Winter wonderland

Woke up this morning to the ethereal beauty of a winter wonderland out my window. Absolutely magnificent to look at and breathtaking in its beauty. There is nothing quite like a fresh snowfall for pure beauty. It will melt today although still snowing slightly. But that is the treats one is greeted with in April and they are as much enjoyed as the first falls of snow last year before we started into our long period of winter in the northern hemisphere. 

Cleaning all accomplished for the top floor. The main floor and the basement will be completed today. I also worked on the matches which was quite successful with again a couple of interesting ones. I was able to place one of them with accuracy in terms of actual family line going back to the most recent common ancestor. My set of discards is growing though with eleven in the folder now and I have completed about 30 of the extracted matches. I may look at Living DNA today and see if there are more items to extract. There are a lot of Blake but the hundreds and hundreds of great grandchildren for John Blake and Ann (Farmer) Blake probably predominate. We will see as I go through them. In terms of Pincombe quite a few of the children of Robert Pincombe and Elizabeth (Rowcliffe) Pincombe emigrated with one emigrating to the United States, three headed to Canada, one to Australia, one died young, one remained a bachelor in England and just the youngest remained and his family are located in England. The Rawlings are all pretty much still in England but some emigrated to Australia and a few to Canada. They would be the descendants of William Rawlings and Elizabeth (Lywood) Rawlings. The Buller family has spread all over the world although many still remain in England. But all of my grandmother siblings left England and many of her father's siblings also left England. Two of them emigrated to the United States and three to Canada. But with my first people not coming until 1818 and then the next in 1832, followed by the next in 1850 and then 1908 and 1913 my history on this side of the ocean is relatively short from a genealogical viewpoint. 

Teatime and solitaire puzzles are next.

Cleaning day once again

Monday and cleaning day and it will be the top floor. Separating out the floors with the basement attached to the main floor has worked extremely well. The water meter has a new counter installed this past week and I can put everything back now as it was. I moved everything to give a clear path to the meter and the rugs were moved away as well. A lot of work but I guess a new meter is a step forward in time! The last meter was on for 47 years. The people who bought the house next door appeared to have moved in. 

The Church Service at Hythe on the Dover coast was very much a trip back to my childhood days as the service was very like those of my youth. The priest gestured to the window whilst talking mentioning that you could see the coast of France across The English Channel (or La Manche as the French name the Channel (in English that is The Channel)). That was a surprise as we stood on the White Cliffs of Dover to discover just how close the French shore was. I mean I have seen pictures but being there is something else. We were taking the ferry to France on our way to our European Tour back in 2010. 

The Fifth Sunday in Lent has now been celebrated and next Sunday the last in Lent and more commonly called Palm Sunday as we begin Holy Week which brings us to Easter once again. The most important Feast Day in the Christian Church Year. Prayers continuing for the peoples of Myanmar with a death count well over 3000 now and still searching for survivors but mostly recovery now. Prayers for the Americans living in areas threatened by flooding. That is the new world of the 2000s really where we know everything that happens as it happens and we are part of it because like John Donne wrote back in the early 1600s:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends`s or of thine own were. Any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." 

The world has changed a great deal and so many peoples have moved from one continent to another. The largest percentage of those who have moved have been the Europeans but this past century has seen huge movement out of Africa once again as the lands there become so affected by Climate Change. America is and remains the most mixed set of Homo Sapiens on earth with peoples from all over the world forming the nucleus of their population.

Today continuing to work on the matches as I move towards the re-phasing of my grandparent's DNA.  To date the changes have been slight or none mostly but occasionally I do find where I was mistaken in a placement in the past and it is clarified by new matches from second or third cousins in a line that just hadn't appeared in the testing companies earlier. But it is rare for sure. I re-phased every year from 2014 to 2020 and now five years later I am finally getting back to it. I have made a couple of starts at it but time and circumstance rendered them incomplete so back to the 2020 drawing board. I still need to draw out the matches in FT DNA and Living DNA not yet collected. Blake does tend to be the largest set of matches mostly because John Blake and Ann Farmer had ten children and over fifty grandchildren which quickly became over 300 great grandchildren and they married in 1823 so a lot of descendants of that couple. 

