Another glorious Sunday with Venus shinning brightly but slightly behind the trees. Always always the view of the stars is a gift to humankind keeping us centered in the universe around us and our protection of the planet ever needs to be in our minds. But yet I continue in my mind to see a pipeline to the east and us refining our own oil for use by us in our gas guzzling cars at this moment in time a natural progress for humanity; we will move to better and better useage of the planet's goodness but it does take time. We must concentrate on Canada right now; it is our duty; it is our life blood.
Venus is lower and lower in the sky as winter approaches and the full leaf blocks the view which won't be the case in a few months. Church on YouTube once again this morning. I feel blessed to live in a world that has moved along from basic television in my childhood to the computer age which I welcomed in the mid 1960s learning Fortran and then COBOL and other languages. I was programming in my work in the 60s and 70s. We bought our first home computer in 1984. But in terms of being online the world moves faster and faster in that regard. We need to be wise though as we read all of this online material.
The good news is I did publish the Blake Newsletter yesterday and it should soon be in the mailboxes of the members of the Blake Study at FT DNA.
Continued with my In common ancestors on Ancestry with just twenty left to go in the third siblings results and the fourth sibling to do which is around 95 matches. I have learned a few items as I worked my way through the matches. A larger amount of Knight passed to my siblings that I had missed the first time through. Blake-Knight have the same colour in the grandparent phasing chart and we have one very large match - at least some of us do (myself in particular) considering I still do not know precisely where this individual is matching us in terms of a family chart. I do know that we share John Blake and Ann Farmer with some of the matches, we also share Ellis Knight and Eleanor Knight with other matches but there is a third MRCA (most recent common ancestor) and I am quite sure this match is on his mother's side and I am starting to hone in on the Horlock family (the Horlock family matches myself and my siblings in the Rawlings family (where Rawlings includes my grandmother's father who was likely a Cotterill (and I have moved to that statement a little more strongly looking at these matches in Ancestry where I left the tree blank above my grandmother on the paternal side and Ancestry has suggested not just once but four to thirteen times within the four siblings matches (variety within these four matches) that I was correct in an earlier thought. The children of the possible father would be my grandmother's half siblings but all were born in the latter quarter of the 1800s. The grandchildren of these children would be my father's half first cousins and it would be half second cousins who would match my siblings and myself and thus far the thirteen who match me are all half third cousins so our shared ancestor is still a long way back from the possible father. So interesting for sure and I probably would never have gone on the trek except for discovering the medical history of the possible father and it is good to know the medical history of your ancestors - our life is not controlled by them but the knowledge can be of an assistance in avoidance of some items that contribute to their illnesses. Because my father did not marry until he was 33 and he was into his 40s when I was born most of his half second cousins were likely a decade plus older than he and my grandfather was 29 when my father was born (my grandmother was one year younger than her husband). I do notice the age differential in the group as most are at least 2x removed or more). The size of the matches (considering TIMBER and half cousins) is quite surprising. I have not really paid a great deal of attention to the DNA results in the companies where we can see the results in terms of the likely MRCA except where I know the individual and the relatives that we share. I may do that now; I just haven't done it. There is still a suspicion on my part though with regard to the exact person and it will probably never be known. After all these were already cousins to my grandmother due to the marriage of Mary Rawlins and Stephen Cotterell 28 Jan 1764 at Enford, Wiltshire and his known descent from William Cotterel who was also the father of William Cotterell the ancestor of the other Cotterill family. So it is just somewhat of a mystery to be honest. It is the size of the matches that lead you somewhat but you have to be cautious even with that unless you actually have a known line relationship. Looking at the Cotterill family trees on Ancestry this is perhaps a commoner name than I ever realized as it appears in several different areas of England. So on the back burner once again for sure and definitely my great grandmother (Ada Bessie Cotteril Rawlings's mother) would have likely known her Cotterell cousins living in the Enford area of Wiltshire although I was thinking it was Mary (Rawlins) Cotterell and her husband Stephen Cotterell and their family that moved to Australia quite early actually. As I travelled through memory lane I discovered that Mary Cottrell (their grand daughter) married her cousin William Rawlins (2nd cousins) and it was this family that went to Australia - interesting actually and their very large family (nine children) were all born in Australia. So an interesting trip through my legacy file (not online) which includes all of this family in Australia and I do have some interestingly large matches with them considering the separation William Rawlins married to Mary Cottrell were my 1st cousin 4 times removed and 2nd cousin 4 times removed respectively. Amazing the effect of endogamy. So I moved towards that thought of the actual father of my grandmother but this has definitely moved me back into the thought of perhaps even. It is surprising how some sticky bits of DNA can move through a family line generation after generation.
Today I will continue with the matches into the Database. I also want to spend sometime on the crossovers for the grandparent DNA re-phasing and get that ready to go. I have been checking into the other databases to see if there is anything new that I need to pick up so perhaps by mid month I will be ready to re-phase the grandparents and then work on the great-grandparents.
Our quarterly DNA meeting at BIFHSGO was yesterday and a good discussion on AI. My use of it is mostly looking items up. I will eventually use it to query my databases especially when I am phasing my great grandparents. I have been very selective with my meta data so as to enable specialized searches and every database has a sort field that will allow its return to the exact order in which it was produced. I produce all of my single files on each match that I retain in a database in a fixed way using the same metadata so as to enable searches through those files. They are all sorted with a key at the front - Bl for Blake, Bu for Buller, P for Pincombe and R for Rawlings as well as the inevitable U for Unknown but there are only a few in there actually. Sometimes with the Living DNA I have overlap where the descendant is matching me on two of my lines and I simply include that in the key order and I always put male first and then female so my Blake is my father and the Buller is my maternal grandmother, the P is my mother and the R is my paternal grandmother. Again I am strict in how I organize these so that Bl would proceed placing that one first always, P is second and then R is third and Bu is fourth. It is just being orderly so that I know what to look for in terms of a search. AI is great but it isn't our brain and after 23 years of doing genealogy and a huge amount of it working with DNA results I have a lot of insights into the data but AI is faster for sure. As one of the members of the group mentioned yesterday; it is the queries, what is asked and how they are ordered that controls AI. Everything AI does is a result of what we ask for and the ability of AI to consume huge amounts of information is a reasonable extent of computing ability and we must harness it carefully, thoughfully and meticulously. We need to remember always that we influence the emphasis and the significance of anything just by our wording and AI will pick up on that and the path can not be quite as good if we dictate in advance what we think the results will be - we must always have an open mind working with AI so as to get the most out of the randomness ability of AI. An excellent discussion and it is always nice to see the people once again that have attended the meetings through the years plus the co-ordinator is my cousin and she does an excellent job managing this group. Thank you to Susan Courage for another great meeting.
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