Hampshire Genuki webpages and continuing transcription

Ken Greenslade has agreed to take on the Hampshire Genuki webpages. He has been very efficiently and effectively doing the Church Database for Hampshire and will now take on the entire set of Hampshire Genuki webpages. Although I loved doing them, they are beyond my capabilities these days with the new web pagery. My talents are now archaic!

I have taken on Regional Representative for the Eastern Canadian Region of the Guild of One Name Studies. I am looking forward to this new challenge and being in my area will be easier to handle. Doing the Hampshire pages from afar and having them look the way that I would like was not possible for me and it is good to step back and let someone else who can do a better job do so.

I completed Parish Register Three of Andover and there are 3694 burials in almost 100 years (they began in 1587. Looking forward to Parish Register Four I discovered that the burials in woolen are now being recorded from August 1678 on so will be able to pick up the information that I could not read on the last couple of years of the Parish Register Three burials. That is good news for me as there was a Robert Blake who died and perhaps there will be a little more information on him in this register. I will begin Parish Register Four in the new year.

I have a number of tasks that I want to take on over the next month including planning for Christmas and knitting new dog sweaters. The time will pass quickly I am sure. I also want to begin working on the conversion of the Bishops Nympton Parish Register to an excel file (some done already) and I have a couple of email requests to answer on this register.

I also want to pull the Cardinal Points for St Mary's Andover, St Mary's Abbots Ann, All Saints Upper Clatford and a couple more registers that I have for this area. That way if a Marriage Challenge can ever be undertaken I will have given the individual at the Guild a head start in those particular parishes and I have the offer of another local parish from another Guild member. We will have a good set ready although there are 33 parishes in that particular Registration District but mostly small as it is a rural area. I feel proud to be able to say that from first hand knowledge as we spent a little time there in the last couple of years.

My Blake famly is ever my interest and a Heraldry lecture by the Registrar of the Canadian Heraldic Institute has me thinking about having a coat of arms for our family. We need to think about whether we would each like to have one that we then combine by quartering for our daughters or start with ours combined and then our daughters can do whatever they like in the future.

Rainy here today in Ottawa and it looks more and more like snow. We have had our first snowfall already but often it is mid December before it accumulates. Then it stays with us until early April although last year was an unusual one with no snowfalls particularly after mid January.