Must make my tea, early today just 5:27 am.  Minus 4 degrees celsius and we are in for a colder spell and perhaps snow as well but it is just early April and pretty normal conditions for this part of Canada.

Church at Hythe today (near Dover, England)

All these online Anglican Church services week after week are most interesting. The one this week will be at Hythe (along the Dover coast of the English Channel). I shall attend later. 

Yesterday good accomplishment on the matches into my various recording files. I also put a few into my holding file because they are not complete (missing one or two siblings where the match is a known one from several testing companies). Why, a mystery perhaps but also logical given that the five results are not from the same testing company. One is original with My Heritage (mine) but the other four are coming in from two different testing companies. I have anticipated this already so will have this file that I can look at if I am curious. This match I am currently working on is actually a very ancient match in the Blake family which stretches back probably as much as ten known generations (sounds weird but it does happen that a length of chromosome remains with a family line achieving success generation after generation of expression). Within the Blake line I do have several cousin marriages which have decreased the look of the generational difference as much as five generations on occasion (endogamy). The length (around 30 to 35 cM) does not include anything of a nefarious nature which has also probably given it the ability to express itself generation after generation. These lengths can fool you on occasion but after doing this for more than a decade I realized a while back that I am looking at quite distant relatives with this length and it is shown as a "common built up area" on this particular chromosome length. Knowing that my Blake family was in the same place (Andover and area) probably for thousands of years adds to this persistence (many families in the village of Upper Clatford were related to my grandfather in the latter part of the 1800s). Some really good matches are coming out of this work that are known to me. As I re-phase my grandparents once again their inclusion helps to solidify this knowledge about the DNA material passed to my parents from their parents. The value in it all could be absolutely none or very helpful but it is interesting and one does like to do interesting things with their time. 

Going back to work outside the home in 1994 and working until 2008 full time, the street changed around us here very much with lots of new people. When we first moved here the doctor we went to seemed to think that I could be a visitor to welcome people. I said that wasn't really my thing but I was still recovering from my breakdown and easily swayed by the people who were looking after me. That changed quickly as I found that welcoming people was not really my thing for sure and it only lasted a short time. So I never really got to know the people who live around me and that is still pretty much the case although I have a sort of "Hello" relationship with them. Since I do not want to babysit or look after houses during vacations or do any of the things that my husband did chatting away with the neighbours about flowers and such things; my time is spent pretty much on my own except when my children are here which is often enough although my eldest will return to live with me permanently when that happens. My husband was very involved with the things that interested him like being part of the building of Orleans United Church (he was treasurer for ten years and sang in the Choir for fifteen years or so), he had a number of organizations to which he belonged through the years, but he was very active in the Ontario Genealogical Society from the early 1980s until the 2020s and then his online activities were huge as he belonged to many many family societies in the United States (and some in Canada) with his mostly colonial ancestors (although I did notify them they still send the Family Newsletter electronically). Primarily his families were Patriots (with a few loyalists) and came to southwestern Ontario in the 1800s right up until about the late 1820s they were still arriving. That meant a lot of traveling into the United States (particularly New England/New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania) which was interesting although eating out in restaurants a lot is not my thing but I did eventually persuade him that we could just go to the grocery store and buy a meal and take it back to the hotel. But we did eat out a lot. Then our eight European/British Isles trips were fun (a lot of preparation which I generally did so that we could see everything that was around the hotels that we stayed at - that worked really well). Although I certainly miss my husband this quiet time has been good for me in the long run. Not a day goes by that I do not think about all of his research through the years and wish that he had gotten to do even more of it but life does flow that way unfortunately. As I went through his material I actually realized that he had not done any new research for maybe four or five years but spent his time listening to music and especially reviewing our trips with the Powerpoint presentations that I made for him (he asked me to do that). For each trip we had a box of items that he purchased (Edward was definitely a shopper!) which he would have out when he was watching the particular presentations along with all the trip books that he purchased along the way (I did notice that he was doing that but thought he was still doing research). I used to extract his DNA matches into a file for him and he was working on that - he had tested maybe a dozen of his cousins to work on the matches - he could see how five siblings matches made such a difference in how quickly I was able to link families. But now the quiet time of life has come to me and I am enjoying it with my work. 

