Continuing with the matches

On page 8 of the matches now and they are primarily 2 segments with a few 1 segment so will be doing the entire page it does appear although half or more will likely just be placed into the grandparent line or in some cases two grandparents lines as either or or simply insufficient data. As one reaches toward the end of this project in terms of extraction, impatience does enter in just a little but squashed it and moved on. Must be patient working my way through these last 50. Then the task of assigning them into the different files and there are  225 new files. Also back to the other testing companies to check out any new matches and then on to phasing of the grandparents once again but most importantly I hope to phase the great grandparents as a result of all the work at Living DNA since this population most represents my lines going back in that I am 100% English going back many many generations until I reach my Scot lines, my Huguenot lines, my unknown lines that appear to be Scandinavian/Germanic but they are way back with the Huguenot having a known date around 1480 and my Scot around 1400 before they came to England. Is there Irish in there or is it just English lines that went to Ireland and then came back again - all five of us show some Irish as a percentage and that includes at Living DNA. 

Shopping yesterday for essentials - batteries for the smoke detectors (will install them today), lights for the rangehood over the stove (one was burned out), watermelon lozenges (this dental appliance dries out my mouth), and some food. That completed it and we were done in about 2 hours. It always takes such a long time to do everything. Lots of rain this July so not a lot of kayaking or walking outside. Unusual not to be in a drought situation actually. 

Prayers continuing for all those who died in the floods in Texas (how sad so many children) and prayers continuing as the search for survivors continues (last noted was 170 people still missing in one county alone). Our American neighbours and cousins in my case have so many natural disasters during a year. Their lives have been very difficult this year. 

Yesterday we also took four boxes of CDs and one stack of records to Salvation Army. Hope they sell well for them - Edward would like that. They were his collections and I want to keep everything but I need to move. This house is too big for me and there are so many families looking for this price range of house and so the downsizing will continue once again until I am able to move. It has been a lovely family home for us and Edward never wanted to leave it really. He loved that huge garden but his need for a pacemaker way back in 2012 meant that he could no longer maintain it as he wanted to although the pacemaker did help but my lifestyle changed rapidly from one of writing to one of gardening. I am not good at it and do not get the joy out of it that he did but I do try to keep the lawns cut and the weeds down somewhat and let his flowers continue to bloom year after year. 

Tea drank and solitaire puzzles next to do. Another day of intermittent exercise and working on the matches extraction.  

One's pension

The majority of one's pension (unless you never worked) is money earned by you and invested by you. The only give away amount by the federal government is the OAS (and if you worked you have helped to produce this as well since when you worked you supported the Old Age Security (OAS) for the old in your generation). But in general it is money that is surplus to what you have earned and saved for retirement through your life. The TFSA (created by the Conservative Government in 2009 and this is a really good idea) is perhaps the best tool yet in the retirement toolkit and should be utilized if you are able from the age of 18 years on - instead of buying cigarettes and other junk put it into the TFSA for your enjoyment in retirement. You can invest inside of the TFSA and one of the really good ideas that Pierre Poilievre put forward was a bonus amount on top of the current $7000 per year that you can put into the TFSA if you invest in Canadian projects. Being able to put away $10,000 a year from the age of 18 to the age of 70 (and not counting the interest accrued) is $520,000 (the interest would potentially make this much much larger over a period of 52 years giving you a nest egg that is not taxed when you take it out). So we need to ensure that our pension money is directed towards Canadian projects to really make this growing Canada aspect work. This isn't for us, the old, this is for the future and a down payment on the success of all the grandchildren and great grandchildren who live here. 

Prayers continuing for those who died in the floods in Texas and prayers continuing for the missing still the count is at 160 with over 100 dead. How incredibly sad that so many of them are children. 

Cleaning all accomplished and the Fit Bit tells you so much about how you spent your day amazingly. For instance I definitely over did it cleaning and so my sleep was somewhat disturbed as too much exercise can do that but the compromise gives me three days of cleaning which is just too time consuming and so I continue knowing that the overwork will be noted in my restless sleep and move on. 

Today continuing with the collection of matches for the final sibling and I continue on page 6 of the matches at Living DNA. I suspect that I will only do to page 7 as there are fewer matches for this sibling. A couple of interesting ones yesterday in the Blake line. There is a length on one chromosome that tends to be there for every Blake result in the Andover line. Interesting to see how far back it will go as there is a group of Americans who have tested on Living DNA with this particular length. As the knowledge of DNA grows individual lengths will become interesting and our understanding of the health and well-being of people will be greatly enhanced. DNA does not control how we live our life medically speaking but rather life-style but good genes from the beginning are also an asset so long as one has a good life-style which must include a good amount of exercise and maintaining a good weight for your age and size. 

I am dropping into 23 and Me most days to see if there will be any changes in how we can look at our results since I have access to my own and two of my brothers (I will never regret spending the money to test at so many places in particular my one brother who was my co-investigator in all of this). 

The 21st century will be exciting although at the moment it is totally clogged by financial happenings out of the control of most countries. In being benevolent following the Second World War some of our economies became warped one might say and lop-sided and we do need to restore ours to that system where we produce many things locally because external trade (although it can be a game changer for some people and even for some countries where their product level is high in valuable products) is not the most important item in a country but rather that it can produce what it needs in order to be the most productive for themselves - external trade is a bonus. 

 Tea drank and solitaire puzzles next on the list. Then breakfast. This day is beginning late for sure. 

On to cleaning day two

Yesterday cleaning day one all accomplished with one extra my daughter cleaned out the large closet where most of my husband's boxes are stored and so that is dust free once again. It is a large task and I am thankful that she took time out of her research to do that for me. I always mean to do it but she is stronger for sure. So the top floor all completed. 

