T Paper and other thoughts

Revising the T paper and it is going to be a very interesting publication. It will add greatly to an understanding of T and I am proud to be part of it.

As our daughter reaches towards the end of medical school, we are thinking of where we would live and it would be close to where ever she is in order to help her out. That way we also have a place for our eldest daughter when she comes back from teaching all winter.

Although our home is a "carriage house" it still has a lot of land and the four bedrooms seem very large with just the two of us. Since we were all working or at school the smaller livingroom/diningroom worked very well for us especially as we used the basement for the TV room. Now it would be nice to have less room in bedrooms and more "living room" area. The smaller yard would also be nice as it is a lot of work for Ed to keep it up. However, no rush on that still another year before we know where our daughter will be.

Back to the T paper and I shall finish off with my input today. I am looking forward to it being published - not for the acclaim but to make it easier to work with my T2 study. I get questions several times a week now from the people in my group (351 of them now) and I simply can not answer them with other than the paper is in the writing stage and no results will be released until it is in the publication stage. I do suggest that they join the FGS project if they have results. Although these will not be in the paper, it is always good to have these extra results to look at as we do the final tweaking of the paper.

Back from a 10.8 km bicycle ride and it is going to be warm here today. A high of 33 degrees celsius with a humidex of 40 plus. It was pleasant along the river with a slight breeze to cool you off as you rode.

Library and Archives Canada

We spent Friday and part of Saturday at Library and Archives Canada. Ed wanted to verify some of the newspaper obituaries for the article on his Great Grandfather Wilhelm Schultz who had come from Germany in about 1866 to Oxford/Brant Counties area.

This man had been quite a mystery through the years. We have a beautiful picture of Wilhelm, his wife Rachel Niemann and their three children plus the original baptismal certificate for his grandmother Ida Caroline Wilhelmina Schultz. We have three census reporting this family in 1871, 1881 and 1891. We finally found the marriage registration but we were unsure as it read John Fred William Muller and Freidericka Naumann and the marriage date 25 Dec 1866. We knew they were married around that time as their first son Charles was born 22 October 1867.

I decided to look up the Bertrand family because of conflicting marriages that I had found online. I now have the information from the archives which was prepared by a noted genealogist of the day. I shall try to figure out which one is correct.

An email from my Blake correspondent got me thinking about the Blake Wiltshire Lineage Chart again. I have two William Blakes living at Andover in the 1500s. The one is the son of Nicholas Blake (and my 11x great grandfather) and the second has been to date unknown. The chart shows a line down through William Blake married to Avice Ripley and living at Andover. This William is said to be a son of Roger Blake and Mary Baynard. The visitation does not list a William. However, the interesting part is that the daughter Margaret of William Blake and the son John of William Blake (my 11x great grandfather) married Margaret the daughter of William Blake. The suspicion is that the line is simply in the wrong place and it should show Margaret as the daughter of William Blake (the caption in the circle states that Margaret is the daughter of William Blake aforesaid and he is the only candidate for that!) in the chart marrying John Blake the son of William Blake who is not on the chart. Hopefully I will be able to clarify that when we are in London at Kew. It would be a somewhat monumental step forward in linking the Blake family at Andover with the Blake family at Calne. There is still the mystery of exactly who is the Blake who was married to the widow Jone Blake who left a will dated 23 Mar 1527 at Knights Enham (near Andover). But solving the above mystery would at least link the families on that line and seeing them both living at Eastontown in that time frame one is left to work out the relationship between these two family lines that marry at Andover.

Anglican Church Archives Ottawa Diocese

We spent the day at the Anglican Church Archives Ottawa Diocese. They have over 800,000 CMBs for this area in an online database. My husband was particularly looking for members of his "Link" family and he found over 100 records that we extracted into a flat file. It was necessary to type them one by one but was fairly quick work with two of us working on it. Then sort into register numbers and look at the five early registers that were most interesting. His Link family were at Osnabruck from the early 1780s until the first quarter of the 19th century. John Link (bc 1816 Lower Canada) moved to Queensville by 1839 and married Mary Ann Abbes there before 1841. Unfortunately for him, there are few records available for these specific events but he is on the census which is helpful in 1851, 1861, and 1871.

