Thursday, December 26, 2024

Christmas Service in Cornwall, England

 Another lovely Christmas Service in Cornwall, England led by a priest that I have seen a number of times and his message is quite beautiful actually. I loved my short time in Cornwall when we were touring England. The land reminded me of the Bruce Peninsula area of Ontario. Open and active and just waiting for you to take a walk down the many roads and paths that lead to the Ocean. A beautiful part of England although I do not at this point in time think I have any Cornwall ancestry unless it is my maternal grandmother's Buller family. They are elusive those Buller lines. I can easily get back to Christopher Buller born circa 1764 and who had a Shop on  Tooley Street, Southwark, when I reviewed the Court Rolls in the 1760s I could find a sailmaker named David Griffin on Tooley in Southwark in 1766 purchasing from James Heberd of Ewell (shop-keeper) this copyhold. In 1778 David Griffin surrendered to Richard Carpenter Smith part of the land but still held the shop it appears. I have been slowly collecting up material on this property on Tooley Street because that is where I find Christopher Buller in 1795. Will it help me; no ideas on that actually but all the information on Christopher Buller points to him living in this area from the early 1790s on and his birth (looking at his death registration in 1832) leads one to think he was born circa 1764. There were Buller families in London and I have transcribed a lot of their wills but no mention of a Christopher yet but I haven't done all the wills. There was a Buller family from Somerset at St Olave where Christopher and his wife Mary (Beard) Buller buried one of their sons and later Mary and Christopher were buried in this area but later moved to Bunhills when the London Bridge extension needed that graveyard. I have all of that material showing the various plots that were no longer in the graveyard but moved. But I digress. The name Buller is old and English but my great uncle was the last of the male Edwin Denner Buller line born to Henry Christopher Buller and his second wife Ann (Welch) Buller who was the son of Christopher Buller and Mary (Beard) Buller. He died in 1973 long before DNA testing. A fascinating family with Henry having a very active business life in both London and Birmingham which maybe could fill books in the future sometime. I do have many many excellent atDNA matches with my Buller cousins around the world.

The Church Service was perfect for a Christmas morning and thank you once again to the Church of England for having their online services on YouTube. I should go to Church and perhaps I will once again when I move one of these days and have an Anglican Church nearby that I can walk to.  I do love the Anglican Service. 

After Church I did my yearly donations to Montfort Hopital, Shepherds of Good Hope, Ottawa Food Bank, Orleans United Church, Ottawa Mission in memory of Edward, my husband. I had already remembered him with a donation to The Ottawa Hospital when they let me know that my donation would be tripled on Giving Tuesday and earlier I made a donation on our Wedding Anniversary to the Ottawa Branch Library for genealogy research. Ottawa Food Bank was a new addition this year but Edward had often given them his surplus produce from his gardening and a money donation. I just didn't think of them until they asked me at the Metro if I wanted to donate $1 when I bought my groceries. I did think about it but I would rather have a donation slip because I am like that - donations add up and we all need to economize to make the best use of our monies to support our economy. Of course my donations are not huge; I am not wealthy! Edward loved Christmas and giving these donations on Christmas day just seems so right.

Then off for a long ski into the Greenbelt park here. I actually went further than I have for many years but today I will rest - a day in between is probably a good move on my part. I am after all over 79 years of age. But it was quite enjoyable and I actually got up a bit of speed finally. Fell down just before the last turn but got up on my own without removing my skis. Thank you to the lovely young man who offered to help me get up. But it is good practice to right myself and so I did with a thank you to him. We said Merry Christmas to the many people who were also out there enjoying the fresh snow fall mostly on skis but some walkers, some bikers, some snowshoeing. It was a big group and it was cold. 

Then we had Christmas dinner and we made a beef/pork meatloaf, with candied sweet potato (in the skin so that the sweetness just penetrates a little without being excessive), mashed turnip/carrot, baked squash, olives, raw vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, carrot sticks, tomatoes, turnip sticks and dip). All the raw vegetables were from the United States of America except for the carrots and turnips; our time of growing is past for a bit and the greenhouses of southwestern Ontario do not reach us here all the time). We thought about a Yorkshire pudding but the meat was mostly fat free and there was actually very little fat that came out of that meatloaf so did not do that. It was a lovely hot meal after that long ski. For desert chocolate and nuts. A feast for sure but no Christmas pudding; I have not made one of those since I went back to work in 1994 outside of the home. But there were also mandarin oranges to delight the taste buds to complete the meal. We will miss the fresh produce from the United States if the tariffs goes on as I will not pay for that. I can eat stored vegetables produced in Canada all winter. We did when I was a child. It will be sad though for sure. There are so many American stores in Canada and I am not convinced that there is any trade deficit when one takes all of those stores into account (I expect that Americans sell us far more than we sell to them after all we are just 40 million people and they are 340 million!). After all they often bring their own trucks across and does that actually get counted as trade between us; the goods are after all made in America by Americans (and their cotton products are so much cheaper in the United States than Canada). But I will leave that to Premier Ford to manage. 

Today cleaning to complete that task as I did not do anything yesterday or Tuesday as both days were busy. Also work on the chart for Thomas to add in the new details that I see I had missed doing. Then that is a completed task and on to publishing. Just a quick read especially the Preface and Acknowledgements and it will be posted on my website. I then need to ask if I can replace the earlier document where I placed it last January due to my now being able to see so much better following my cataract surgery (fortunately I only sent it to three places!). I had no idea my eyes were not always catching everything!

Tea drank and it is late for my breakfast but that ski certainly gave me a long night's sleep!

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