Two Newsletters

I do have two newsletters to write - H11 Newsletter and Kipp-Kipp Newsletter. They are both looking only at the DNA groups within the FT DNA study. I shall work away at them today. I always mean to do them as I used to a couple of days before the due date but writing books has distracted me from this task the last year or so.  In the case of the Kipp Newsletter I really do not know this family (it is my husband's family) and feel somewhat in left field working on it although I always did write a portion for Edward on the yDNA study that he managed at FT DNA. I took it over until someone does come forward to take it on. 

The basement completely cleaned yesterday and today it is the main floor and soon will begin that process. I also worked on the matches and I am about 1/3rd of the way through at this point I think. A new Rawlings/Cotterill match where the testing was at 23 and Me so a nice list of Relatives in common in this last batch. An interesting find in that the  Farley family does appear to have a Knight connection. This actually would be a step forward in solving one of my largest matches outside of family so we will see how that flows.  David Farley (son of John Farley and Mary (Yeates) Farley) married Mary Ann Blake (daughter of John Blake and Ann (Farmer) Blake) 12 Jun 1853 at Upper Clatford, Hampshire. Two known Blake matches were very handy as well. Today will see me working on the J's and there is a long list of them. I hope to complete Chromosome 2 this week and perhaps into Chromosome 1 which has over 250 matches and will take a good week or two to accomplish but then complete and I can start to use the file in ways that should give me interesting tables to explore with regard to the four great grandparents being noted in this particular rendition of the phasing as they match these five siblings tested (five tested out of three girls and four boys) of the great grandparents. I find I talk more about my brothers but they were all closer in age to me than my sisters (one sister is six years older and another sister is eight years younger). Just one brother is outside of that closeness to me as he is ten years younger. My prayers are very much with my older sister who had to have surgery lately and for a speedy recovery for her. 

I do feel a great desire to get back to writing the books Blake and Pincombe these days and a bit impatient to have that begin. But it is a process and will involve my transcribing the latin documents that I have at hand with regard to this Blake family way back in time. I feel I can progress from Robert Blake who left his will in 1521 living at Enham and will begin there initially. If I can take it back further I will but time will tell me that as I work through the material. With regard to the Pincombe book (which is really Pencombe as that was their surname when they arrived at North Molton it does appear) I can begin with John Pencombe who is on the Tax rolls and work my way forward but there to I have information on the Pencombe family of Pencombe Herefordshire which can be added in once I have transcribed the documents at hand. In this case I am working on a family that probably came from the modern Belgium area of the Continent perhaps in the early 1100s as there are records back that far. I  shall have to have a look at the archives there to see if there is anything. But the yDNA line points to a European line and not a Western Hunter Gatherer as is the case with my Blake line. 

But also I want to start scheduling myself to work on the index of the photo albums and to start collecting matches using Edward's present charts and the Excel files that I gave to him as I downloaded his matches from Ancestry. I need to see if any of them are on Gedmatch. Unfortunately collecting from 23 and Me did not happen in his case although he has many many excellent matches there. I may try writing to people to see if I can acquire the matching lengths to help with phasing his grandparents as it might interest people to have that information as well that are his 2nd cousins since they share great grandparents. For the other testing companies I have that material at hand and can search for those matches. It is a long shot for sure but I think it does make me feel happier about breaking up this set of fourty albums that covered all of his life really but they are all scanned. The early pictures I scanned for him maybe six months before he passed away and he found that to be something very pleasant to look at as he organized them in an online type of photo album so thinking about that does make me think he would like what I am doing. He and I belong to the generation that viewed everything in place not online. But this generation that will receive the photo albums  will view it online by preference. But perhaps in the future there will be a child who wants to see those original pictures in their binders; no one can know that. 

Vanilla tea all drank; a gift of my daughter, and now solitaire puzzles and then breakfast and the cleaning. I am a bit late today.  

 

  

 

Jasper following the fire

 The Prime Minister certainly has his fingers in many activities (managing the restoration and recovery of Jasper) he is quite amazing although he definitely works with his cabinet; with the other appointees not in the Cabinet and all of the party to get items done. I find him quite fascinating but then he has worked all of his life and brought to the government those skills and knowledge that he has gleaned during that lifetime of work on two continents since his work in the British Isles placed him right there in the midst of the EU and British Isles. 

