Ancestry update on ethnicity

 Once again Ancestry has updated their ethnicity estimates especially within the British Isles. I had selected one set of data as put forward as my father and one set as my mother. They are correct. My mother has ancestry in southwestern Ontario and my father's ancestry totally in Hampshire and area although some interesting additions here and there. So you see my father's journeys all being in England plus coming to Canada as a nine year old with his parents in 1913 whereas my mother's journeys are all in southwestern Ontario. The percentages though struck me as not what I might have anticipated but I have four tests on Ancestry and need to build a table with all the results and look at them in that sort of frame of mind. For instance I inherited little Pincombe lots of Gray and others inherited lots of Pincombe and little Gray as it turned out. Again I inherited heavily from Rawlings and less Blake where the others did inherit heavily from Blake and less Rawlings. That is why I am different although percentage wise I am very like my next youngest brother; very unlike my next oldest brother and similar to my two sisters, one eight years younger and one six years older. The other two brothers have not tested (one died in 1999 prior to autosomal testing) and the other I have left it all up to him and he just never got to it and really with all the data that I have he shouldn't feel pressured for sure. He is the image of my grandfather and it continues to be the case as he ages except my grandfather was always thin and he is not as thin. But I can see it more and more every time I see him.

So that completely occupied me yesterday when I wasn't at Church (online). Although I do see it somewhat as work I always feel it brings me closer to my family so also see it as a family time. My older sister had a fall and broke her hip and is slowly recovering so prayers being said for her recovery. I continue with working on Sunday although I must admit I do feel a twinge of guilt that it is work but then it is also time spent thinking of loved ones and God would like that. 

We won silver in the playoff Hockey game; the team did well and really looked equally matched and the sudden death overtime goal broke some hearts and cheered other hearts. That is the way with sudden death ends to games! I like the way that Norway runs their Olympic training actually. The interview with someone involved in all of that was most interesting.

But ancestry continued to intrigue me through the day as it will take me quite a while to work my way through the 21 matches. I glean as much as possible especially looking at the matches in common.  

My mind wanders today back to the early years at Edward's United Churh in the late 1970s to 1985. I was volunteer secretary of Edward's Church for a number of years  (he volunteered me )).  I was marking papers at the same time for a professor that I would work with doing my masters and our daughter was all settled into school. Edward was very content at work and he and his cousin Gordon Riddle talked about their mutual Kipp genealogy and Gordon had invited Edward to go with him to the Ottawa Branch meetings of what is now Ontario Ancestors. Although planning to do my Masters all good plans sometimes get changed for excellent reasons. I returned to motherhood instead of doing my masters welcoming our surprise baby when I was 36 nearly 37 and working at home proofreading and copyediting for private printers for about a dozen or more years and finally a secretary was hired to replace my volunteerism for the Church taking that off of my plate as I was very busy. The Riddles  had moved at some point no ideas on that as our directions rarely crossed after we left Orleans United Church in the mid 1990s and never after they left Orleans. We were no longer attending Orleans United Church regularly after 1996 (Edward's brother had passed away and the minister at Dominion Chalmers sensed Edward's need to talk occasionally and that was certainly a drawing card to going there for him every week) as we went to Dominion Chalmers for a couple of years and then to Christ Church Cathedral when the minister at Dominion Chalmers retired (he was excellent; a brilliant early Biblical scholar). Christ Church Cathedral is Anglican but Edward loved the music of the organ and the choirs so was content to be there and as he said to pay me back for going to his church for nearly 20 years. I think he used to go sometimes to special services at Orleans United as I do recall being there also once or twice in the early 2000s. The women's group there used to make up lunches for Gene-O-Rama which they sold to the Ottawa Branch. I was busy in those days working full time. I also took a course at St Paul's University on developing encounter groups for people dealing with mental illnesses - a very interesting experience for me where I learned a great deal about myself having been in just such care many many years earlier (back in 1974). I do not keep in touch with Edward's Church other than donating some money for music in memory of Edward, as he requested, which I do through Canada Helps. Funny how little things pop back into one's memory on occasion. Not sure why I thought about all of that really. 