We had packed a small lunch (egg salad sandwiches, a grapefuit drink and an apple) and went for a walk in the Park of the Provinces/Territories and then ate our lunch there. It was cool under the trees and once again one can marvel that a capital city could be so quiet just a few blocks from Parliament Hill. It is a beautiful setting and many people eat their lunch there sitting on the stone walls. Then a walk down to the Ottawa River towards Parliament Hill and back up again. The walk is a strenuous one and left us ready to sit once again and work on the records at the Anglican Church Archives.

These Archives are located at Christ Church Cathedral on Sparks Street. We attend Church there as well. We were the only researchers in the Archives on that day and they are now open three days per week from 8:30 to noon and then 1:00 to 4:30. There are a number of tables to work at (large tables) so it is easy to look at the large registers.

We want to start going to Library and Archives Canada once again. I always have a lot that I can do on our son-in-law's French Canadian ancestry. With hundreds of emigrant ancestors, the trail of many of them travels back through nine generations or more. Some came in the early 1700s making the trail back a little shorter. Many French Canadian family stories have been published and that is quite helpful to lead me to the original records when they are missing from/or hard to find in the Drouin Collection which is online on Ancestry.ca.

Farley family

I received a contact on Genes Reunited for the Farley family. Mary Ann Blake (sister to my great grandfather Edward Blake) married David Farley June quarter 1853 at Andover Hampshire. Mary Ann was baptized 2 Oct 1831 at Upper Clatford. They had nine children including George Farley who married Edith Pearce. George was born March quarter 1855 at Andover. Their daughter Muriel was grandmother to the person who contacted me. My contact's father Richard is my third cousin. Mostly I find fourth cousins so this was quite an exciting contact. Since I do not have any first cousins and few second cousins a third cousin seems very close although probably not to most third cousins :)

The contact is fairly new to genealogy and can not add anything to my Blake quest although being "on the spot" so to speak there is a potential of her learning a great deal about the family and I hope she keeps me tuned for any advancements. I can at least provide information on what is known for sure.

Today is a canning day - we will make chili sauce which is a five hour marathon but tastes delicious at the end. All that work for seven or eight jars! The elderberry jelly turned out very well though and it is the first time that we have made elderberry jelly - usually pies or the birds eat them all!

We worked on the Schultz family the last couple of days. We are making up a new chart with all the discoveries of this past year. That is our primary need at the moment to complete that and prepare for a visit to the Archives of Ontario, Queensville and Baysville to visit the local cemeteries there and look around a little to see where the Abbes, Link, and Allen families lived in these areas. My husband's mother was a Link and her grandfather's mother was Mary Ann Abbes (a newly found ancestress).

Blake family chart - 2

I continued looking at the Blake family chart I purchased from the Wiltshire Record Office. I have now concluded that the first two couples on the chart in two of the lines (Blake and Baynard) are continuous generations. It would appear that the Blake family can be traced back to this Richard Blaque als Blaake als Blake who gave land to the Knights Templar (since they were disbanded by the Pope in 1312 this may well bring the Blake line back even further since it is known that Robert de Blakeland paid taxes at Calne in 1286.

According to the other researcher (I have not done the work) Barrie Blake in Australia, Robert Le Blake was b c 1190 and he d after 1272. He married Johanna La Blake and they have two sons Adam Le Blake and Richard Le Blake. On his webpages (http://blakeheritage.synthasite.com/iframe1.php) can be found this lineage and from him I have the information: "Whilst my records show Richard as the Sub-treasurer to the Dean of Wells Cathedral, they also show his father, Robert, as Bailiff to the Bishop of Wells." On the chart there is the statement: R[ichar]d Blake gave certain Lands in Essex to the Knights Templars in the Reign of King Edw[ard] I which may be seen by the Records in the Tower of London _____ E_??_r. 31 Ed I a? 77. Edward I reigned from 1272 to 1307. The subsidy paid to Edward I by Robert de Blakeland was in 1286. I now need to check the records to see if this was actually Richard Le Blake paying this subsidy. The land that Richard gave to the Knights Templar was in Essex which is a good deal away from Wells and from Calne.