I think as I listen and watch that he is a doer like the Parliamentarians of our early days when we took on huge commitments and tasks and completed them making us the country that we are now. But it is all the people pulling together to make us great that will help this to happen. When Rupert's Land was purchased the idea was to grow Canada and we did but it was always meant to be all of us (and then Newfoundland joined and added in their gifts) and the projected railroad was going to help with that and has. But the idea that so few would bring themselves to buy such a huge purchase and commit themselves to making this entire country work for all of us is really the secret of those times.

Although we enjoyed free trade with our neighbours to the south and north-west (USA (including Alaska) and Mexico) it did reduce our native industries making us dependent on other sources for so many of our say electrical appliances. Now the opportunity is there for our young people to create and rebuild that lost base of industry to support us as we move forward (it will help to replace the car industries although time may also replace those as the government of Canada has been busy). 

Sitting at a desk is not really the best for our young people - they need to be out and active and working with their minds and their bodies to remake some of those lost industries. It is true that you might train for something and end up doing another where my husband is a very good example as he trained to be a Scientist (PhD Chemistry) and then he did a Postdoc in Chemical Engineering for two years. Still no jobs and he did yet another skill he did his Masters in Library Science and was a Technical Librarian for the remainder of his working life. So do not let what your dreams were impede you from doing great work. The possibilities of having an interesting life are always there. 

The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition working together can do great things for Canada. Decision times can come when they need to come but in the meantime making us Tariff Proof is the most important item on the agenda. Increasing trade between the provinces and territories so very very important (apparently could be as much as 7% GDP over time). 

My shopping takes me twice as long as I read all the labels. Mind you I only buy food and maintain a place to live but I mostly buy basic ingredients just because I prefer to make all my own food from scratch. I do not buy packaged or frozen dinners. I do buy some frozen certainly - our wonderful summer vegetables which tide us through to the next summer so beautifully. But not all of them are frozen some of them stored like turnips, carrots, winter cabbages, brussel sprouts, and then there are the greenhouses now that bring us fresh vegetables all winter long. 

 

The value in working on the great grandparents.

 Really all that I will be doing is taking the set of phased grandparent chromosomes and labeling say the Blake portion subdividing it so to speak and showing where the Knight area is and where the Blake area is  - it will not really resemble the chromosome that a great grandparent  actually has. That would require my knowing a lot more about the matches of my cousins than how they match me. But it is interesting to see the area broken down into eight great grandparents. Worked on the 2nd chromosome yesterday and it did go fairly quickly through about the first 1/5th of the matches thus far simply because I have so many known cousin matches. 

The Sermon at Church was very interesting actually. He is a very knowledgeable speaker and quickly comes up with lots of linking comments on the early Christian Church since that is his specialty. I quite enjoyed the United Church Minister's sermons at Dominion Chalmers years ago and in the mid to late 90s until he retired. Edward spotted it in our bulletin at Orleans and we went to Dominion Chalmers just for the series but ended up staying there until that minister retired. He used to talk to Edward just for a few minutes after every service and following the death of his brother and then mother he really wanted that little chat each week.  The new minister was young and into a more folksy less old music service and /Edward asked if I wanted to go regularly to my own Church so we picked the Cathedral with its beautiful organ and wonderful choirs and went there and I still do except online. I do like to give God my 10% as He instructed and so the Sunday was a lovely day as always. God gave it to us as a day of rest and worship. 

Cleaning day today and it is the basement. I shall soon begin with the robot vacuuming the rug. No rush. My hour of exercise is complete and just breakfast to have whilst the robot cleans. 