My work on the five siblings matches will be useful for the books as I have reached the point in writing that I would begin the generational chapters. I am still though working on the earlier chapters with the latin documents that I am transcribing slowly but surely. They will take a while but having the two types of work gives my eyes a rest and perhaps my brain too at times. The brain benefits from different varieties of work. 

On to the matches, breakfast already completed and then Church shortly. 

Money

  I think what people are saying is right; this may be one of the most important elections in my lifetime although I can think of a few that came at very tumultuous times. Getting it right is very important. I hope everyone votes; that is the gift of a democracy that you get to say what you feel at this time. Money is the big evil really; the desire for it is huge and people want so much of it.

Yesterday was a good accomplishment day in terms of working on the matches. I created a file for unused matches because some of them are incomplete as I know that there are areas where more than one sibling match and if that doesn't show up then they go in the file although I will look at them. For the five siblings not all of the tests were done at the same company that I uploaded to My Heritage. I did an original test at My Heritage. I thought about testing my one brother who is the most different to me but he was not well at the time and it was the middle of COVID when I had such thoughts and he lived a seven hour drive away from me and generally I took the kits to him myself and then sent them in for him. He passed sadly in 2020 so that did not get done and four of the five kits are from different testing labs where they chose their own particular set of markers to test. However, there should still be some similarity and there is for many of the matches but as I said for some no and these I look at and then file for the future as I can look at them again. The object of this re-phase is the books actually. I will begin the generations after I complete the latin documents looking at the early history and some of the matches reach incredibly far into the past and I will be using that information in the book. For instance I have a number of cousin marriages in the Blake line going back into the 1500s resulting in a stronger presence of Blake in matches beyond the sixth cousin although very small so perhaps suspect but none the less interesting. 

I also went for a lovely walk and picked up a few items at the grocery store which included a piece of fresh salmon which was quite lovely. Along with a sweet potato and broccoli, dinner was quite pleasant. That was my weightlifting for the day as the bag was full (freezer bag) including butter, avocado margarine (wonderful stuff), bananas, oranges, and two fresh tomatoes.  I will eat one of those tomatoes today but the plan was to have it with my dinner but I forgot plus I was stuffed anyway. I am still eating my Banana Bread for dessert so that was also enjoyed. The walk both ways comes to about 3 km and it was a couple of degrees above zero degrees celsius so a perfect day for walking. 

Today continuing to work on the matches and sort them into their grandparent line and into my flat excel files and paint them in DNA Painter. Some of the matches are quite spectacular for third cousins with good strong matches between at least one of the five siblings and usually more. Having such a diversity of results between siblings in terms of inheritance has produced matches on every chromosome with no areas not covered by matches. I am very lucky that way with this information which permits me to fully re-create the DNA passed from the four grandparents through our parents to us. Not having any first cousins looked like a limiting ability to do that but in reality the second and third cousins are providing a huge amount of data. 

Must get my tea and then begin.

Still 200,000 without hydro in Ontario.

 A warmer day in Ottawa today but the nights are still pretty chilly. Hopefully not too much longer before the hydro is back up again for the about 200,000 customers which could mean half a million people or more. Ontario is a large province (the largest population in a province/territory in Canada  of approximately 16 million people). But that is actually good news because there are more people going to the other provinces now since the population of Canada is 41.5 million. Everyone coming here just wanted to go to Toronto and it is just too big now.

My eyesight has taken another small leap as the ceiling has become so much deeper (i.e. it just looked flat before although I knew that it was a "popcorn" ceiling) to the eye, the little blobs of plaster are so much more distinct than they were right after my poor eye cleared from the first surgery. The really big item I noticed before surgery was the sun in March; I used to hate going out in March the last maybe ten years even with sunglasses because the sun was so strong. But that has disappeared amazing really what cataract surgery does for a person. No migraines either which is a treat. I always get this period of maybe four or five days when my eyes feel strained and then suddenly I am seeing even better. Perhaps that is how an infant's eyes develop who knows; they cannot tell us. 