Still in my mind this idea of moving and it is more concrete than it has been for quite a while. But still it will not be before spring likely; spring would be a nice time as that is when I am the most likely to overdo it in the garden although I noticed this year I didn't do that. I am just not a gardener but one side of the yard looks pretty much as Edward had kept it; the other side for some reason was badly eroded by the fence building and it was an area mostly used for gardening tomatoes, peppers and herbs so there was a lot of bare ground there anyway and weeds will always fill it. The spring flowers came up not quite as plentiful as they too suffered from the erosion but they did bloom; some of them. What will a new place look like? It will be smaller (one floor possibly, a bungalow) out of the city and with a small lot although woods would be fine. It will be near a waterway for kayaking. But primarily it will be smaller and hence I must continue to downsize although furniture wise I have downsized a great deal so it is the boxes and the 40 albums of pictures and more boxes. That is a process I will begin this summer as well. I will strip out all but the family pictures. I will collect up all the pictures of Edward's nieces and their families to send to them. That should reduce the size of the binders considerably and perhaps by as much as one half. I am actually aiming for ten binders of family pictures from the mid 1960s when we met to 2000 when the switch was made to digital and no more printing. So one binder for four years and since the early years have fewer pictures it will likely be one binder for every two to three years and then perhaps one binder from the mid 1960s to just before the mid 1970s when there are considerably fewer pictures.  So there is a plan in motion once again for downsizing. This house could be home to a nice sized family perhaps with the four bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms. Edward maintained it very well and I helped him with painting so it could be a move-in fairly quickly and just the basement perhaps to do work on. Edward never wanted to really finish the basement and it is roughed in so easy to move forward to doing more with that. The backyard is huge and nice for children although so many spend time on their computers now. I would have put a pool in and that would be a good choice to get children outside for sure! But other than that an easy move in I suspect. That is important I think. I hope to find the same once we get looking. All my stuff fits into my one room concept that I have pretty much maintained now since I retired. I am not attached to the dishes and everything that belonged to my mother or my grandmothers is in two glass fronted bookcases but there is still a lot of Edward's collections with the coffee mugs and his mother's dishes. But I already told my daughter they are hers and do not think about them. 

Yesterday I completed page five of the matches and will work on six today starting once again with 1 segment and working my way up - gradually as I work through these matches the four or five dwindle away and some are just tagged insufficient data or nothing at all. This sibling has fewer matches so the task may be completed sooner than I think. The singleton matches with five siblings are always a surprise but sometimes one or the other of us inherits a length of chromosome that no one else does. I generally collect those matches down to a slightly smaller level just out of interest. 

The rain was heavy again yesterday which is unusual for July but the ground will not mind; the sunflowers are growing quickly now and above the weeds. But the weeds have helped to keep the rabbit from eating up all the sunflowers. If we are still here next year we will fence it again while the sunflowers grow. 

Tea still a bit hot and will move on to solitaire puzzles. Then the cleaning can begin.  

Prayers for those lost in the floods in Texas, how sad to lose so many children. Prayers for the recovery effort. I have many Buller cousins in Texas (no longer with the surname but we share 2 and 3 x great grandparents).  

God moves around the world and looks at all of it and he must be weeping for those little ones. I still think that World War II was meant to be Armageddon but by the grace of God and our determination we came through that and so now we are on our own into an unplotted future perhaps. I have no idea but the winds of God still blow through the trees, through the cities and across the oceans. Our path must always be forward as Jesus taught us loving our neighbour as ourself (I think love is respect) and finding that uplifted plain of peace where there is no war and mankind lives to make the world a better place for all. God bless the world and all who live in it. Greed, envy, and hate must disappear from our world. 

 

Blake Newsletter, Volume 14, Issue 3, 2025 is published on the website

The latest issue of the Blake Newsletter is published on the website. Again there isn't really a story in this one, mostly data and a short discussion of yDNA as mentioned yesterday. I did not draw any conclusions but merely stated the facts. More data is needed to really come to a concrete decision with regard to the East Anglia group. However, it was very enlightening and the results not unexpected given the settlement of this area of the British Islands being strongly related to Danish emigration. However drawing conclusions would be premature.

Attended Church yesterday and it was an interesting sermon once again; time escaped me and I will watch the service from Essex in my break time today. Amazing how busy life can be for this nearly 80 year old. There is never a dull moment for sure. 

Prayers for the lives lost in the floods in Texas and prayers for those still missing. How sad that so many of them are young children at a Christian Children's Camp.  

Yesterday heavy rain and it does look like more today but is not raining at the moment but very grey out. An unusual July with so much rain but does save having to water the sunflowers that have managed not to be eaten by the rabbit. 

Did think more about moving and I can see this is not an immediate thing but rather I am looking further into the future. For one thing my daughter who spends her research time with me loves the East End of the city where she has lived since just before she turned four years of age. Although she has memories of the other house where we lived they are vague and long ago. 

For myself, I did do a little more work on page 5 of the matches extracting 1 segment and 2 segment matches into my file where I didn't already have them. More on that today in between cleaning. I am back to Monday once again and it is the top floor that will be cleaned today. 

Yesterday was the first time that I worked on downsizing once again. I went through the Allen material and checked to see what was there and then wrote to the Allen family member that has been my contact person and verified that they would still like to have the material which Edward had taken to a meeting back in 2019. They are collecting up Allen material and I will now pass this box to them along with a letter showing the line of possession of the items from this same area to Edward's mother and then to Edward and now back to them once again. Many of the items are quite old and there are a number of tintypes including one that is special to me somewhat as it reminds me very much of my oldest daughter at 14 years of age (the tintype is of Edward's maternal grandmother Margaret Evelyn Allen who died 11 Apr 1914 at 34 years of age when Edward's mother was only seven years of age. The striking resemblance to my oldest daughter was amazing actually when I saw the tintype when Edward decided in 2008 to unpack his mother's hope chest that she had left to him when she passed away in 2000. His finds were especially poignant to him as there were pictures of himself with his father which he had never remembered seeing and for me to see a tintype of a child born in 1880 that looked exactly like my eldest daughter and was her great grandmother (mind you I could see the similarity in Edward's mother as well). Life can sometimes be amazing for sure. But the material belongs to the history of the Allen family which was very large with Margaret being the youngest child of eleven children. Her parents were James C Allen (son of Isaac Allen and Rebecca Crouse) and Hannah Catherine Parlee (daughter of John Casey Parlee and Margaret Folkins). The lineage very interesting and primarily New Amsterdam/New York families with Huguenot, Dutch, and English ancestry (dissenters primarily that went to The Netherlands first before going to New Amsterdam). All traced back into the 1600s by Edward and part of his nearly 70,000 member tree on his website. Edward corresponded with cousins all over the United States and Canada often spending a couple of hours a day responding on the email to comments and queries. 

