H11 Newsletter is a complete redo of the site

 It will take me a while to do the H11 Newsletter as the mitogroups will necessitate a complete rework of the site. I am in the process of looking at that. The Kipp Newsletter only deals with the yDNA groups and will also have a look at that but again I am moving away from working on Kipp since I do not know the family and perhaps someone in the group will come forward and become involved. We will see how that goes; I will mention it in the next Newsletter.

Cleaning was slow as I decided to download my TurboTax which took me a bit to accomplish but everything  is working very very well. I do like using Turbo Tax to do my Income Tax. It is an American product but it will be difficult for me to change that unless I just do it. We will see in the future but this year it is TurboTax once again.

Cleaning completed although it was a dragged out session today as I kept on checking in on a couple of items.  That completes cleaning for the week except little everyday things. 

I did absolutely nothing on the matches as I decided to work on the Newsletters and will likely do that to a large extent today. Reworking the H11 viewing chart will be a large task with  517 members although some are only Family Finder and did not test their mitochondrial DNA at FT DNA (I am assuming that they did test it elsewhere which is why they are on the H11 site!). 

I will start out though with the matches as I am now down to  43 left to do (my guess of 40 was pretty close). Then there is just Chromosome 1 to add to the flat file and I am looking forward to that. This was a huge task as it turned out but I have now really looked at all of those matches after many years of not opening some of the files or just a brief glimpse. 

The bright sun out this morning does tell me that cold weather is coming since the clouds are not very prominent but then we are promised the Polar Vortex for a few days and it is  minus 16 degrees celsius at 7:44 a.m. EST. This is normal weather for us although we have had a mild winter or two in the last couple of years but a return to normal winter for Canada. Definitely we need all that snow to build up the water reserves on the land. 

The new consulate is being opening in Nuuk Greenland today by the Governor General. It is a nice feeling to realize that our Governor General is Inuit just as the people of Greenland have Inuit heritage. Long ago the Inuit people traveled across the Northern Pacific (estimated 5000 plus years ago) in some fashion we are still learning about that (our simple thought of an ice land bridge across the Bering Strait is being replaced by a very reasonable thought that the peoples moving across would have stayed close to the shore or on it but not necessarily go all the way north to the Bering Strait given that the winter would have provided lots of ice covered areas for travel. Our Inuit are very used to traveling about in Northern Canada during the winter and have built homes of ice for many thousands of years at stopping points. 

It is fascinating what DNA reveals to us about our heritage. I continue to marvel that my paternal grandfather talking about his family and saying they always lived in the Andover, Hampshire, England area (he always specified it like that as I was young and he wanted me to understand that this was a different place on this planet of ours). I am glad he did that and repeated it so many times (I loved to hear him talk and he could have said it every day and I would  have listened just as eagerly as I did as I loved being with him). But I am distracted my point in bringing up my grandfather was that the yDNA of our line is Western Hunter Gatherer and the particular haplogroup belongs to a lineage named the "Deer-Hunters" by Ethnoancestry. I tested my brother everywhere I could as he was so willing that I do so and the second brother I tested when he was willing just to have the two samples in the system. The Western Hunter Gatherers were said to be in England 8,000 to 12,000 years ago but I always wonder if they were there before the Ice Age and simply returned to the lands of their ancestors. The proof may lie way below the surface as there was a kilometre of ice on the British Isles at the height of the Ice Age.  

Tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles for the day. I was also doing a weekly challenge with Spider but had to give it up when my eyes discovered sparkling and it still overwhelms somewhat and tires them so I have stopped for a bit (I have done them every since that project was added to the site so do miss it on occasion but replaced with Sudoku) but perhaps I will return one day as I love doing Spider Solitaire Puzzles. The Sudoku has these levels gained as you are given points and I am now at Super Star having passed through a number of levels over the past couple of months. I take my time as I aim to have no errors and it is fun I must admit. 