Good progress on the matches and I am into sorting them into my various files, painting the matches in DNA Painter and preparing my "known" matches for re-phasing my grandparents and then working on my great grandparents. It will take a while to work through these more than 300 new matches that I have acquired since 2020. I have not collected the matches in FT DNA for a while, never collected them in Living DNA until yesterday I had a look (extracted one) and of course we no longer can collect that data in 23 and Me. There isn't any data in Ancestry either but I do use Ancestry differently with a lovely flat excel file of the matches for the five siblings side by side and it includes the information on the known matches. They are colour coded by grandparent line as well as a line of text stating the most recent common ancestor. I have  extracted just over 1000 matches from my kit and the kits of three of my siblings. Now that there are so many I may separate out the four grandparent lines into sub-files as the information is useful - many people test at more than one site and the trees on ancestry are quite interesting. All of this looking at phasing/re-phasing does play a role in my book writing as I reached the point where I would begin the generations although I am back in both books writing early history as I read the documents that I have acquired through the years in Latin. My Latin really has come a long way although it is still difficult to read the old text. I did do a small chapter on autosomal DNA in the Siderfin Book just to link all the families together coming down from Robert Siderfin and Elizabeth (Question) Siderfin. I have not looked at the female lines coming down from the cousins of this Robert Siderfin. I will leave that to another - that was a lot of concentration on a 3x great grandmother (Elizabeth (Betty) Siderfin who married John Rew 30 Jan 1792 at Selworthy, Somerset and their daughter Elizabeth (a twin) married John Pincombe 9 Jan 1834 at Bishops Nympton, Devon.

So today more matches to assign. I  must get out the paper recycling as this is the day.

Blake Newsletter published and working on the last sibling

 The Blake Newsletter was published yesterday and it was fairly brief. No new testers for yDNA Blake and really that is what is needed in order to really narrow in on the older yDNA Blake groups in the British Isles. That is up to time for sure and there are more pressing matters at the  moment for everyone. Still publishing the BMBs for Andover but I have only transcribed into the mid 1700s (although I have the fiche) so it will soon come to an end perhaps by the end of this year not sure - would need to check that out. 

Worked on the matches and completed the next sibling overview and working on the last sibling - perhaps 1/3 through. Should finish it today and then need to assign the matches to my databases and there are four places in which these matches get organized into the chromosome they match, painted in DNA Painter (very much my go to place to put matches as the visual is great), then also into a file for known matches to prepare that for the re-phasing of my grandparents and phasing of my great grandparents and the last is my list of matches by grandparents and the unknowns. The unknowns are actually quite a small group. So a huge task to now assign these 314 matches to date and it will take me a little while to do that. But the calming effect on my brain has been great actually. My mind has been very busy these past few months. 

Yesterday the exercise was a workout first thing, then yoga before breakfast, followed by rowing mid morning and then a run followed by a walk around lunch time and finally calisthenics about an hour before dinner - Cardio Load was 304 and steps 13,190. I only ran for 25 minutes and walked for ten minutes and that reduced it from the usual 16,000. A good day though and today will be workout already done, yoga next, then weightlifting, run and walk, biking or yoga not sure yet in the latter part of the afternoon. Exceeding the suggested cardio load but it is pretty hard to stay at 71-176 if you run. Just a run is half of that. 

Behind on my email and must catch up with that although anything that needs to be done is done. Generally people write to thank me for a will/wills they found on my blog or something like that and I do not think that a reply adds anything to that so generally do not. I do need to get the Siderfin Charting book up online on the sites that I put the Siderfin Book on and will think about that. Publishing Blake and Pencombe will be different; it is more of a family thing (close family) but time will tell. Probably I can blog the chapters that are more universal to the Pencombe/Blake families. I can embargo the material as well and have it available that way for family members. Lots of items to consider there. 

Up early and I may just have my breakfast sooner rather than later. I  have this tendency to get started working and then it is 8 or 9 before I get my breakfast - hunger generally drives that. 

My mind is still up in the air about the election - I do think that the needs of youth should drive the election more than the baby boomers. Both of the major parties appear to be into this idea of a national energy corridor so will have to continue examining what else they are saying. Both parties are going to increase the militarization of Canada and that is really important; has been for about fourty years! I think we continue with the purchase of all F-35s but we should be also thinking about the next defensive aircraft (I am sure the military already are!).  It actually was much easier when I just always voted Conservative but I also think we need to look at the issues and how people will handle them and so my commitment to party has been replaced by a careful examination of what they are saying. Then the consideration of whether or not they will follow through on their commitments. I think the greater importance needs to be placed on the energy corridor and not letting current legislation slow that down. If the First Nations are onboard with these pipelines as well then we should get it going as soon as the ground is ready especially the Eastern Pipeline. Certainly we are getting a clear picture of the aims of the Conservative Party in this regard. However, the ground is still frozen here in Ottawa!