So next Sunday the project is to prepare the Kipp family material (early Oxford, Ontario) family that migrated to Chilliwack, British Columbia in the mid 1800s to see if one of the Archives would like to have all of these early original pictures. I think there are two boxes that I need to work on and that will likely take me several weeks to list everything in the boxes. It does take the idea of moving for me to get back to working on all of this material. I suppose in my mind I do not really want to break it up but I must in order to properly preserve it. Genealogy is an interesting past time and one that I avoided very successfully for most of my life but in 2003 I took up the challenge by my cousin to produce the Pincombe profile for his book on Westminster Township. No one, especially me, would have ever thought that over twenty years I would be so deeply entrenched in genealogy but without DNA I doubt I would ever have proceeded so far into the studies. For Edward, it was being part of the Ontario Genealogical Society that interested him primarily I think until the overwhelming picture of his own ancestry did flow forth as he studied his lines. It was truly amazing the history in his lines that had been lost during migrations from the United States into Ontario beginning in 1800 and continuing in his lines right up into the late 1820s. Gordon Riddle inviting him to go to the meetings with him was his initial introduction to the Ontario Genealogical Society back in the early 1980s.  

For myself I must continue extracting the matches from Living DNA and once completed work them into my databases and then begin the task (along with collecting anything new in the other genealogical testing sites) of working on the re-phasing of my grandparents and then moving to the phasing of my great grandparents. A task of love one might say but the love between my grandfather and my grandmother was strong and it has been easy for me to move away from anything that I thought about doing before I retired to this work for sure. It does keep the brain stimulated especially my latin learning which continues but I do need to move towards ancient latin and that will happen this fall I believe. 

Solitaire puzzles completed, tea drank and it is breakfast time and then cleaning.  

 

 

Sunday and Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

We are into Ordinary Time in the Church Year - that quiet time in the Church Year when the Choirs step back and we are into summer time. The hymns tend to be the beloved ones of the Church without the choir to lead us but we know the tunes well. The Bible Readings are history lessons for the most part as we work our way through the Christian Church as it spread out from the Holy Land but particularly Paul who was Roman and so the shift was gradual towards Rome and the Papacy formation. Christianity would travel to all the far reaches of Europe moving beyond that to the British Isles although historically Anglicanism finds its roots in the Christian Celtic Church with its roots back prior to the arrival of Augustine sent from Rome to bring Christianity to the British Isles. 

Taking the word of God to all the corners of the earth was the pledge of Christianity and also Islam as it formed and now with the advent of Internet the possibilities are endless really as purveyors of the knowledge of God around the world. Prayers that hate and greed will pass from our world and that a good life can become much more evenly spread around the world when aggression totally disappears from our world. 

Yesterday was a busy day and some accomplishment on the last sibling's results as I completed page 4 of the matches and now I move into the system of extraction using 1 segment, then 2 segments and 3 segments and moving quickly through the larger ones as they will be primarily inadequate data (without a good deal of work and the size doesn't justify it). Then on to the task of re-phasing the grandparents using the Living DNA results primarily (but also the others that I have collected in this year) and the known cousin's results. Then once completed I can move to the great grandparents which is my main aim in collecting Living DNA data for sure since it contains all those interesting incidents of endogamy in my family lines.  

I am back to really thinking about selling the house - it is too large for me and it would make room for another family to come to this area (it is four bedrooms and one and a half baths). The backyard is 180 feet deep (60 metres). The laneway is a good size although single parking only (two or three cars) but you can park in front of this house as well. So we will see how it all goes. I am back to more downsizing although mostly everything that I would not take with me to a smaller place is gone. The Light Rail will be completed this fall which gets rids of all that mess that has been around us these past few years. The training stage is ongoing and the opening of the stations out to Trim from Blair will soon be happening (not sure if that is all at once or station by station). Initially the thought was station by station. The change to the neighborhood is huge with round-a-bouts replacing the crossing lights and realignment of bus stops. The road itself newly paved and accesses to the highway greatly improved. The schools are very handy to this area including both Separate and Public Elementary and High Schools. The Light Rail to Universities and Colleges very frequent making the trips into and out of the downtown really quite easy.

 Off to Petrie last evening for a kayak and me walking. It is a lovely walk and I enjoy my three times around the 0.8 km oval. The weather was beautiful last evening and the beach was packed with people and the walk pretty busy as well. I tend to be passing everyone as I am walking alone and fast generally which I prefer. 

Tea drank, solitaire puzzles completed and my breakfast is late today. Church soon. 

 

Lawns all cut

The lawns are all cut once again and that was a huge amount of work yesterday. July tends to be dry and hot so not a lot of growing for a few weeks perhaps time will tell. Some weeding but still more to do there. Everything done that I wanted to accomplish except for sweeping the front porch and patio and weeding the patio bricks. Perhaps I will accomplish that next week along with other weeding. The hostas though are really effective in keeping the weeds down. Not being a gardener by nature all of this is new knowledge that I probably did not really want to acquire very badly! Moving is always bright and fresh in my mind and one of these days that will happen all in its own time. 

Some work on the matches but not very much perhaps a little more today. This last sibling will be more work because I have left a number of the likely endogamy in abeyance waiting to make a decision on whether to include all of that information in the database or not. What do I gain from doing that as I have some good matches in the Knight/Arnold/Butt/Ellis lines? That is really the purpose in all of that to collect data that I do not have and reinforce what I do but if what I have is adequate then the reinforcement just seems like extraneous work. 

