Getting older

 Yesterday I did the next three pages of hits on the Find My Past website for Siderfin but entered the information into my family tree not into my one name study Siderfin tree so will have to redo that. I thought about using the split screen in Legacy but it is probably just as easy to redo it. Must be more careful. However, I did move the "story text" from James Sanders book into five appendices and I think that will work better. I did not want to lose this text but merging it into my style of having each descendant level just wasn't going to work well. It is easier to simply have the interesting stories there and refer to them in the text and send the reader to the particular item with hypertext links. What started as a few corrections has now emerged as a basically new textbook but saving all the parts of the earlier text. The corrections proved to be a little more than at first anticipated but there is a lot of material available to me online plus what I collected on my trips to Kew through the years. Tempting to go again but will think about that for a while. My oldest daughter has a friend in England and such a trip could be possible and I would have that support so will consider it. However the last time I did spend about two years collecting up the 200 items that I wanted to look at and would need to do that again. That would make me 80 and I am not sure that I would do that trip then. My older daughter is acquiring an interest in all of this work and with her background is ideally suited to taking it all over eventually. I should leave her some exciting work to do! I think surname research is rather a field that can be painstakingly slow but with great rewards from this slow methodical extraction of data. I would say she is  more interested in the people aspect (genealogy) and would like to finish up her Dad's pursuit of his Kipp ancestor known to be descendant of the Kip family of New Amsterdam/New York. Isaac Kipp was born 1 Nov 1764 but his parents remain unknown. He married Hannah Mead/Meed 29 Aug 1790 and she was born 11 Aug 1770. All of this is thought to be in New York State (possibly in Northeast Town where they are found on the census in 1790 living next door to or with Jonathan Mead (the Cooper III)). On the 1800 census Isaac and Hannah are at Rensselaerville, New York and they arrived in southwestern Ontario in the fall of 1800 seeking land as settlers (they had four of their five sons with them (Jonathan appeared to have been left behind with his grandfather)). The yDNA for Edward matches the yDNA of known descendants of the Kip family of New Amsterdam/New York. Edward has a huge amount of data on the Kip/Kipp family and I occasionally dip into the DNA results and continue his collection of that data but have left the rest for another. 

But I digress, I have discovered this past year that I can only do Blake and Pincombe and will leave Kipp and Link for another. I will keep up the Kipp Newsletter that I started and this time it is a continuation of  the children of the emigrant Hendrick Hendricksen Kip and it will be Volume 2 Issue 2. That is this month's work although I also plan to put together an H11 Newsletter. I just haven't moved beyond that thought as I will not likely publish it until this illegal war against Ukraine which Russia started ends. Glory to Ukraine and prayers for Ukraine.

It is also cleaning day today and that takes up most of the day although will correct my mistake of yesterday. 

The Lent without borders theme for this week continues as "Creational Love that Nourishes and Sustains" and the reflections this week are prepared by the Venerable Patrick Stephen of the Diocese of Ottawa. Being Anglican is in my soul, it is who I was at baptism and confirmation, who I am now and who I will always be. But mostly I am a child of God and for that I will always be grateful; having faith is more important than anything else in the world.  My prayers are always with my family, my country and my world. I love God's world and pray that the time will come when peace is everywhere and no one is hungry or feels unloved. An excellent reflection and prayer time suggested by this week's Lent without borders. This has been a wonderful resource from the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF). It is one of my attributes (I see it that way) that I am a loner really preferring my quiet time on my own. I did not and do not integrate well throughout my entire life; perhaps my first day of kindergarten tells that tale. We were meant to play musical chairs but I was far beyond that, spending time on childish games was not my way (I was still only four years old actually but soon five). I preferred to read. There was a reading corner also used for not following the rules so I just didn't really play the game so was sent to the reading corner until I mended my ways perhaps and promptly read the books that were there (the other corner of the room was less interesting I must admit which was where I ended up eventually). My lack of desire to be in community goes back a long way. Because Edward also preferred his quiet time on his own working away; we blended well in that regard. We would work for hours on our projects and then we did his other preferred item which was being around people whether it was shopping (and greeting people he knew) or going to various organizations to which he belonged (and I was a member as well he saw to that - the only groups I actually joined for any length of time were the Guild of One-Name Studies and BIFHSGO). For myself, coming from a large family, I went one of the two routes that people go from large families I think in retrospect. As a child I asked to live in the attic because I really wanted to be on my own, undisturbed in my reading (I read everything from encyclopaedias to massive tomes on history/geography to the great scientific discoveries and how you did them which would be my main interest at university. I just wanted to read but I also liked to run so did both (lots of good reading; lots of good exercise) and I have barely changed from that person now as I have slipped back in widowhood into the person I was in my teen years before we married (I was 20) way back in 1966. I have preferences on where I go and do like to go to Church every week although that is on YouTube these days - COVID did show me that path and I love it. It is also a failure of personality (and for quite a while my health was poor in my 30s and my psychiatrist had recommended a quiet life after my breakdown) on my part because I do not want to be part of community anymore never really did but made the effort for my family as needed and Edward and my children. Living on the fringe suits me but the Reflection wants us to think of the times over the past three years and I had a wonderful routine that brought me closer to my family because I was in a position to be of assistance for the period of time that that was an asset. The memories are gorgeous and fill my daydreaming times when I do that (standing in the corners in school classrooms ( my kindergarten year) honed my daydreaming skills!).

One of my favourite set of books as a child was the Heidi series (my grandmother bought them for me and I still have them (and she taught me to read at a young age)). I often think that in my old age I have become like the Grandfather in the Heidi book who was a hermit because of a bad experience in his youth. I shared that bad experience in my late teen years but the roots of being a hermit were already there so do not blame the bad experience for my being a hermit. I think some people are just like that but do find ways to be part of the community without actually engaging with the community (I have done a lot of volunteer work in my past (Edward volunteered me a lot for his genealogy activities) although I did find volunteerism to be difficult in my 30s and 40s due to ill health so avoided it as much as I could except for my children's activities). 

Winter has returned; the Colorado low has arrived perhaps or just one of those winter storms of April that we often have. It is supposed to be a short snowfall - time will tell. I still have the snow shovels out since the snow clearing people are done for the season. It is quite beautiful - large fluffy flakes of snow - and gives the world that ethereal look that only a white snowfall can give. One of God's many gifts to the world.