Family Day once again and it is a well named holiday in Ontario and four other provinces namely Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan. I think when families are close they create an atmosphere of love for all of their family members bringing them up in a world where they can live and work knowing that their family is always with them. In these days of small families I think that is really important to have such closeness between cousins.
Yesterday I did work a little on the Siderfin book. Mostly editing the Acknowledgements which I wrote to follow the Preface which James Sanders originally wrote for his book. Although I have done a lot of writing it has not been an entire book before so I expect this will be a slow process as I want to ensure that James Sanders work still exists as an entity within the revised book. .
Today I shall spend some time on the Siderfin book and also the Pincombe newsletter which is due the 1st of March. The time just seems to pass so quickly and I also have the Income Tax but still waiting for more paperwork.
Edward has been in my thoughts these days as the first anniversary of his death approaches. I have decided to give a donation to the Ottawa Branch Library of Ontario Ancestors (was the Ontario Genealogical Society and I think that might still be its legal name not sure) on the anniversary of his death. I thought about having it on his birthday which is just six days later but I think I will do his death date. We still miss him very much and always will. He was the center of our lives and always such a busy person. He enjoyed his life and once traveling to Europe wanted to go back again and again which we did in fact do. We saw so very much and now with two years of no travel it seems like all of that is so very long ago now. Fortunately we made powerpoint presentations of all of our trips which I will continue to add to so that all of the images which he took are in the full presentations for our family to enjoy.
Coming from a very large family (seven children), I think that the value of such time together as children can never be quite so fully appreciated until you reach my age and as the mind stretches back to those few years together (I was just twenty when Edward and I were married) you remember the fun times together with a great deal of nostalgia. I was maybe four years of age when I first played Go Fish. My oldest brother would deal the cards quite often and then he would come around and help me to organize my cards. I generally played on his team with the two others playing against us so knowing my cards was not a problem but perhaps was a bit of a gift! But then it relied on a four year old to play the game properly. My oldest brother used to say I was just three when I first started to play but I have forgotten those early days but the memory of turning five was only me looking at all those cards and playing the game. Rainy days were card playing and board game playing sometimes all day long.
In retrospect the fifth child never really got included in those games until my oldest sister decided not to play games anymore. Then the two youngest were born long after we spent so many hours playing cards and board games. They are eight and ten years younger than me and sixteen and fourteen years younger than my eldest sister. We were all pretty much grown up by the time that they reached their teens with my youngest brother being just ten and my youngest sister twelve when Edward and I married. I always remember she had her long hair pinned up under her (what you would now call a fascinator) hairpiece and it gave her a headache so we took the pins out and her beautiful long hair flowed out from her face as she looked so much happier.
Now we are all over 65 (my two oldest brothers have passed away) and our growing up days are long ago as we watch our grandchildren start to take their place in their own family units. Our grandchildren only inherit 25% of our DNA and share just 3.13% of their DNA with their second cousins. It is truly amazing how quickly the genes of our ancestors are spread thinner and thinner as the generations follow.
The only line that I do not know anyone in it other than ourselves is my paternal grandmother's father's line. The priest gave her a middle name of Cotterill and with just one Cotterill family in the village one is left to contemplate that this was the surname of her father and certainly there are a lot of matches that are likely Cotterill but thus far I have only written one individual who did not respond. It would be interesting to know more about this person. They were both rather young and personally I think the right decision was taken to do what my great grandmother did which was to go home and let her parents raise her child which they did until she married and then had another four children with her husband giving my grandmother half siblings and a step father gave his surname to her and treated her as one of his own.
In the letters which I saw the siblings all thought of her as their full sibling. Probably she would not care that I have even looked at the possibility of this individual as being her father; she had a father whom she loved very much and that was good enough for her perhaps. Because she died five years before I was born I have no ideas on that. My grandfather loved her dearly and talked about his Bessie a great deal when I was young.
An interesting post for Family Day as I look back at what I have written. Genealogy per se does not interest me as much as the ancient ancestry in our genes. It is fascinating seeing what our genes reveal about those who came before us. They have passed Nature's gift on to us and that stays with us our entire life.
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