Another warm day although just 15 degrees celsius at 7:00 a.m. The house was cool last evening and I do not think the air conditioning came on at all yesterday although the dehumidifier does as it is humid a bit. Humidity is new to this area to last decade or so but it was very humid some days in southwestern Ontario when I was a child. 

Lots of discussion on the forward movement of our national energy project and looking forward to new work being done there. Canada is a huge country and our population is supporting that forward growth for sure with 85% of the people voting for this forward motion setting us up as a powerhouse by the end of this century. When one is nearly 80 though I guess my thoughts tend to be shorter term although not actually; it is fun to think about what this world will be like at 2100. It has so much potential to be a wonderful welcoming place but always ready to defend itself against aggression. I wonder some days how the Rohingyas are doing.  Their struggle has been long and silent in many ways but much more traumatic than anywhere else in the world except perhaps Ukraine. They have led an honest upright life not trying to take away from anyone just living their lives as best as they are able. They have accepted an unfair loss of their lands and moving on to just have a better life. They would be good candidates to live in Canada really more so than people who hate. Haters we do not need. 

The Prime Minister continues to be calm and collected in his dealings with both the provinces and externally. I think that calmness is good for Canada and yet he is forceful in protecting us. The increase in expenditure for the military is long awaited and will stand us in good stead and it is a great employer of people as well. 

Drinking tea and solitaire games are next. Then yoga and breakfast. I will decide today on the one section of the Blake Newsletter - whether I leave it in or remove it. One of the new Y-700 tests is a perfect match with another in the East Anglia data and the country report has one an American and one from the UK. It remains still not enough data really to make a strong statement but it is interesting because the Blake family of East Anglia was said to be the ancestral line of Blake that went to the American colonies and settled in Hampton, New Hampshire around 1650.  There is another Y-700 test in that set of data as well but it does not match. However, I do believe there are a couple of distinct Blake lines in the Norfolk/Suffolk/London area in the 1300s which may account for the difference. Genealogy is interesting but sometimes one must be slower rather than quicker expressing any concrete ideas on lineage but recording the data is very important. 

A huge shopping day

Yesterday was a huge shopping day although I started off the day picking raspberries mid morning. Not too many yet but they are coming along nicely. The birds have eaten about 50% of the red currants which they love it would appear along with the gooseberries. I should pick them but really watching them enjoy eating the little red and purple berries is much more fun as these are pretty seedy berries and mostly just good for making juice for various dishes or making jellies which I do not eat. Although I made hundreds of jars of jam (and perhaps even more) through the years I do not have a sweet tooth and it was my husband mostly who ate all that sugar so when I went back to work outside the home in 1994 I stopped making jams and jellies for the most part as it wasn't actually good for him to have all that sugar as he was by then in his early 50s. I didn't tell him that I just said I wasn't a martyr and could not maintain that sort of life style when I worked full time! 

But off to the market for the newest vegetables in our area (these outdoor markets are wonderful that the farmers set up around the city) and then picking up some items at a specialty food store that I am fond of (namely frozen Canadian blueberries) but a few other goodies and then to the grocery store where I had a huge load to buy this week. By the time I reach the grocery store I am a bit tired; my nearly 80 years are showing. When I am on my own then I spread out any trips but my daughter drives me and has a busy schedule with her research and so I just fit into the pattern. Plus I just shop occasionally on my own for sure; I am not a shopper. Then out to buy some other items once all the food was stored away that were perishable. Our shopping all accomplished we had a lovely meal of fresh meatballs (made by our hands), a lovely potato salad also made by us and fresh asparagus (likely the last meal of that locally). Along with fresh vegetables on the side it was a perfect meal. 

In the morning I worked on the matches and Page 2 is nearly complete and will work on Page 3 today. I am at 210 new matches to work into the database once I get through all of this data collecting. Many of these are significant because they demonstrate the endogamy I knew was there but needed a solid concentration of my British cousins to really see it well. This sibling is more like me with an even number of results from the four grandparent lines rather than a heavy double percentage of Pincombe matches to the other three. I did not inherit nearly as much Pincombe as the rest although this sibling did actually just proportionally they fell different from the others. There are more individual matches to this sibling which I also knew from the other testing companies. But in general we are all good matches with each other and well within the range given for siblings. I am picking up quite a few of the suspicious ones which were mostly endogamy with so many lengths of chromosome between six and twelve centimorgans with many of the samples having one length of six to nine and one of twelve to fifteen along with four to five between four and six centimorgans. This collection of up to 70 centimorgans on occasion could be seen to be Blake but having all five sets together to look at helped to marrow it down to one of the great grandparent lines a little easier. That is the thought with all this new data that I am using all the companies phase our great grandparents in a meaningful proveable way. 

I did pull some weeds as I was picking raspberries and that is something I need to do a little more of to let the flowers have room to flower this year. On the one side no problem the hostas take over most of the ground and the weeds are minimized but on the other the weeds just keep coming back - they are hardy for sure. The lawns need cutting and today looks good for that - sunny but not too warm just 14 degrees celsius at 7 a.m.

I must admit to being a bit impatient to see shovels in the ground for the pipelines and ports and more industry being created here in Canada but it all does take time and our trade is going well between provinces getting that set up. I am looking forward to seeing more foods from the provinces on the shelves in the stores. Canada is a huge country with lots of ability to do well and unleashing it will take a bit of time for sure.  I still think that the American car companies should just incorporate their businesses as Canadian here and break their ties with their American businesses other than the sharing that can exist between compatible industries. That way they will continue to produce cars for sale here in Canada and we do buy a lot of cars. Since our car (Dodge Caravan) has just over 30,000 km in five years I obviously do not represent most of Canadians but in our younger days we generally put 15,000 to 20,000 km per year on our car. But I scarcely drive it on my own just the grocery store and to the garage to change the tires twice a year and have the usual oil changes and the like done to it. But there are a lot of young people in Canada and it is really a rite of passage here to get your driver's license at 18 now (used to be 16 for a permanent license but times have changed and one does need to ensure that one thoughts are always on careful driving on the roads) and then buy a car and still live at home and go to school. The laneways are full of cars for every house. But it is the choice of the American manufacturers for sure; the Auto Pact has cost particularly Ontario taxpayers a lot of money these past sixty plus years and even if they leave it will continue to cost us money because of promises made. We do tend to be a punishing lot Canadians and will not generally purchase foreign cars but only cars made in Canada with Canadian materials. At 41 million we are a large market  to lose for sure. 