Cleaning day today and working away on the matches in Ancestry. One  match I actually wrote to in the Blake line - a very small match but it was with a Blake in South Newton, Wiltshire. Corresponding back and forth I learned that his father's line was from Salisbury. That of course brought to mind that interesting arrival in the Emigrants Database 1330 - 1550 with a Richard Blake coming to Salisbury 7 Sep 1441  from Ireland. Presumably these people listed are not British Subjects. I shall continue my correspondence with this individual as his tree begins in 1735 at South Newton where Mary Blake was born as was her son John Blake born in 1781 at South Newton and his son James was born at Salisbury. Looking at it now a little more intently I had not noticed that the original birthplace of the line was South Newton. I tend to think of South Newton as associated with the Calne Blake family. That a small match would occur with an individual that is at least 7th cousin or greater is surprising. He has built a huge tree and I have not yet investigated it for any other possible lines. A glance now shows me an Arnold line and of course my Arnold family was in Dorset to the south of this area. This is a very large family so would not jump to conclusions on that too quickly. I tend to think if there is relationship between the Calne Blake family and the Andover Blake family it is quite distant likely in the 1300s to possibly the 1400s simply because the wills of these two sets of Blake mentioning each other in the 1500s do not state cousinship or even kinship but rather friend which was a term also used by people who had a kinship but was distant and considered not really there as far as I can tell. I can be corrected on that anytime. The amount shared 10 centimorgans across 1 segment. I generally find that the use of TIMBER by Ancestry to remove ethnic related DNA lengths can affect this final length by 0 to as much as  5 or 10 centimorgans. The smaller the amount the smaller the effect I find generally. Perhaps I can persuade him to take his kit into Gedmatch. We will see. But it was very interesting to see. I do know some pieces of DNA that are common can be so stubborn and exist in a line going back quite a ways certainly as far as 10th cousins but this would need to be in the range of 16th to 20th cousins I would think. 

So that was an interesting find. Just realized I didn't finish my blog. 

It is cleaning day and must get back to it. Working a couple of solitaire puzzles as I forgot that as well. 

 

 

 

 

Sunday and another snowfall at minus 7 degrees celsius

 Cloudy and snowing but it is Sunday in God's world here in Canada. The snow falls lightly but consistently as I look out of my workroom window. I love the winter and I think I probably always will. There is something so beautiful looking at the snow covered landscape especially on a Sunday. God's day in the week when we put the tools away and just contemplate what the gifts of God have brought to us through the centuries that man has walked the face of the earth. The world has changed a great deal since my childhood when we saw the news on the newsreel or heard it on the radio although TV was not far away and I watched the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on the television with my grandfather and all  my siblings of course and my parents were in and out doing the work that they needed to do. My grandfather was thrilled as he watched and did not take his eyes off the screen the entire time I do not think. He talked a lot about the traditions and who all the people were; it was a perfect history lesson for sure. I am trying to remember if my grandmother was there but I do not think so actually. The two youngest were not born yet and so it was just the five of us watching this exciting black and white spectacle. The newsreel was more impressive and we did see that later as well. 

Church once again and we are into Lent and a time of contemplation. I did find a Lenten Study online which I will pursue on my own. Usually I join a group but as I age my desire is to be more and more alone unless it is my family of course. I am polite; I even wave if people wave at me but mostly I just want to be alone to contemplate and to write. It is wondrous all this working time as in my entire life I have never had so much time that belonged just to me. There were always items that needed doing and time was this ethereal quantity that I couldn't grab hold of very often. I love evening prayer time especially; time to talk to God and I still repeat the prayers of my childhood as they come back to me. One does need to thank God every day for everything He has given to us. His Ten Commandments told us how He wanted us to live. 

I did complete my review of 23 and Me, My Heritage, FT DNA and now I am working on the Ancestry matches and there are quite a few at 23 cM or more numbering 21 which I am slowly entering into my table that I have kept now almost from the beginning. It has nearly 1100 matches listed for the four siblings with all the details and the MRCA where known. A number of them are on Gedmatch and I need to review Gedmatch but Ancestry must come first. Then Living DNA and my task will be complete in terms of review. Now I need to go back in and get the matches and prepare the files and then enter them into my phased great grandparent file and also work them into the phased grandparent file if they are needed. So still a lot of work ahead to do in that regard. But I am also back to writing the Pincombe Book at the moment and soon the Blake book as well. 

I had an email from a member of the Galway Blake family which I will pass on to the member of our group who manages that particular Blake group (my pace at getting some of these things done is rather slow to be honest but I will do it). There are so many Blake founders that I do not even attempt to keep up with all of them in the present. Should I let the Blake one-name study be more available? I actually have not had any one write to me expressing such an interest so will probably wait for that. I have done a lot of work on the early Blake founding lines in the British Isles. 

Surprisingly I am one of those people whose mental health does better when they are alone. In conversation I will monopolize that conversation and leave it when I find it doesn't feel comfortable to me. I apologize for this tendency but my mental health does better on its own. Fortunately I bear no grudges against anyone and like the Lord's Prayer says:  "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Ever remembering that God said "Revenge is mine" and just move on with my life and live it the way that God commanded. It is important to do that as we can see the consequences of not doing so. 