Prayers continuing for the people trapped followed the earthquake in Myanmar and Thailand. The deaths in Myanmar are now over 3000 and still people are trapped. Prayers for the souls of those who died.

Well the cleaning got completed at least

Yesterday was a busy day but I did not complete the Blake Newsletter - my mind just didn't want to settle to it but will do it today. I did work on matches and I am complete now once again although I only found a couple for me that got missed by using the wrong sort. Just two siblings left and will work on them today. I am seeing that my own work is taking over from my dedication to my newsletters. I did wonder how long they would last and likely they will last for a while longer but the search and retrieval of information that bore interest to all of the members of the groups is weakening. Is it because I am heading for 80 or at this moment in time doing the phasing/re-phasing is top of my mind?  It is a heavy duty task collecting up these matches for five siblings and one that you could contemplate using AI but it needs that human touch looking at with the knowledge that is in my brain of the various families. It can not just be readily assigned and examined in a fruitful way. I do see the limitations in AI but I also see the assets and they are huge I do have to say that. Office work, regular, would be accomplished in a very routinized fashion that would strip out any human interaction that just complicates it sometimes.

My cardio yesterday was way over target; cleaning is hard work! The recommendation was to take it a bit easy today but I rather think I will do my yoga soon as I have not yet had my breakfast and then a bit of work and then rowing. I am up to 600 rowing motions back and forth so 1200 in total which amazes me but I just decided to see what I could do in 15 minutes although this takes me closer to 16 minutes but it is a nice round number and that works for me. It is just a simple rowing machine good for an old person. One quickly loses one's muscularity in just a couple of days you see a decline. Then later I will run my 30 minutes and walk for 10 to 15. In the afternoon I will do calisthenics. That pretty much completes my day but will likely put me over in cardio once again. Sometimes I am in suggested range. I think it goes by age and I have always been an active person especially I enjoyed my 1.2 km walk home from the bus - although I bought a more expensive bus pass that would drop me practically at my door I only did that so that I could take any bus at Hurdman on my way home and always walked to and from the highway. Coming over the bridge in the various seasons was delightful actually. I still enjoy the views that one gets just looking into the sky - it is marvelous. 

However, I must get some work done and especially it is breakfast time! Prayers for those still trapped in Myanmar and for the souls of those who died. The numbers have increased steadily over the days.

The Lenten Message today

Prayers for the people of Myanmar and Thailand still trapped and hopefully more will be found alive.

 I always enjoy my daily Lenten Messages from PWRDF now Alongside Hope and todays was exceptional written by Jonathan Rowe who is an Anglican priest in Newfoundland and Labrador. One line particularly stood out for me:

"We should seek to build systems that reflect divine generosity, creating opportunities for everyone to flourish, not just for a few to profit."