 

 

Updating exercise routine

 I updated my morning exercise routine over the last couple of months bringing together the two sets of exercises and doing them first thing on awaking. Working very well and amounts to 1 hour of exercise around 400 to 450 calories with a cardio load of 45 to 50. It was my daughter who inspired me actually to take on some exercises I never considered or even thought about. So it is 23 stages in total and the first nine stages are waking up and stretching and then a couple of YOGA type exercises and then I get up and touch my toes 30 times and at that point I add in 200 steps after each exercise set. I was having trouble with my shoulder aching which I just always attribute to my arthritis but she suggested that I might not be working the shoulder enough. There you go so I added in my exercises from the period when I was in physio after I tore my rotator cup. So another four sets of exercises which follow a walk of 200 steps and are ended by a walk of 200 steps. Then Reverse Warrior count of 30 on each side, a 200 step walk, then 40 squats, a 200 step walk and on to the Pose of Tranquility for two minutes and a 200 step walk. Then a new one that she had found is to sweep one foot in a circular motion forward and then back with the other foot firmly on the floor. This took a bit to accomplish but I discovered that when I really got the hang of it and doing it 30 times each way on each leg I didn't fall down skiing anymore. So a real bonus there. Then the 200 steps and I balance first on one foot and then on the other for 60 seconds and follow that with 200 steps. Then into the full plank for 1 and one half minutes followed by 200 steps and then a full squat as far down as I can go and hold it for 60 seconds with hands upward praying above your head but in front to keep the back straight (I think that is another yoga pose actually). That one is really hard and it took a while to get up to 60 seconds. Then walk 200 steps and do 100 jumping jacks followed by a 200 step walk. So that combined all of my exercises from the two sessions into one and then I have a snack and sit in front of the computer and write my blog, drink my tea and do my solitaire puzzles to exercise the brain. I do not recommend this all at once. It has taken me three months to combine my two sets of exercises and to add in the new exercises. I am very physically fit for sure but I always start small and work my way up that way you will not injure yourself. Consulting a doctor is always a good plan if you do not do regular exercise. 

My new FitBit is in tune with me now and I am happy with it. Has some new bells and whistles so to speak and a learning curve. The old FitBit was actually four years old and did very well. I have used a FitBit now for ten years I think although would have to check that. These ten years have been very different for me.  

 I accomplished nothing on the Newsletters yesterday but had a good day working on the matches. I must do the Newsletters they are past due now. I am up to the M's (first name) now in the matches and I have been busy collecting the Relatives in common for quite a few of the samples. AI will do a good job of creating a useful table for me to work with these matches. There are about 50 matches left to do or perhaps less I did not count them just estimated. There are still nine cousins known to me not yet added to the chart so that may affect some of the unknown matches with regard to solving the great grandparent. 

Just minus 10 degrees celsius today but another polar vortex is headed our way so February will be cold for a bit but the gradual movement upward to spring and heavier snows is likely coming our way. We will see. All of this snow is a good thing to fill up the reservoirs, the creeks, the rivers and the lakes. The run off will be horrific though if it is sudden so hoping for gradual and slow run off. 

Cleaning Day three and it is the top floor. Although I would very much like to move to a smaller house I do not see that happening in the near future. We have been here for nearly fifty years now; in the early spring it will be  fourty eight years exactly. The first set of houses was all that was here when we came and you could see the Ottawa River from our upstairs windows. Neighbours have come and gone through the years and when I went back to work outside the home (I proofread and copyedited for about fifteen years at home) in 1994 that was really the last time that I knew the neighbours beyond the houses beside me (although I do have this sort of occasional wave at neighbours as many of them are the same people) as I went off to work early and came home late and all my time went to my children and husband. Working away from home was great; I needed the change for my mental health for sure and I gradually slipped away from any and all volunteer activities. There just wasn't time although my husband regularly volunteered me to do items in his volunteer work. But now all that time is devoted to writing these books and keeping up my newsletters. 

Tea being drank and must do the solitaire puzzles. On to the day.  

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.