 Church in a little while and it is in the middle of the Gold Medal Hockey game but I shall go to Church knowing that most of Canada will be glued to their television sets watching along with our wonderful friends and neighbours in the United States. I believe I have had at least six emails this week from different Americans looking for information that Edward may have gathered and I have tried to be as helpful as possible and do generally direct them to his tree online on our website. He did a lot of work that is used by many many people in the United States and Canada. If I forget to do something I do hope people will remind me. 

 Thank you God for another beautiful day on Your world and may I be ever mindful of this gift to us from so long ago now. Prayers that we can mend what we have created that is harming the world. 

 

 

Surprise snowfall overnight

I missed the weather report that said snow and woke up today hearing the laneway being cleared by the company and realizing my black box was not far enough away although it was on the grass next door as I am hoping to get it emptied this week. Went out and moved it and cleaned out the snow and added some more so that it is about 3/4s full now. When the newspaper was delivered we didn't have any problem filling it but that is a long time ago. 

Just the sidewalks to clear and they will be around later to do that. This is southwestern Ontario snow as I call it; moist and great for making snowmen not our usual dry snow that does pack well on a hot sunny day but otherwise is pretty light and devoid of a lot of moisture. The trees all have a dusting of snow and look quite beautiful through the window of my workroom. Winter is lovely; I do love winter the best but a lot of the reason is all that solitude and time to work. Edward did not enjoy the solitude as much as I did and was out and about doing all his projects with me accompanying when he asked. He was so involved in so many things especially when he retired. For him, I think, being retired was sleeping in which he loved to do. That and just all that time to do anything that he wanted to do and his genealogical endeavours paid off big time for him in terms of unknown family to him but so well known to the world - Roger Williams, Hannah (Peak) Bowne, even the Royal Governor of Massachusetts and so many others. 

It was incredible that so much was lost. He found it amazing that I knew all of my ancestral stories but my first ancestor did not arrive here until 1818 and it was Thomas Routledge and his wife Elizabeth (Routledge) Routledge with their eight children, son in law and several grand children. They were joined in 1832 (still proving) by Robert Gray who married their daughter Mary Elizabeth Ann Routledge in 1835 at St Paul's now St Paul's Cathedral in London, Ontario. Unknown to each other but they did come from neighbouring counties sort of (Routledge from Bewcastle, Cumberland and Gray from Holme on the Wolds, East Riding of Yorkshire). Their daughter Grace Gray (my first born Canadian ancestor)  married the next new arrival in my family line namely William Robert Pincombe from Molland, Devon who was one of the children of John Pincombe (Bishops Nympton, Devon) and Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe (Bratton near Minehead, Somerset). The only surviving child of Grace and William Robert was my grandfather John Routledge Pincombe and my second born Canadian ancestor. John married Ellen Rosina (Buller) Pincombe (Birmingham, Warwickshire) who had arrived in Canada in 1908 and their daughter Helen Louise (Pincombe) Blake was my third born Canadian ancestor. My father arrived in 1913 with his parents Samuel George Blake (Upper Clatford, Hampshire) and Edith Bessie (Taylor) Blake  (Kimpton, Hampshire, aka Ada Bessie Cotteril (Rawlings) Blake). So I am fourth generation Canadian on my mother's side and first generation Canadian on my father's side. Since I was born before 1 Jan 1947 I was initially a British Subject but grandfathered to Canadian Citizen as I was born here in Ontario, Canada and hence forever more a Canadian citizen no longer a British Subject. I did find that fascinating as a child. Probably many times a year as a child those emigration stories were talked about and all the names were familiar to me. 

But life was different for Edward's families in those days in the 1600s/1700s and a lot of time was just spent surviving I suspect so that the stories simply did not pass down through the families. Well educated many of Edward's ancestors were but they had to turn to the plow to grow food for their very existence and that was hard tiring work so that at the end of the day there just perhaps wasn't time to talk about life as it had been. The Dissenters paid a huge price for their dissent for sure but the gain was huge and my husband would have been celebrated by his ancestors I am sure as he made the kind of accomplishments made generations earlier by his ancestors in learning. His first ancestors arrived from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam now New York in the early 1600s so his first footpaths on this Western Hemisphere were his Dutch and French (Huguenot - it appears that dissenters attract each other) ancestors followed quickly by his German (Palatines and in a way they too were dissenters) and Swedish ancestors with his small number in actual fact of English ancestors (all dissenters initially) arriving between the 1630s and the 1660s primarily and to Massachusetts for the most part. Edward certainly had his own opinions and the genes were definitely there for that. 