Drinking my lemon ginger tea (one of these days back to green tea but I do not need the caffeine at the moment!) and on to solitaire puzzles. Then yoga and breakfast and the lawns! 

I did complete the Blake Newsletter but still debating the small writeup on the new Big Y-700 results in the East Anglia group. I will probably release it early next week.  

Some research, some shopping

A busy day that saw some research accomplished and some shopping accomplished. I am looking for a new desktop computer as Windows 10 draws it last breaths. I want basically what I have now but with Windows 11 and we toured about looking at various computers. I have a couple of months to decide. I do not need a new monitor nor do I need any of the other attachments as I bought a new keyboard (this is the third one now since the original that came with the computer. We will see what comes with them these days given that my tablet came without a power pack to fit into a socket! I will be even more questioning this time than the last. 

So onto the second page of matches with the fifth sibling and a little work on the Blake Newsletter. Still not completed but soon hopefully and perhaps today it is going to rain. Raspberries to pick as well and the sunflowers are doing well; that is the only item that we planted this year. There is just too much shadow in the back yard to have a good garden. 

Discussing the books in our coffee break I am still in the midst of Blake and Pincombe and will be for another two to three years I anticipate (I am coming up on one year in January although I did pretty much set it aside until now when I am beginning the generational tables coming down. The starting point for Blake is fairly easy although I would be exciting to start in the 1300s it will likely be the 1500s. The starting point for Pincombe not so easy as I need to make a decision on whether to write up the Pencombe family in Herefordshire as known to me and then this likely family of Pencombe coming with John Lord Zouch to North Molton in 1486 (perhaps as an accompaniment chosen by the King I am suspecting rather than as a loyal retainer). Given that John Pencombe received land at North Molton one is tempted to think that the King was the one who was involved in that rather than John Lord Zouch who was attainted. It does give a different sort of look to John Pencombe than I had formerly. 

Tea drank, solitaire puzzles to do and then breakfast but first yoga.  

Happy July 4th to my American cousins.  

Canada Strong

 It was beautiful to watch Canada Strong on the Hill yesterday. The young people came out in droves in both the capacity of audience and the show leaders. The Prime Minister is dearly loved by the populace; he just fits into the scene so perfectly. It was very pleasant to have the Duke of Edinburgh at our Canada Day as well - a beautiful touch for sure and he brought good wishes from the King. The King is lucky with his support from these two siblings - Princess Anne and Prince Edward. They do him great service and especially here in Canada yesterday. Thank you to the King for sure. The Governor General did a magnificent task in her capacity as well and much appreciated. 

I was happy to sit at home and watch it all on the television. I will always remember my grandfather watching the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He was so intent; full of information about the service as the hours passed and he never left that set really nor did I for the most part although just seven years of age I could tell by the way my grandfather was so glued to that TV that this was a momentous happening in our world and so it was. Elizabeth II became one of the most celebrated women in the world and loved by many. 

Canada Strong and with our population now at 41 million we will succeed and support our population and this huge landmass preserving it for the future as well as the present so that all the world may benefit from the goodness of Canada. The bombing of the fireworks carried on well past ten o'clock last night but we had a lot to celebrate as we have made it through these past six months together and supportive of each other. The few with their separation ideas are just that a few; Canada needs all of her people to be the great nation she is to become. When the Founders of Confederation bought Rupert's Land with Canadian taxpayer money it was for a purpose; to unite all of the royal colonies now provinces of the new Canada (Turtle Island) and to provide a link to British Columbia far off on the Pacific Coast and we did it and for a young nation to build the railroad coast to coast we did well. Thank you to the Founders and all those hard working people who actually did the work on the railroad that made it so. 

Yesterday matching for the fifth sibling and then the task will be complete; just have to maintain it by checking in on matches regularly. I like the setup on Living DNA and the ease with which you can move between siblings in matches. I like the ability to quickly copy all of the data into my spreadsheet but others also do have that ability. And of course with my 100% British inheritance of DNA having so many UK testers is really great. The endogamy that I knew existed is very clear there with a number of people matching in the over 50 cM range with so many little pieces all of them looking like Knight/Arnold/Butt/Ellis or Routledge/Routledge and there are some Blake in there that are interesting for sure. But that endogamy is a long way back although there are a couple of stubborn chromosomes that make their way through the generations. 

The Blake Newsletter still in the writing process; yesterday didn't seem like a day to do that and so will return to it today along with extraction of matches. Cleaning all accomplished for another week. Back to walking and kayaking. A lovely summer and July is probably going to be a very warm month. 

Tea drank, solitaire puzzles completed and breakfast is next but first yoga.  

 

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada day, land of my birth and the home in my heart, I will always love Canada to the depth of my soul. The daily Bible Reading again caught my thoughts first thing this morning. The reading from  Colossians 3: 1-17 but the part that most remains with me after reading:

Each one of you is part of the body of Christ, and you were chosen to live together in peace. So let the peace that comes from Christ control your thoughts. And be grateful. Let the message about Christ completely fill your lives, while you use all your wisdom to teach and instruct each other. With thankful hearts, sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. Whatever you say or do should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, as you give thanks to God the Father because of him.

These words were written two thousand years ago in a world that was different and yet so very alike our own. The words were directed at a small group of people in actual fact but read by the millions as the years have passed. Greed and Hate still dominate in this world and must be gone for us to have peace. As the centuries have passed the Christian religion developed in some areas of the world; in other areas it was Islam and still others different ideas dominated but always with the love of the Creator in mind it does appear as we read the ancient signs left by peoples and the stories passed down in the different areas of the world. 

