Advent Sunday

Advent 1 Sunday worship service was online with St Pauls St Albans, Hertfordshire and a most interesting service. I am  not sure that I was ever in Hertfordshire except perhaps one of the highways on our way here and there when we were in England. But consciously there, no I do not think so. Where I actually really met people and talked to them was in just a few specific areas other than that we were with a group on a bus tour. 

Then at 4:00 in the afternoon I attended the Readings and Carols Service at Christ Church Cathedral (my home church just because it is the Mother Church and that is how I decided to tithe my small pension in those days as Edward moved on from Dominion Chalmers (his time there followed nearly twenty years at Orleans United Church) when the then present minister retired). He really liked him; the minister took the time each service week after week to spend a few minutes with him knowing that he was in pain; spiritual pain that needed support but not a lot just a little. My spiritual background could not help Edward at that time; he found it too intensive I would have said although as COVID shut us down he found that my spiritual background became more of a solid rock for him. We spent more time talking in the last four years than we spent in the fifty years before that in some ways. We had talked a lot as he bounced ideas off of me for his genealogy once I got to thinking about genealogy and took the 42 courses at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies beginning in the latter half of 2003. I was not going to write a Pincombe Profile without some background education that looked directly at the study of surnames and I joined the Guild of one name Studies not long after that. Before that we were just busy with our children, our work and our lives. So his myriad of English Dissenters that he had drawn out of the past were a discussion point from then on; plus I knew that sort of history from my own religious education. The Archdeacon Abraham in his Confirmation Classes that lasted nearly seven months every week (one night) covered every aspect of Anglican Church History back into the depths of Anglicanism which preceded the Birth of Christ in the Celtic Church and before that the Ancient Church and he too believed in the idea that the early inhabitants were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. It is something that descendants of the early hunter-gatherers share in common all over the British Isles - England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isles (Hebrides, Mann, etc). How pleased I was actually to discover that my Blake line did go back into the very very distant past (thousands of years ago) as my grandfather had always said. It does give me more insight into the First Peoples of Canada actually and their path to a more meaningful life in this century.

I also put time into the Companion Charting book and I am now at Page 77 (half way plus) but this is cleaning day so not a lot will be accomplished in that regard on this the larger cleaning day. Mostly finding what I expected to find in terms of some punctuation that I wanted to change but the occasional item pops up that I need to contemplate/change or check. I am way past the spots where I postulated or created from research material a likely scenario. I am in the home stretch one might say and it is just a matter of hanging in there to the end and then publish it. I think the publishing date will be around the middle of the month giving me a breathing space and I do not feel rushed as I did publishing the revised edition of James Sanders' book. In a way this is also a revision but just of the Pedigree chart that James Sanders produced in his book. Amazing that one chart can be revised up to over 160 pages! But the notes take up a lot of room. My John Rawlins cousin who did the charts for our Rawlin[g]s family (his book was 37 pages of charts primarily and an index) did not do much text and I felt that perhaps it would be handy and electronic can really have as much in it as you want unlike the restrictions of paper publishing. John received his MBE at some point in his past for his  military service I think and living in Australia where he moved decided to research his Rawlin[g]s family. He wrote to me after I had put some material on line (I think in my blog I would have to check that) and asked me who was Ada Rawlins on the census with her grandparents William and Elizabeth (Lywood) Rawlins? He had not been able to place her because, like me, he could not find her birth registration. By then I had purchased all the certificates and other material that proved Ada was my grandmother Edith Bessie (Taylor) Blake aka Ada Bessy Cotterel on her baptismal lines in the Parish Register of St Peter and St Paul Kimpton, Hampshire, England when she was 4 months and 26 days old presented by her mother Elizabeth Rawlins and baptized by the Rector. In 1904 one finds in the same Parish Register, but 28 years later, the baptism of  my father Ernest Edward George son of Samuel George and Edith Bessie Blake of Eastleigh Hants on the 2nd October 1904 when he was just six weeks of age. Interesting to this sleuth that they could have baptized him at the Church they attended in Eastleigh or at the Upper Clatford Church where my grandfather was baptized although by then his parents were living in Goodworth Clatford and was perhaps the reason not to chose Upper Clatford - no ideas on that. Family history is always interesting but primarily to the descendant for sure. But there was John writing to ask me what I knew about Ada as he had been unable to place her in his tree (she was on the 1881 census with her grandparents as a five year old). So I placed her for him and he was pleased. We corresponded through the years and he sent me his research. I think now in retrospect he wanted me to publish what I knew about the overall Rawlin[g]s family for whom he had done an extensive tree since I seemed to be into writing. Although I decided on Blake and Pincombe first I can see that time permitting I will move likely to Buller and Rawlin[g]s when I complete the first two directly in my birth line (they are, of course, the maternal lines in my direct birth line).

Work to be done, tea all drank. Time for breakfast in a bit and then latin and cleaning. Generally I work the latin into my breaks on the big cleaning day.