There will be time to work on Chromosome 2 and that will fit into the day of cleaning the basement as well. Just having a break and working on the matches and on this chromosome I have a known match with a 5th cousin Rawlins but she descends from one of the older Cotterill lines as well along with some other similar matches. What I can not readily determine is the division here between Rawlins and Cottrell in their lines. I think this is the only chromosome where I have that difficulty although will search it out. I am matching because they are Rawlins or because they are Cotterill/Cottrell? That is the question but it isn't that long a match and they do follow each other sequentially so certainly possible but would I get a good match that is the question because it is a number of generations back. It is a problem that I may not be able to solve! The ancestor of these two lines does appear to be a William Cotterel with two sons Stephen and William with Stephen marrying Mary Rawlins 28 Jan 1764 at Enford, Wiltshire a daughter of my 5x great grandparents William Rawlins and Mary Ford. William Cotterell married Elizabeth Kempton 3 May 1760 at Wilsford nr Pewsey, Wiltshire. An interesting conundrum for sure. It doesn't even help me that there is a good X chromosome match for Rawlins since DNA divides as it divides so some of it will be Rawlins/Rawlings and some of it will be Cotterell/Cotterill depending on your descent. I  mull this around since technically I would not inherit Cotterell from these earlier marriages since they are not in my line coming down from William Rawlins and Mary Ford. So am I seeing actual Cotterill in this match where my newer infusion of Cotterill is matching this older Cotterill/Cotterell  or is it simply Rawlings/Rawlins. I am particularly cognizant of the match with my known 5th cousin who does have Cotterell/Cotterill in her lines going back including both of the marriages Mary Rawlins with Stephen Cotterel and later William Rawlins and Mary Cottrell by 1842 (marriage not yet located by me and it may have been in Australia as all their children were born there commencing 22 Jun 1842 so she is looking at her 3x great grandparents in this case so how large a match would I anticipate - 16 cM does seem reasonable but we will see what I garner. I have a number of known matches in this instance in terms of how they descend from this couple William Rawlins and Mary Cottrell in Australia. 

Drinking tea and time to do the solitaire puzzles and I did accomplish that. Time to get some work done. 

 

Chromosome 3 completed

 A whirlwind day and the completion of Chromosome 3 made it a successful day. Plus I realized that I had finally thought through a methodology that would work for the photo albums. I will work with the indexes and create a full index of all the family photos and then create the photo books. The hard copy pictures that are not in the photo albums (7 or 8) will be shredded. That will be thousands of pictures I think. There are so many but remaining is a fully scanned set of pictures by date that fits into the indexes and the original slides prior to the digital cameras. It does sound much easier for me to take on except the eye work will be heavy but I can work away at that in batches not quite so long as working on the photo albums which are more of a physical work job plus mental it would appear. 

So today I begin Chromosome 2 and it has 116 matches with 20 known cousins. These cousins relate to my great grandparent lines with two Rawlings,  four Buller, four Pincombe, two Gray, four Knight and four Blake. I do not have any known Cotterill or Taylor lines. The spread is excellent across the chromosome with just a few breaks where it is unknown. That doesn't mean it will be fast because I will be downloading Relatives in common, Matches shared etc depending on the nomenclature of the various databases. 

I am deciding when I will begin the extraction of Edward's matches from the various databases using the same methodology as I have used. I did collect more information which at the time seemed superfluous but in the long run was a good idea. It will be a large task although I already extracted them into a list for Edward which I can use as a reference point to aid me along the path. 

 Sunday again and it is hard to believe how fast the weeks pass. I have my chicken all ready to make my chicken stew and that sounds delicious. Generally I eat chicken for four days and then fish or eggs for three days. It works well and my expenditure of time on planning meals is very short. My grocery list is ready for the next trip to the store but I want to scrub my refrigerator first this time. I like to clean it in the winter when it is less full. Although I wipe any spills when they happen generally but getting out the shelves and drawers really lets me give it a good cleaning. 

Church later this morning and I do enjoy going to Church very much online. I wonder sometimes if I ever will go back to in house worship and time will tell. We are meant to gather as Christians in our Churches and celebrate the gifts of God. It is  my constant omission for quite a while now (since before COVID for sure). Edward loved the music of the choirs and the organ at my Church although he did prefer his own United Church but certainly the draw of the music and the organ was very strong for him. 

