Revised book has been reread and new copy produced

 Perhaps today I will upload the new copy of the revised book but it will likely be tomorrow. Anyone is welcomed to write and question or correct errors. My drawback in writing the book is that I do not live in the area; actually I live across the ocean. Going to the Atlantic Ocean whilst visiting England back in 2008 was an awesome experience. Looking out from Westward Ho Beach towards the west, I experienced this sort of overwhelming thought that out there thousands of miles away was my home country. Looking straight out is below Ireland so all that is between me and my country was water. I have no idea if any of my family members on my mother's side had spent time in that area as they lived at Bishops Nympton. All of that is lost because my mother was only eight when her father died and his memories were of a childhood in Canada with his father emigrating to Canada in 1850/51 when he was fourteen years of age. We, my husband and I, had gone to England in 2008 and we went about six days earlier than our tour so that we could spend time with my Blake cousin Ivan Kent. I had booked us into a house nearby which let rooms and one was able to use the living area of the house if needed. It was a lovely bed and breakfast place and we stayed there for several days. We had arrived at Heathrow early in the morning and took the underground to the train that took us to Dorchester, Dorset where Ivan met us. It was the first time I ever met Ivan although we had corresponded for twenty years at that point in time. 

My mother had asked Edward, my husband, to create a 50th Anniversary Memory book for their Wedding Anniversary back in 1988 (when I first wrote to Ivan to see what sort of pictures he might share with me). As it turned out, Edward did agree but insisted that I do the work of ferreting out all of that information from the Parish Registers at the Family History Library. I had done some of this work for Edward when he had a project and just needed a spare set of eyes to go through the available data. Well, as it turned out, I was probably a good choice as I had listened to my grandparents in childhood talking about their families and my mother and father as well. Memory banks are amazing tools that should never be overlooked and should always be tested and filled in as a child actually I think. It is good training for the future as you store away things that need to be remembered and at the tip of your tongue. So there I was picking through the Parish Registers to create a genealogical tree of my family as Edward did interesting things like collect each of the different types of currency for one of the pages and maps of England which was all very interesting for sure. In the meantime I did run into that problem of who was my paternal grandmother. I had all the stories in my mind but they didn't fit. Eventually I was down to three possibilities (none of which was right) at that time and simply put nothing except what was known which was her life parents who raised her. She was just sort of an enigma for whom there were lots of pictures, stories of siblings, pictures of siblings but no record of her birth but records of her siblings births, a marriage record for her parents. Stories of how wonderful her father was and how much she loved him. For all the others I had parents and grandparents in many cases but that was it. Perhaps there was an inkling of curiosity then for what I did not know but life was busy; I proofread eight to ten hours a day and mostly every day although did take off part of Sunday in the day working in the evening (following the Jewish tradition that the day ends at dusk). The book was created; reproduced making one copy for each sibling and one for my parents and we kept the original which I shall turn into a powerpoint presentation (I think I will correct the genealogy though just to have it current). My parents were pleased (perhaps my father a little less so as so little on his mother whom he had adored and over the next short period (as he finally succumbed somewhat to dementia) I did learn just a little more to set my mind thinking although it would be another twenty years before I really looked at my grandmother Blake (he talked about an ancestor that had been at Waterloo amongst other tidbits that came up in the conversations that we had over the eight hour period that I spent with him each time I visited the nursing home where he lived for the last six years of his life). Then I spent about 100 pounds and bought all the certificates that were needed to lead me to the correct birth registration for my grandmother. It was a surprise and a sort of gift that she was loved so much by her families that no one wanted to remember and that her mother was unmarried when she was born. The actual name of the father still up in the air but mostly because I am a stickler for having actual proof. The priest had recorded in the baptismal lines that her name was Ada Bessie Cotterill Rawlings. There was only one Cotterill family in that tiny little village of Kimpton with a son around the age of Elizabeth Rawlin[g]s. Was George the father is still a question in my mind? Does it matter? When I discovered he died of cancer I thought well maybe it would be good to know. But really haven't still at this point in time pursued it (I haven't seen a picture of George yet). I have matches that lead that way. Her mother Elizabeth Lywood (from a relatively well settled family) had a run away marriage and they baptized their first child born the 20 Aug 1849 in Dec 1849 with their marriage on the 22nd Sep 1849 and away from their home village. As it turns out this is my only line with an illegitimacy. The mother of Elizabeth Lywood, Martha Peck, was the daughter of Elizabeth Peck and I suspect her daughter Martha was the result of a too hasty event before a soldier left for a posting (back in 1791). George and a cousin joined in the early 1800s (a runaway I think taking the King's shilling along with a cousin to see the world perhaps but they were not the first; young men were eager to join up in that time period and earlier and he was just fifteen or so when I figure it out). He did come to Canada actually and was stationed at Halifax until 1808 when his unit returned to Portugal and the Peninsular Wars (all written up in a lovely book I bought in Wales from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers). It makes for an exciting story in a family actually. Not knowing this story as a child meant I didn't know that George Lywood who fought at Waterloo was my 3x great grandfather and finding that was amazing. I had I think around twenty such long conversations with my father after he moved into the nursing home. He loved talking about his family and suddenly he didn't care what I knew! He had  it all right for sure so perhaps he was just starting into dementia but he lived to be in his 95th year. I hope my memory is as good if I should live so long.  Everyone thought he had dementia but as I went back in time about ten years after that; everything I found proved what he said. I am so very  happy that I elected to spend my eight hours with him on one of the days that we were back visiting. He  just never talked a lot when we were children; he was busy working for sure. So you never know where genealogy will lead you and for me that path was a very very long one before I finally succumbed to name collecting although I call it surname studies as a member of the Guild of one name studies. I study BLAKE (my father's surname) and PINCOMBE (my mother's surname). SIDERFIN was just this happening that has occupied my life now for nearly three years. 

Breakfast completed. This is Sunday and Remembrance Day and it is on YouTube which is exciting. I look forward to it. I didn't know you could tap now and buy poppies so did that this year and have a lovely one with a plastic centre that you can attach firmly to your coat plus a couple of others. The tap is for $10, $5 or $2 but $10 is such a small amount so I just tapped $10 and have all these poppies just for me. I will not get to put one of them on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Remembrance Day but at nearly 80 that is probably wise on my part but I will keep it for one of these days I am downtown. Although putting it later might not work so I will just think about it.

God Bless the members of our military and keep them safe. God Bless Canada. Definitely I will vote for the party that promises 2% GDP for the military sooner rather than later (2032 is very late) and especially if they promise to reach towards 4%. We need our military to help take care of Canada. I have taken to cleaning my teeth three times a day these last five years and paying to have them cleaned every 4.5 months to keep those costs down on my insurance and maybe everyone could do that and we could direct that money towards the military instead of funding people's teeth cleaning. I do believe in looking after people but we need to do as much as we can ourselves. The military needs to be better funded and have better pension so that it is an appealing job. I always thought my husband would have loved the military as he did so like traveling about plus he hunted when I first knew him. Living in a small town though he never thought about it until much later.