A trip down memory lane does work very well to get the brain moving in the morning. It reminds me why I am doing all of this work - my mother wanted to write a book about her Pincombe family and my grandfather a book about his Blake family and so here I am in 2026 writing the books. My memory serves me well very often and both of these individuals (my mother and my paternal grandfather) repeated themselves many many times. In a family of seven children that is not surprising that repetition would be a pretty constant item on the menu. 

For myself I look back and I think why would they choose only Pincombe or Blake and of course it was the name that they were born with and so their thoughts centered on that surname. My mother also remembered the surnames of her grandparents and great grandparents but also included in that mass of data were family lore which I still investigate when paperwork becomes available that I have not seen but family lore does not always lead you to the correct place but then these stories were repeated to her and sometimes the repetition doesn't always follow exactly the same line of thought I have discovered. The intent though is interesting and I do like to not miss any possible leads when I am missing information. So I search those brain cells of mine for any tidbits that sit there dormant for sixty or seventy years or more and pull them out and look at them. I have a very lucky memory it appears as just little bits of conversation (tagged in a way by the manner in which my brain works where particular words cause a flood of memory). Yesterday I started writing once again in the Pincombe book and will continue with that today along with working on my lovely new file as I input the new information, if I do as I am being very selective. Mostly I am looking for anything that could upset the apple cart which is important for me to find that now rather than later!

Tea all drank and time to do the solitaire puzzles to really wake up that brain. The laneway is cleared and now the snow shovellers have come and gone and the path out is clear once again although I am not going anywhere. It is Saturday and I prefer not to be on the roads on the weekend. I stick to school times for my outings as there is very little traffic especially walking traffic!

 

 

Silver in Women's Hockey is beautiful; we won it

I am thrilled that we won silver; our whole Olympic Team is doing great. I actually hate it when people act as if it is a loss. We gained a silver on the score board. That's it. Gold is always nice but silver is not a failure; I do dislike the way people see the Olympics as a win or loss - it is an achievement just to be there. Congratulations to all. 

I have always loved the Olympics until it became another TV show like a soap opera. Its a game some are won some are lost but it is being played by humans and these things just happen. Cheers for all the members of the team; you are doing great. Wanting to get a medal is great; wondrous and good for the mental health. Getting a medal is more a feature of how life flows sometimes. I thought it was interesting when a comment was made about one member of the Canadian team whose parents had both been in the Olympics. It is just such a wonderful accomplishment to put all that time in your life into being at one  Olympic game or two maybe or more - the parents are certainly the drivers in that for sure because they get them to the practice and they are there cheering them constantly at every event and the players learn rules of life. 

Myself I have just always loved running but I did not want to be part of stop watches or controlling how I ran or any of that. I just love to run and it is unlikely that I am of that type of runner anyway. So these are special people prepared to put up with coaches who just want you to win for sure and sometimes not achieving what you really wanted. 

I did complete all the matches and moved on to looking at the newest matches in the databases. There are not a lot as I have become much pickier. My interest is not fading in DNA just do not want to continue a lifestyle where I am constantly collecting data that is borderline or difficult to prove or appears to be somewhat strange. Other than that I will continue to look but my cause moves forward and I will be back to writing shortly. I have already developed in my mind the next chapter of the Pincombe book and then the genealogical chart will begin and indeed I already have a beginning of that in my Legacy file. This book will be published as written because all of the data that I need I have; just have to transcribe some of it out of Latin. A slow process but actually a quite enjoyable one surprisingly. I do so like a challenge and latin is certainly a challenge especially because it was written in some cases 800 plus years ago. It will be published under a Creative Common License as  the Siderfin books were and are free on my website. 

Another work day and shall see how much I accomplish. My new file is set up to work with the great grandparent data and that will begin shortly. We will see what AI can do for my file. I am starting to create the scenarios that I want to look at.  

Drinking my tea and time to move on to the solitaire puzzles.  

Is there change in the air?

 Moving to a new stage of my old age as I pass some management on to those better able to do that. the youth of our country is innovative and resourceful and now to really move ahead they need to look at the jobs that are to come and train for them so that they are ready when the jobs appear. AI will come soon enough especially to a country like Canada because we have what AI needs - vast amounts of available electricity, ability to create the infrastructure to contain such intelligence and the will to do it. AI will make life run smoother in some ways but there will be blips in the path because AI will need a lot of training so it is very important that one become very efficient at what they do in order to best teach AI the methodology that must be used in order to get the superior results. 

