70 as a milestone

Turning each new decade I have found myself intrigued by age and it started with turning 10 years of age. An entire decade old and I can remember thinking about that just as clearly now as if it had been yesterday. I have enjoyed reaching each new decade and continue to do so. Perhaps it was my grandparents who themselves reached each decade with joy and wonderment that they were spared to go forward when others were not that gives me that sense of wow.

But for me 70 has become a milestone where I plan during this next decade to minimize my "work" in genealogy. To start to backtrack and look solely at my own family. Listening to Judy Russell at the New York State Family History Conference I could sense her intense interest in her own family and certainly her talks were mostly about her families. That is the direction that I want to be moving in by the middle of this decade of the 70s and so at this time I dedicate myself to that end of being completely clear of extraneous research in my Blake and Pincombe family around the world. I hope that someone else will pick up the studies but I will consolidate what I have done and lodge it with the Guild and the Society of Genealogists because, even yet, the history of these families belongs to the United Kingdom more than it does anywhere else. I shall lodge the work that I have done on the Irish Blake family with the Record Office in Dublin where it can be found by any future researcher and that will complete the task that I set for myself 10 years ago when I took on the Pincombe family and 4 years ago when I decided to work on the Blake family.

This has been an exciting year for me working away on the Cornwall Blake family as I can see that it can be done area by area and bring together as much as you can and then construct family trees from the material thus accumulated. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have found as much as I can on Cornwall and start to move eastward into Devon. Will I make it to Hampshire through Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset? I hope so because Hampshire is the home of my Blake family and I have through the years come up with a better understanding for me of my Blake family. Are we all linked in Hampshire? No, already there are two different yDNA lines (not markedly different but still separated by thousands of years) and as more people test their lines we may find even more as there were Blakes in the British Isles from very early dates in terms of people having surnames. The earliest records being in the 1200s thus far.

My thoughts on turning new milestones; enjoy the time that God has given us to walk upon this earth. One never knows the pitfalls ahead; one can only file away the pitfalls that lie behind us.

Why Blake and why Pincombe? My father was a Blake and my mother a Pincombe and so my work has been to remember their families as a tribute to them and those who came before them.

I love this blog. Often enough I do not reflect personally in it but it is interesting for me to go back sometimes and read where I have done so. One's thoughts are always evolving and changing as we age. That child of ten years was looking forward into the future and wondering what 20, 30, etc would be like. The reward for me is that I am still that child of 10 years; that married woman of 20 years; that mother of 30 years; that  "work at home" entrepreneur woman of 40 years; that "return to the workforce" woman of 50 years; that emerging genealogist of 60 years and now that grandmother of 70 years; each decade brings into one's life some new adventure; some change to the status quo that predominated the decade before.