I suspect if I have the time and ability to collect Blake records that we could find out a great deal about this family in the early history of England at least back to 1000 plus. However, I am still concerned with finding a little more proof for my linkage from William Blake (the Clerk) to John Blake (his son) and to Thomas Blake (my known 6x great grandfather and the son of John Blake at Andover). That is in the 1600s! I am still curious about William Blake attached to the Roger Blake family. I am now noticing that the crest attached to the Blake/Blague family at Surrey which is quartered is using the Blake/Blague crest in the top left, the Durrant/Dorrant top right, the Bellet/Billet bottom left and the Baynard bottom right. However, the Visitation notes (put in at a later date as they are in square brackets) that the lower right is unknown calling it an incomplete Blake/Blague crest. Since the chart was made from the Visitations, the College of Arms would have recognized the lower right crest as Baynard and attached William to Roger's family as this is the first time that the Blake/Baynard family married. That works for the dates. Interesting actually and with it being over 150 years earlier there would not have been anyone living to really answer that question.

Blake family

A hiatus of three weeks and now back to looking at the Blake family and the charts which I purchased from the Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office. We have been on a three week trip to the Maritimes and in particular Newfoundland and Labrador. The trip was a success as I saw everything that I had hoped to see (except for icebergs but that was our warm winter as we would normally have seen icebergs in the places that we went). L'Anse aux Meadows was particularly poignant. Walking on the same ground as the Vikings walked on over 1000 years ago is quite exciting. The recreation there is very much worth a visit. Since they constructed homes in much the same way as they were constructed by my ancestors in England I found the experience to be very learned.

Seeing whales in their home environment was a thrill. We just couldn't get enough of that. At each sound of "Whales" we would hurry to see the evidence of their existence. We only saw one whale jump up out of the water exposing his large body. For the most part you see the blowhole spray and then the back breaches the water and then the tailfin comes up high. It is a glorious sight and we spent nearly an hour sitting in the middle of a pod as they swam around the boat. a truly breath taking experience and I would do it again and again I suspect just to be close to these marvelous mammals. I keep thinking that whales that I see in the ocean could have been there when my grandparents and father came from England to Canada. They live to be several hundred years old and they came to Canada in 1913. It has this linking to my family's past as part of the component of my liking to see them in the wild.

There were many other highlights but for me those two stand at the forefront along with visiting Labrador which I had never done before. Labrador was a surprise. I expected wilderness and found a modern community - not a large city but towns such as we would find anywhere else in Canada. The views there are incredible and so green - I expected to see the land more like Scotland with its high craggy mountains. The mountains are high there but lush with their green trees and high bush blueberries, labrador tea and others. We hope to explore Labrador further at another time.

All told we had four ferry rides and one boat trip and the all boat rides were very comfortable. We had dolphins and porpoises on our ferry rides from Port aux Basques to North Sydney and whales on our trip from St Barbe Newfoundland and landed at Blanc Sablon Québec but stayed at L'Anse aux Claire in Labrador. Strait of Belle Island is quite wide and you can just see the other side on a clear day.

I had not been to Halifax before and really enjoyed our time in the City. We walked the waterfront from our hotel (Delta Halifax) almost to Pier 21 and back on our first evening. The harbour is a very busy one and there were a number of navy vessels in - frigates and one destroyer plus other smaller boats. There was so much to see and we had a three hour tour which introduced us to a lot of Halifax. We visited Pier 21 and the Citadel in depth plus walked from Pier 21 along Hollis Ave to the Citadel. Pier 21 was very interesting although none of us have ancestors who arrived in Halifax at the time Pier 21 was in use for immigration. My latest arrival was 1913 with my father and his parents and Ed's latest was his 2x great grandmother's family (including parents) when they arrived in Canada in the early 1830s. His German born great grandparents appeared to have come through New York (in the 1860s) as did my Pincombe family (my great grandfather, his siblings and parents arrived at New York harbor 7 Jan 1851). My grandmother (maternal) landed at Halifax in 1908 which preceded the opening of Pier 21 by twenty years so also missed being in that collection. However, it was most interesting to see the collection that has been established and it is an excellent accumulation of material.

The Citadel was the best part by far. A great deal of the structure is original to the mid 1800s when it was built. There are renovations to take it back to this time period as it was in use up until the end of the Second World War. An excellent movie to be watched on the history of the Citadel and I purchased my first fleece coat there with the Halifax Citadel embroidered on it. I never bought myself one before as I usually wear my daughter's hand me downs :) I really enjoyed Halifax but after seeing that I was most anxious to be on my way home. I am always like that on a trip. Once we have accomplished everything I just want to be back home.

I made elderberry jelly when we arrived back and am just about to freeze 12 cups of Elderberries for pie later in the year. Our elderberries are heavy this year and we have only picked and cleaned half of them. Our garden had grown about double while we were away and we missed our beans once again - the rabbits had a good feed.