my brother in their anonymized database - so there are others like him from or in the British Isles. Chromo2 was a pricey test but well worth it with 15,000 SNPS tested.

Breakfast and hungry as usual. I made Chicken Stew and have had that for two days and two more days to go. It does make such a huge pot and I like not having to cook every day. Edward loved to cook as he discovered when I went back to work outside the home. I was the last one home and he just took that on organizing the girls to help him and they did the grocery shopping. It was lovely. I just meandered through life working away those last twelve years and not really talking to anyone outside of the house except people at work and at the meetings that Edward took me too although I did avoid that. I do find dealing with people to be a nightmare most times. But not always! Prayers for the Jewish people and prayers for the Ukrainian people; prayers that the Palestinian people eliminate Hamas from their presence and stop trying to annihilate the Jewish people (for all of my life's memory that has been the case; Palestinians killing Jews; it must stop). The Jewish people have the right to defend themselves. Release the Hostages Hamas and get out of Gaza. Hamas has caused the death of 25 thousand plus Palestinian people in Gaza at this time and more than a thousand in Israel.

 

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