The BIFHSGO Conference was as always very well run and the speakers excellent. I did actually listen all day as I worked on the cross over points getting ready to rephase my grandparents. I really did not have very much knowledge on Workhouses. I didn't realize they were so sad actually although books have been written. Cottage homes were not really discussed so perhaps were new in the late 1800s early 1900s. Some of the other children, my great Aunt Sarah mentioned, had had fathers in the military that had died leaving them as orphans as their mothers had passed away that lived in the home with her as she and May were there the longest. Sarah did not remember her mother at all (she was only one year of age when she died) and she was only four when her father died. But she had four older siblings. I heard a lot but probably did not retain a great deal as I just have my grandmother and her siblings who experienced the Cottage Homes. The rest of my people were farmers/tradesmen in that generation.
I haven't decided if I will attend today. I could do it the same way; listening while I work on my re-phasing preparation. I do not want to get behind as I also need to work on the photo albums. Life is so busy; amazing really how busy one's life can be. Doorbell rang yesterday and later when I checked for mail discovered a flyer from the local High School (probably something to do with collecting at Hallowe'en). I do not answer my door anymore unless I asked the individual to come. I have moved back from involvement in the world; it is time. I shall only watch and listen. I have committed enough time to my local area and my duty is just to maintain what I have and keep it up. When that isn't possible then it is time to move for sure.
Working on the cross over points and adding in the known just as boxes with lengths of matching DNA by cousins is working very well actually. Chromosome 12, like the others, has a number of known matches and for this one it is probably 60 to 80% of each sibling. Having the images from 23 and Me showing the matching (full and half between siblings), the matching from FT DNA and the matching with My Heritage along with Ancestry and finally the pictures from Living DNA is giving me a really good overall view of the two chromosomes inherited from our parents. They only have the two chromosomes from their parents which they recombine and pass onto each of us as one on to each of us in different ways. There are no missing lengths from our parents now with the cousins adding in what they received from their parents who are all related to my parents (indeed just from five siblings the chromosomes were mostly complete (just a few spots here and there). Could AI have done it better? What AI needs is my input asking the right questions in the right order and supplying AI with data that is prepared for AI to best assimilate it and then give answers. Fascinating really and spending time with my daughter has honed some of that thinking. I think AI is one of the most exciting new items of our generation.
These boxes are all my known cousins but again on this chromosome there are in total 96 matches including the known but what remains not marked will certainly be added to with all of this data. Could I write a program to do this work? My programming ability is probably still there I just haven't done it for quite a while. Perhaps I will consider it but I would still want to go in and look at each match carefully to see what I can glean from Ancestry Trees (and others) along the way (old fashioned genealogy is still very very useful). Because this is a story about people and it is the book that I am writing about people up to the 1921 Census or 1920 or whatever the last date of such things in the countries from which my relatives descend and that is primarily looking at the DNA results from the British Isles with cousins around the world testing at all these companies. The American cousins (very distant) are fascinating (and it is the Blake matches that come up that will draw my attention; they are few in number as the number of Blake members descendant of the Andover Blake family is few (if any as the family was so small in the mid 1700s) leaving the United Kingdom for other places prior to the 1900s). I do have close cousins (up to fourth cousins) in the United States in particular in my Buller-Taylor line as well as my Pincombe-Rowcliffe and Rew-Siderfin line. Earlier with the Sorenson Database there were a number of interesting matches way back when I first got into this project of DNA/genetic genealogy and that was the spice that left little bits of enticement which certainly drew me in very quickly as the DNA companies formed and offered testing. Then there was my mother and our last discussion which centered on this idea of doing the Family DNA. I had explained to her at that time that it wasn't a matter of just my older brother and I doing our DNA we would need input from at least three perhaps four others but at that time we were still six siblings as my oldest brother passed away in 1999. I did try to test his daughter but my sister in law was not interested. I would have had half then of that brother. I think it is exciting to know that one's relatives are forever memorialized in these databases in a way that was never possible before. I remember Edward and I having a discussion in 2005 when we first talked about doing DNA. That was one item when I mentioned to him this idea of being memorialized in a database (so long as these companies last); this idea of a forever presence in the world that he really liked. He remained absolutely amazed to see how I changed from absolutely no interest in genealogy to a 100% interest in looking at all of these records.
But our DNA will tell the story of Homo sapiens past far far into the future.
Time to make tea and do my solitaire puzzles.
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