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.
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