Huge projects

I do have several large projects for the fall independent of my writing/editing. There are four large piles that have to be shredded. There is one banker box of items that need to be scanned before shredding. Shredding the four large piles is difficult in some ways because a large part of it was letters between Edward and family members he met along the way. The letters begin with the usual things that genealogists talk about when they write to a long lost relative but some of this correspondence went on for twenty or thirty years and they became like pen pals sharing their lives with each other. I feel it is important that I shred all of this as it is private information between two people who found a friendship by mail that they enjoyed but it wasn't really meant to be shared with the world. My daughters have a nodding interest in genealogy but not strong enough to support picking up the traces which were left by Edward and carry on with all of this work. They may pick it up one day but this way they can use their own flavour of research and they are happy with that. The amount of material that Edward held was quite enormous thinking back now as I look around a house still full but not overwhelming in quite the same way. The fullness results from four people and then five living here for a period of time accumulating objects and not really wanting to part with them. Even I with my tendency to not gather dust so to speak do have some possessions that I have acquired although rapidly diminishing. One set was the VCR tapes and then DVDs that I bought (generally on sale) during my working days as I had planned this lovely retirement watching all the old movies (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) but my cousin did change all of that and I was able to persuade Edward to travel to Europe/British Isles which also changed how we did things in between trips. I liked to see absolutely everything that I could in any particular area that we stopped and so the huge lists began with the directions attached and on our tour travels we added in our own personal tours in the evenings whenever we arrived. It was fantastic. But I have given away most of the VCR tapes and a lot of the DVDs as well keeping just a basic set that I enjoy because I do not apparently have enough time in a day to watch one most days. Just sometimes. 

Yesterday I did some more work on the Answer document that pertains to the Siderfin family at Timberscombe and East Linch. It is proving to be an interesting story as in the answer Robert Siderfin and family relate most of what was in the complaint as far as I can tell since I elected not to buy the complaint as well. I really just wondered what they would say in the answer and whether it would help me to locate which family this was. Indeed it has and I am simply continuing to transcribe out of curiosity. I suspect that this Robert Siderfin the elder married an Ursula Franck either a Franck by birth or a widow as that is starting to emerge from the document. It will end up having no impact on the writing/editing that I have done thus far except to be a further proof. But we will see how the document flows and I am perhaps one fifth of the way through now. 

I am not in a rush particularly plus I am realizing that I need to do the Pincombe-Pinkham Newsletter for the 1st of September. That very nearly slipped my mind. In the past three months the idea of writing a book on this family has solidified and will be my next effort in writing in the new year as the likely beginning time. I continue to collect information and will also work in the same manner with this book as with the Siderfin. I will begin as far back as I am able to research and then bring the material forward although continuing to work backwards through the available census and the Parish records to the 1500s/1600s when these Pencombe/Pincombe/Pyncombe families dispersed from North Molton/South Molton area into North West Devon and other areas including London especially. It will be at least two years in the writing I estimate. The only advantage that I have with this book is personal history passed to me by my mother and then my uncle in the last  ten to fifteen years of his life when we used to spend time with him and he and I corresponded regularly or spoke on the telephone all of which I recorded and have available to me. That discussion though is limited to my  direct family only that lived first at North Molton and then in Bishops Nympton/Molland and then with Philip Pincombe in Gloucestershire as my direct line emigrated to Canada originally with others also in that direct line emigrating as well to Canada but also to the United States, Australia and South Africa. 

I have given myself until the end of the year to complete the Siderfin book and will publish it under a Creative Commons license in order that I can protect the contents from being published for profit making it free to download or be distributed to repositories that may wish a copy. Plus it will be then possible for descendants to edit my work with their own new publication even during my lifetime and correct/alter/change items for which new material is available or simply to maintain the lines and bring them forward as I will not publish anything that has occurred after 1920. 

Breakfast is next and I am hungry as usual. Last night we had a piece of salmon poached with dill which was quite delicious along with a broccoli salad which I quite enjoyed but that was many hours ago now! Another beautiful day in God's world and may peace be the choice of all of us as we manage our way through this wilderness of climate change and come to a better side by caution and care and respect and an end to greed, violence and envy.