 To Canada, land of the free and our desire is that it always should be. The land of the First Peoples and we are grateful to them for accepting us to live in the lands of their forebearers. May we ever live together loving the country of Canada (Turtle Island to the First Peoples) and forever embrace their love of the land and take it to ourselves - to protect and nurture this land the Creator has given to us.  The land is what is important; we must care for it and cultivate it and protect it. 

Yesterday cleaning of the top floor completed and today it is the main floor and the basement. Like the birds in the air we clean the space around us to make living easier and simpler.  

 I completed the fourth siblings matching extracting and started into the fifth sibling's matches. No surprises as we continue to have as our best match outside of our family circle a young man in New Zealand. His large match is a result of endogamy in the Knight lines that we both carry as we share Ellis Knight and his wife Eleanor (Knight) Knight (my 3x great grandparents) and John Blake and his wife Ann (Farmer) Blake (my 2x great grandparents). The path is an interesting one for sure but it is his shared matches that point the way it would appear. His wife first wrote to me more than ten years ago now but the actual individual that is the father of this young man remains as likely rather than absolute. Life can be strange. With my father an only child ( these matches are on the paternal side) and my grandfather coming to Canada in 1913 with his wife and my father and none of them ever returning to England the relationship had to be sought elsewhere and endogamy rules the waves one might say. Where it occurs surprises in length follow. 

So today more cleaning and more extracting as I work my way towards the project of re-phasing my grandparents using this new data from Living DNA along with the file of Known matches with 2nd, 3rd and fourth cousins although principally 2nd and 3rd cousins. I do know there are a couple of inconsistencies that I keep track of to perhaps solve with this new set of data. Time will tell.

 I look forward to shovels in the ground to build pipelines and ports to deliver the oil to the world, our industries bought up/closed by free trade once again developing and flourishing. We are a different country from the 1960s when the Auto Pact was first signed and then in the 1980s when Free Trade began; we are nearly twice as large and we are like a new country on this day of our birth as the Dominion of Canada now stretching from Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Ocean surrounded on all three sides by the oceans of the world. God Bless Canada. Forever free. 

Internet restored yesterday morning - just a couple of hours later

 My internet was restored yesterday morning with just a couple of hours offline (in time for the Church Service actually although I was nearly late as I did set the service up but was busy doing a couple of items and already the entrance of the clergy and small choir was in place when I finally sat down to watch). I had watched the Church Service in England on the phone. Both services had lovely music although we are into summer time now without choirs here although the soloist was excellent at Christ Church Cathedral. Internet is such a wonderful addition to our world as it allows for one to visit around the world without actually going anywhere. I have traveled enough to last a lifetime for sure and it was fun. My husband Edward and I very much enjoyed our many trips to the United States hunting out his colonial ancestors and visiting with his many many cousins there; attending many many conferences and he presented at some. Being part of many many family reunions particularly in the Rathbun  and Williams family (his latest American ancestor to come to Canada in the 1820s) and his family mentioned that he had an "itchy foot." Although he came with his wife and family to Canada he didn't bring the stories of his family with him which turned out to be amazing including the Reverend Valentine Wightman, the Reverend Jonathan Holmes, the Reverend Obadiah Holmes, Reverend Joshua Rathbun, Roger Williams, John Sayles, Hannah Feake, John Bowne and the list goes on and on back into the very early days of the American Colonies. Although his Kipp family arrived in October 1800 in Canada there too the knowledge of his Kip family of New York also not passed down in very great detail. So it was, for Edward, a wonderful journey into the past as he learned more and more about his American ancestry mostly patriot actually although he also had Loyalist ancestry - but I found it intriguing that two very obvious Loyalist and Patriot lines married here in southwestern Ontario! Life makes many changes in families. The Internet has certainly made it possible to not only track them but also to meet descendants and enjoy swapping stories that had been passed down. 

Another beautiful day and thank you God for the sun and the wind, the rain and the blue sky. Another day under the beautiful sun which God created. Yesterday we walked at Mer Bleu and it was a lovely outing in the woods. Not really busy but busy enough that the woods will be maintained for use for all having a pleasant walk on a Sunday afternoon. There were some bikers as well so perhaps we will take our bicycles another time. 

I spent some time collecting material to work on the cross over points for the five siblings as I move forward towards the goal of all this collecting of information in the Living DNA site. I have not yet completed the fourth siblings' page 8 and will work on that today and perhaps tomorrow begin the fifth sibling. So an even shorter time than predicted to reach this point which is rather nice. Generally July is a hot month and rather dry but a couple of good rains has given us a good start into the new month to begin tomorrow on Canada Day. July 1 1867 the Dominion of Canada became official. I had meant to buy a big flag to put on the Garage Door but did not get that done but do have a Canadian flag on the front door. 

Today is cleaning day and it is the top floor. Soon time to begin that but first breakfast and before that drinking my tea which is in the process and doing my solitaire puzzles. 

May peace be more than a futile wish and may the peoples of the world find a path that brings us to that uplifted plain of peace and good works which will lead to a wonderful future for the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the world. Thank you God for another beautiful day in our world.  

The Bible Reading for today did speak to me I must say (Psalm 85):

A Prayer for Peace

Our Lord, you have blessed
    your land
and made all go well
    for Jacob's descendants.
You have forgiven the sin
and taken away the guilt
    of your people.
Your fierce anger is no longer
    aimed at us.

Our Lord and our God,
    you save us!
Please bring us back home
    and don't be angry.
Will you always be angry
    with us and our families?
Won't you give us fresh life
and let your people be glad
    because of you?
Show us your love
    and save us!

I will listen to you, Lord God,
    because you promise peace
to those who are faithful
    and no longer foolish.
You are ready to rescue
    everyone who worships you,
so that you will live with us
    in all your glory.

Love and loyalty
    will come together;
goodness and peace
    will unite.
Loyalty will sprout
    from the ground;
justice will look down
    from the sky above.

Our Lord, you will bless us;
our land will produce
    wonderful crops.
Justice will march in front,
making a path
    for you to follow. 

