Newsletters

Finally the Blake Newsletter Volume 8, Issue 4, 2019 is published. It is taking me several days now to pull these publications together but I find it to be my time well spent.

The good news is that I may have an article for the next Blake Newsletter that I have not written. I am always ready to include other's research in the newsletter. It will be under their name and with their email as the contact person for that portion. I do reserve the right to refuse an article but I can hardly imagine that that will happen!

I am thinking of having a Query page in the Newsletter if anyone is interested in submitting a query for the Pincombe-Pinkham Newsletter, the Blake Newsletter or the H11 Newsletter. It should be lengthy enough to include sufficient information but not over one page. Again your name and your email will be on the query as I do not want to serve as a go-between for any of this type of research. I can publish the results of the Query if the submitter is willing to prepare that material.

I want to publish all of the transcriptions that I have done over the past sixteen years and these newsletters are giving me that opportunity. I have a lot more to transcribe and my desk is gradually becoming clearer so that I can do that. I am not closing my books on looking further back in time on my lines but that will become secondary as I gather up the loose ends and tie down what I have managed to glean from the records. I will be stricter now on what I find and try to have DNA results to back up these thoughts. I have a great deal of DNA information now on my family with my grandparent's phased.

I am in the process now of updating that phasing with all of the new results of the past six months. I also plan to go to the great grandparents and have eight colours instead of four on the charts. I want to move gradually back in time. As more and more people test particularly at My Heritage I am getting a lot more DNA information on my great grandparents and great great grandparents with relevant matches to them. I ignore anything smaller than 7 centimorgans which was again the recommendation of our last lecturer at the BIFHSGO Conference (Blaine Bettinger). For the X chromosome I pretty much ignore anything smaller than 15 centimorgans. I prefer a 20 centimorgan match or higher before I actually make a decision although the X chromosome is now pretty much set with a few good matches. I am starting to work on the Buller - Pincombe portion which is shared with my brothers as I can see that it will be possible to readily separate Welch-Cheatle-Taylor on the Buller side and Gray-Cobb-Routledge on the Pincombe side. The Rawlings that I inherited from my Father I am still sorting through (it will include the Rawlings-Lywood lines of my great grandmother but also the DNA inherited by her unknown father from his unknown mother). I do have a number of matches that are not Rawlings-Lywood but I haven't really done anything with them yet. I really would need the descendant of one of her half-siblings to do much with that. If the surname that she was given as her third forename is an indicator of paternity, then she possibly had seven paternal half-siblings (six half sisters and one half brother). Her natural mother (and the mother who raised her) had four other children (three who lived to adulthood and had children) and I do see some of those matches. I do have several interesting matches on My Heritage but they do not have the X chromosome displayed in the results. My grandmother had a very happy life and her step father was wonderful to all of his children from what I have heard. She worked as a cook at a manor house in Kimpton until she married when she was 27. But I should probably try to work this out when the information might still be available.