Perhaps it is because I am female that I see the world from a mother's point of view and particularly I look at Canada from that mother's point of view. As I have often mentioned my father and his family were all born in England coming to Canada in 1913 where my grandfather, a blacksmith was employed by the Grand Trunk Railway at Stratford and then London and this became the Canadian National Railway. He worked for them until he retired in 1940. My mother's family is my Canadian line with just three individuals - herself, her father and her other - all born in Canada.  Each in their own time married an emigrant from England (one must remember in that time frame that coming to Canada from England was like moving from one county to another). My first ancestors to Canada (although my 3x great grandfather George Lywood served with the 23rd Regiment of Foot in Halifax in 1806-7 he returned to Europe with his unit to fight in the Napoleonic Wars including Waterloo!) came in 1818 (in the late summer or early fall I suspect just from the records) to London Township, Middlesex County, Upper Canada and they were the Routledge family from Bewcastle, Cumberland. Their daughter, Mary Ann, was fourteen years of age at that time. She married Robert Gray in 1834 and he was a new arrival (located at Etton, East Riding of Yorkshire in 1831/2) setting up a farm in London Township. Their third child, Grace Gray, was my first born ancestor in Canada (1839) and she married William Robert Pincombe (his family including his father John, mother Elizabeth (Rew), and four siblings arrived in early March 1850 purchasing a farm in Westminster Township, Middlesex County, Upper Canada. William Robert was 13 years of age when he arrived at the Port of New York 7 Jan 1850 traveling to stay with his uncle Robert Pincombe who had emigrated to the United States in 1835. Why they chose Canada over the United States I have no idea; no one ever said but they did. The only child to live to adulthood in the family of William Robert Pincombe and Grace (Gray) Pincombe was John Routledge Pincombe (my grandfather) born in 1872. So for me, I am sort of a recent arrival (1st generation Canadian on my father's side and fourth generation on my mother's side). My Anglican Church roots are deep mostly fostered by my grandfather who lived with us when I was a child. The ancient history of the Celtic Church of England was deeply ingrained in him going back thousands of years as it existed prior to our Lord Jesus Christ but according to legend in that first century became Christian. At the Council of Arles three Christian Celtic British bishops participated in this council established by the Roman Church (Eborius of York, Restitutus of London and Adelphius of Lincoln/Colchester in 314 CE. But definitely the Christian Celtic Church increased steadily throughout England during the Roman occupation. 

So these words today rather rang a bell in my mind as to how I would love to see Canada continue to prosper; all of us. Like most people in Canada, I did see the United States of America and Canada "walking together" so to speak and perhaps in the future that will happen again but at the moment the interest by the President is in a closed shop around the United States of America looking inward rather than outward. As a result we must move ahead and the debate during this present election time is whether we go with the Baby Boomers who have driven this economy in Canada from childhood to the present or do we go with youth which will rebuild our country devastated by free trade which eliminated our  much smaller industries as we gradually merged with the economy of the United States over my lifetime. Fighting tariffs is a losing battle in my thought (we just avoid them); we need to move beyond this close relationship maintaining what works (and what does not cost us a lot of money; the auto industry has cost us a lot of money through the years and will continue to do so into the future no matter what happens) and letting go of what does not. Creating our "National Energy Corridor" is an excellent idea and I like it. Building more homes is a luxury; staying with parents means babysitters and not having to put all of one's money into a house which can be done later (children love grandparents). All we do is enlarge our cities; increase the debt burden as new schools have to be built with the existing being closed. But the energy corridor is so very very important. It means employment that corridor, it means a bringing together of the provinces/territories in a way that was gradually being eroded by our shipping everything south rather than east and west. The profits will belong to the people of Canada and we will pay off our national debt rather than saddling our youth with even more debt to build them homes. It is a time to grab hold of the future and bring it into the present with a national energy corridor. As usual the Liberals and the NDP only think of increasing that national debt on our youth by building housing which can wait as the energy corridor should be our first concern at this time as it has the greatest return to support our economy (it will include far more than the transfer of oil east and west but also railways; mineral extraction etc.). 

Cleaning day two as yesterday saw the basement and the main floor completed. The top floor will be today's task along with working on the matches. I am reviewing my matches now with just two other siblings to review and then on to the task of re-phasing my grandparents and working on my great-grandparents. It is a mind calming process for me at this time like my sudoku except I am getting work done! I am also thinking about painting once again but will not over task myself as I approach 80. 

The Blake Newsletter is due today and I will also be working on that. Again it will be short because the book is my primary work now on Blake. But I will review the yDNA results once again but they are now starting to emerge as cut in stone so to speak. They have proven that there are a number of founding Blake lines in the British Isles first off and secondly that number increased steadily from the first notations of Blake in the records. With the greatest increase being in the 1200s to the 1400s. As surnames were acquired my own line at some point probably around the beginning of the 1300s took on the surname Blake which makes sense given the Hunter-Gatherer yDNA results of my brothers. 

Tea is drank and time for breakfast; first yoga whilst the oats soak in the milk. I do love my breakfast and it is by far my favourite meal of the day. It has a long history as I used to arise early when my father and grandfather were off to work at 6:30 and before they left they would leave this little one of four and five years of age a big bowl of steaming oatmeal. I just ate it like that as a child - no sugar, no fruit and definitely no chocolate. I can remember the warm cereal in my stomach at that young age. Their words as they left to go to work of "be careful it is hot" stay with me even now.