Internet down

Always an interesting event with a world so interconnected, an absence of internet connectivity in the usual manner. Anna, Rogers vigilant helper, quickly identified the problem which is helpful. 

Drinking tea and planning my yoga drill and breakfast. Yoga precedes breakfast. Then the leisurely breakfast and it is Sunday. Church on the phone is great so that works. Thankyou God for the beauty of the day.

Looking forward to moving

I continue to look forward to moving and downsizing has to continue to be on my mind as I simply have too much of Edward's material not yet placed. All of this material meant a great deal to him and so I will strive to place it and perhaps this summer will see me organize all the Allen material and all the Kipp (old) material and get it placed. My daughter will help me with it but she is also busy with her research. Her retirement days though are coming and although she has thoughts post-retirement slowly developing they will I know involve moving perhaps even before she does retire. One of the people who did some replacement work and repair was telling me that there is a consortium which wants to purchase sets of carriage homes along the road behind us to build condominium apartment buildings (low-rise) I think he said. An interesting idea and I certainly do not have a problem with that. It would house many many young people and the train is so handy to go to work wherever in the city.  But if someone with a family comes along when I am ready to sell I will sell it to whomever. We have lived here since the 26th April 1978 (and to date the family that has lived the longest on this rather long street!) when everything from here to the river (including no houses across the road) was just farmland (unused). Orleans Blvd as it is now just a dream on a map although some parts already existing. 

 I remember when the girls were young and Edward took them and went househunting when the houses were first built up on Chapel Hill but the yards were too small and the bedrooms also rather small as these rooms are generous in these carriage homes on the second floor. The living/dining room is small but the kitchen also not a bad size. But he decided not to move as gardening was something he loved to do. Myself at nearly 80 find the gardening a lot and mostly just weed putting a bag out to the front or into the bin at the back. I definitely prefer winter! But my not cutting down everything in the fall is showing this year as the hostas are huge and healthy looking. I lost quite a bit of flower at the fence when they were replaced on the one side but the hostas survived along with the gooseberry bush.

But Edward's material continues to be important to me but I do not know anything about the Kipp family so can not carry on with that work except for the yDNA study which I took care of for him. He was very much into autosomal DNA and proving his lifetime work  was a fascinating pastime those last years when autosomal DNA testing became the way to go. Not long after his pacemaker was inserted he asked about a dozen of his cousins to test and their results along with his own (and my daughter and I surprised him by having her tested to give him a close match since none of his close family other than his nieces survive) and that pretty much occupied him the rest of his life. The colonial matches with his cousins in New England/New York/Pennsylvania/New Jersey were a delight to him as they poured out of the various databases. 

It meant a lot to my brother next older in age to me to test and I said to him since he didn't have any children of his own this was his gift to the family which he very much loved to have me say. I tested him anywhere that I tested myself since we were the least alike it gave along with the three others a very robust look at our DNA. DNA is the fascinating tool of genetic genealogy in particular autosomal although I have found both the yDNA and mtDNA fascinating.  

Continued with the Living DNA  pulling of matches and I am on page 8 now working on the 1 segment entries and will progress as on the others to 2 and 3 (I do not actually see any 4 or 5 on this page which is nice as this work is long and for the most part other than assigning perhaps 50% of the entries I do not learn anything new with the 4 or 5 segment matches. Just the last sibling to do and then I can complete the crossover points and create the new phasing for my grandparents based on the Living DNA results and most importantly my known file of cousins. 

The Blake Newsletter is growing in my mind and I will also get to that. Tea being enjoyed and solitaire games are next. 

Continuing with the matches

 Yesterday more matches and interesting results on occasion as I reach into data now that is less and less data rich for the study but nonetheless mostly because of endogamy continues to delight my thoughts as various lengths of chromosome come to the surface and are examined against the existing grandparent phasing chart. The Living DNA results do give me the opportunity to look at my 100% British Ancestry within England as opposed to looking at it within databases that encompass primarily the population of the United States which is partially descendant of colonial English Ancestry in the 1600s but also a great amount of European/African primarily into the 1700s and beyond and recently Asian Ancestry. The 1600s English colonial ancestry in the United States only really exists for my Blake line - I seldom find a really colonial family with any of the others although Buller is also known to be there and I do find the rare Buller match but I do not believe I have any endogamy in the Buller line (two distinct areas came together in the 1830s the one from London/Surrey and the other from Warwickshire/Staffordshire/Leicestershire and centering in Birmingham in the 1830s on.  There is a third area for this line which brings in the Ayrshire/Argyllshire area of Scotland and Northern Ireland but I also appear to have Republic of Ireland from the charting which I could only really believe was also from this third area in Buller. 

Nearly 200 new matches to work into my database although some of them are solely extracted for their pinpointing of endogamy and hence somewhat smaller but none the less interesting for my intended work on the great grandparent's phasing work. This breaking down of chromosome into eight lines will be intriguing for sure and I look forward to that challenge sometime later in this year perhaps. That takes me back to the spread of years from  1837 to 1859 which is within British census time and will mark the end of any genealogical charts that I produce for the books. From that point forward one can use the material to then work to the present quite readily using census and family records. 

Is there a slow march to peace starting to galvanize in the world? Peace, it does appear, can only happen when we are forever ready and able to do war.  The NATO meeting seemed to be sounding the first drum beats to denote that. Peace in our time was the galvanizing expression just before World War II but already the drums of war were beating and we went into the worst war that was ever fought in this world. But one can feel the desire for peace by so much of the world. Enticing people to be part of a larger country will continue long into this century I am sure and will be successful in some cases when honey is used instead of mortar. Satan and all its evil must be gone from our world so that we can face the really tough issues that lie ahead as we move away from global destroying economies to regeneration of the world in a way that the grandchildren and great grandchildren of our children can swim in the lakes and the oceans and enjoy fresh air. Greed and Hate must disappear from our world. As I approach 80 and look back on the times as described by my grandparents - the world has changed so very very much.