There is talk that our population is starting to peak and that the numbers of people will begin to decrease in this world. There are a lot of us here for sure. The Russians keep sending their young men to the fields of war which Russia created and the body bags keep going back to Russia. So Russia may experience a very sudden decline in population of their own making. Will women want to have babies that are being sent to war; I doubt it. They didn't in 1917 and the whole country did something about it. Peace waits on that. 

On the news this morning there was a video of Khan Younis in Gaza. How sad to see the tent city there where the children have to live. The children did nothing wrong; they didn't invade another country but it is always the children who pay for the deeds of the elders. I feel sad for the children of Gaza; I have from the beginning and desired that they could come here to Canada where they would be safe but it needed the people of Islam to come forward and take them in but it did not happen and so we had to watch day after day as children were killed and maimed in a war they did not invent. Children need to be with people that are of their own kind; it is only fair. Although adoptions across such creeds and races do work; I have seen some that work very well but in this case the children would have been coming from a war stricken country and they just needed that comfort of their own people until they could return to the arms of their families. 

 Yesterday was a somewhat tumultuous one but it lead to a new way to do things and I look forward to that as it will take a bit to come to fruition but I will be happier with the changes I know that. I maybe did five matches yesterday but did  manage to do my 12,000 steps after all without actually doing any special exercise aside from cleaning the top floor which is completed and another week of cleaning under the belt so to speak. There are some things that are beyond me and I know it and so I do not attempt them. My life ahead of me is considerably shorter than what I have passed through thus far. In order to be as effective a human being as I am able (and that is God's wish for all of us) I need to make changes that smooth out the path ahead. I have these aims that I want to achieve in these years and I do need help on occasion and this was one of those occasions. Thank you to my family for their guidance. 

 Today I will work on the matches and should complete them as there are only nine left; hard to believe. I will also check the other databases for the new matches that have come in and see if they are useful in my quest. It will be easy to set them in if that is the case. 

Today will be a running day (30 minutes before lunch) and then a weightlifting day this afternoon (mid way) and we will see if I do anything else other than walking. This morning's exercises went quite smoothly and the cardio load was 40, 1 hour was spent and 3204 steps with 375 calories. So about usual and I know I repeated several of the counts of 100 steps as I forgot to stick out my thumb to remind I had already done the first hundred of the two hundred on occasion. The statistics are interesting that you obtain on the Fit Bit with 5% at peak, 24% is vigorous, 47% is moderate and 20% is light. The average heart rate was 101 beats per minute. A good way to start the day it does appear. I read a bit ago that one's exercise periods should be 45 to 60 minutes long. So I moved to that with this early  morning exercise and I think it works well but one should of course check with a doctor if you are just beginning exercise especially if you are my age. But I have been running since I was a very young child when I finally stood up and walked free of furniture when I was eighteen months and it was when my first glasses were put on my face. I quess instead of a lot of fuzz I could actually see - no ideas on that. But at twelve when I went to high school the gym teacher really encouraged running and so I took it up and have run most of my life ever since. I was a better long distance runner than a short distance at that age and I would say it remains as I have good endurance that keeps me running for the full thirty minutes. I could run longer but I think 30 minutes of running followed by 15 minutes of walking is good exercise although one notes that even greater variety is touted as beneficial like run 10 walk 10 or whatever combination but I prefer the continual running followed by a slowdown walk. Perhaps as I age I will change in that regard. Somehow I can not imagine myself running at 90 but I guess one never knows what life will present. 

I see though that the Fit Bit is back to its desire to keep lifting my cardio target - it needs to remember that I am 80 and only maintaining. A fault I think in some ways of the programming but it sees how I manage on cleaning days and thinks that I can continue that sort of high pace which is not likely. I am always somewhat tired on Thursday and have to push myself just a little to do the exercises that I do. So will I make the low and high targets today. I probably will make it to the low target of 188 cardio load but it is not likely that I will make it to the 251 cardio load that is the top of the range. But getting to 188 we will see. I have 40, running will be around 80 to 90 and then weightlifting around 40 to 50. Plus the walking is around 10 to 15 so I just make it to the 188 and a tiny bit above but not likely to 251 even with the walking every hour on the hour. But it takes time to train a Fit Bit one thinks and probably it doesn't recognize the fact that I am 80 and that means something; if I was 50 or less I could see that the level of activity as suggested is more doable. 

Yesterday working on the few matches that I did do was revealing as a couple of them were known to me and clarified the particular great grandparent simply because we share a 2x great grandparent. Always an interesting experience this autosomal DNA. 

Tea drank and must do my solitaire puzzles. Then breakfast and back to work on the matches.