Parliament back in and will watch Question Period next week. It is a time of hard work here in Canada as we work to make ourselves Tariff Proof. It is coming along but lots more to do. We need good jobs for our young people and I am hoping that they leap into creating new companies within Canada to make items like vacuum cleaners and other small appliances that we no longer make here. There are lots of new ideas on how to create and make things and it is the youth that will do that. What they see on their video games they need to now create in real life. They can do it; they are clever and well educated - creative thinking is what is needed to create items that exist digitally but give them that extra creativity to make them better, quieter, more efficient and Canadian. Go Canada Go. 

Drinking my tea and solitaire puzzles are next to wake up the brain.  

Supporting the government

I am always one for supporting the government that won the election; the people do get to choose. I continue to support the methodology of our Prime Minister. I may not always agree with him but as an working economist he has the knowledge and the experience to convert us from an economy dependent on the current trade deal to standing tall and strong on the world stage with many deals including a deal with our friends and neighbours to the south if that is their desire (United States and Mexico). Cutting the GST from 7% to 5% (over time) which was done by past Prime Minister Harper was a very economically unsound move because it funded the government. That was the intention of the GST; the GST was a wealth tax because so many items are excluded that are necessities and so those less fortunate pay considerably less GST over a year (the only people who really benefited were the wealthy). Not long after PM Harper brought in his first government the Stock Market in New York crashed in 2008 and we never recovered within his governance and still we have not yet recovered (as it turned out the era under PM Trudeau was also not productive for Canada although five years of it were COVID influenced) but we are on our way. Balancing the budget by selling off Canadian items to the Americans is not good business practice (the items were making money for Canada - short term money is not worth while in the long run). The budget will balance it will just take time; re-tuning business always take time but we have lots of it for sure. Ontario for the first time with the federal governance of PM Harper was a have not province under his leadership because he only saw oil as an economy for Canada and did not support the industries in Ontario sufficiently. I would rather Pierre Poilievre does not follow his ideas. There are economies all over this country that need to be built up/created in order to make ourselves more self-sufficient. I am a conservative first and foremost but like many I did not support PM Harper in 2015 (that support for the Liberals did not last long as I have always hated the tendency of liberals to toss money at it but I will say this government has been thorough and thoughtful in this process of making us trade independent). I realize that a Stock Market crash such as occurred in 2008 was a cruel twist in an otherwise productive government but one must accept and move forward in a way that benefits all of the country.  We are a hard working productive people (I call that fighting people but I did grow up with four brothers (three of whom were my best friends as a child and the fourth was ten years younger and only ten when I married so that opportunity was missed)) who do well and in our history we built a railroad across a nation having purchased Rupert's Land and became a joined country from ocean to ocean to ocean and then we built the St Lawrence Seaway. All of this on our own - go Canada go. I was pleased to hear Pierre Poilievre say that he would work with the Prime Minister in parliament. Of course he is going to bring up opposing points (we expect no less) but working together is important at this time in our history. That is life. Non support of the government at this time and causing an election will be punished at the polls. 

Chromosome 3 has just under 30 matches left to do and hopefully I will complete that today. Still I could not work on the photo albums. I will have to work hard to get into that I think. It isn't lack of interest but rather it seems like a lot of work for something that is all scanned and filed by time period. The indexes though include everything so again it would be a lot of eye work for me and I can only do so much although my eyes are stronger than a year ago. What I really need to do is to create an electronic file that only contains the family items and then construct the photo albums. It is maybe the better way for me as I contemplate that. It is a massive task really looking at it. One needs to be on a desert island somewhere without internet and just doing that I suspect. In the  meantime I continue to contemplate the process that I will use to phase Edward's grandparents. I know it is a project that was dear to his heart but without any close family (daughter tested) or first cousins tested (he does have a couple of half first cousins though that will be helpful) for autosomal DNA it will be problematic for sure. 

Mostly the matches did all get corrected in terms of grandparent when I went through them for the re-phasing of the grandparents but the occasional item needed to be updated. Separating out Taylor and Cotterill have proven to be the commonest work that I will use the AI to help me with. For the others the matches have been extremely helpful. I still need to check the databases and see if there is anything new that would be interesting. 

Tea all drank and time to do the solitaire puzzles.