So today continuing with the match extraction as I am now working on the 4 segments section of the 7th page and most will just be looking for names that have been collected earlier and extracting that information into those already established pages. I simply add in a section for Living DNA results. This tends to be my endogamy search for the most part. Then on to page 8 and check once again for the 1, 2, and 3 segments which tend to be of value for original work and then looking at 4 and 5 for any repeats of earlier files. The fifth sibling will be next. I also need to think about the Blake Newsletter as it is due 1st of July. The months move very quickly actually and we are well into summer now. 

Tea drank, solitaire puzzles completed and I need to do a bit more weeding and put that bag out to the front. The birds are back looking for their berries - currant, raspberry, gooseberry and we will have to be quick to get some as well. The elderberry will be a little later. Put the feeder out in the front tree once again and the chipmunks are very grateful as they have been fed here by my husband for probably twenty years since he retired and discovered them in the backyard although they live elsewhere they came here to eat! The squirrels too are eating away as well as the birds. The cardinals who have come for years and years checked out the fruit bushes the other day.  

 

Working on the matches

The matches that I am putting into a file are few now that I am into pages 5 to 8 of this siblings matches. I have 194 new matches thus far but some of them were selected solely for their demonstration of endogamy in the Knight family rather than as good matches for my database. As I reach towards the last sibling there will be some accountability for the matches designated suspicious as I work my way through them - I needed all the results to really make a decision on them. Given my 100% English heritage looking at my (our) matches in a database which has a large percentage of UK testers is a different picture from looking at my matches in the United States located databases where the largest number of testers tends to be American. There my matches unless they are one of my 2nd/3rd/4th cousins tend to be small and the testers are early Colonial American families. In the past I have not paid a great deal of attention to these testers but they will actually prove the distant endogamy in the Blake family as particular lengths are handed down in the Blake line of Andover on particular chromosomes enabling this thought. But it was an interesting morning of working on the matches that saw me complete page 5 and most of page 6 leaving just 7 and 8 likely although I will glance at page 9. Then I can work on the fifth sibling's matches and this will clarify some of these suspicious results that I found in matches that show higher amounts of shared chromosomes but not a logical pattern that lets me place them readily into a grandparent line until I can look at all the results. I could have looked at them all along but I wanted to work through each siblings matches from beginning to end only using the knowledge of those already completed as it will give me a picture more easily gleaned overall from each set of matches. The advantage of having already phased my grandparents based on the other companies (namely GedMatch and 23 and Me but using the FT DNA results (I did most of this work before My Heritage became as large as it now is) was a picture of how each sibling inherited percentagewise from each grandparent so that I was able to focus on their likely percentage when I looked at each new match. It has worked pretty much but perhaps as much as 2% to 3% of the matches in this new acquisition show some discrepancy (not unexpected to be honest) which can now be addressed with this newer rendition of the phasing based on all of these databases. One of the main reasons of course is the actual testing regimen of each company is or can be different slightly in what they select to use as their testing points. 

Off to kayaking and walking later in the day and was most interesting. When we arrived back at our car there was a car parked behind us (and two beside us and no way out in front!) with a small group of people just lounging about with their car. So I flashed the lights of the car to unlock it to let them know we wanted to leave but they didn't leave strange really. Then suddenly they did! I think they thought we hadn't paid for our parking but we have a parking pass and do not have to go to the machine and pay each time. The parking pass is great. A few minutes later I suppose the meter person came by to check on the parking they generally ignore our car as they know we have a parking pass hanging  in the front window; that did send them running and we were off and on our way. One would think that young people had better things to do with their time really; the parking attendants are very efficient at Petrie! We had done some shopping earlier as well before going off to the park. The parking attendants at Petrie have a huge amount of ground to cover and do a great job for sure of ensuring that people do pay which helps to maintain the park for everybody. It is a very large beach area and was pretty packed last night although there were a lot of parking spaces in the boat launching area so no excuse for parking behind us; we just happened to be in a crowded spot!

Off for groceries sometime today and I do hope that the cashier doesn't pack our bags so full when we provide so many. It only takes a second to grab another bag from the bag of bags. When you see them grimace picking up the bags it seems strange that they do not get the hint on that for sure. I have told them many times but with my daughter here for a bit she can pick them up easily and put them into the cart. The cloth bags are flimsy and tear easily so not overfilling them would be appreciated for sure. 

Cloudy today but the heat spell is gone for a few days and rain is coming. The NATO commitment to 5% is welcomed for sure. We always need to be prepared to protect our countries and it is good to see that happening. NATO is not an aggressive group - they have proven that time and time again over the past years since their creation. We want to have a peaceful world not one where the extreme wealthy of countries, where they basically hold the people who live there in servitude much like the days of serfdom, create wars of aggression trying to steal even more money and land (Ukraine is definitely an example of that as the Russians slowly take more and more and kill more and more Ukrainians). We want to have a world free of hate and Iran is the great hater in this case creating legions of soldiers - Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis - to try to destroy Israel. What logic there is to that I fail to see but then this same country Iran shot down an airplane headed for Canada from Tehran full of children, women and men (no combatants) over Tehran itself all because they hated these most Iranian (or Iranian descendant) people on the airplane for not supporting their satanic hatred of the West. We all need to get rid of hate and greed for sure. Then we can have that peaceful uplifted plain on which to live on this earth where our greatest struggle will continue to be degradation of the environment due to excesses which have created Global Change which is astronomical in the polar regions of the world but will also impact the rest of the world. 

The day beckons, tea is drank and time to do the solitaire puzzles.  

 

 

Cleaning completed and back to the matches

Cleaning easily accomplished yesterday morning and I was back to the matches in the afternoon.  I have completed the 4th page of 50 and the next four pages will be a pick and choose beginning with 1 segment and working up likely not collecting anything beyond 2 segments but will check the 3s as there may be some plus it can be a correction point with the last sibling results worked in where I could not choose one of the four grandparents but had two (and that has proven to be the case as the morning is passing). Then just the last sibling to do completely. I did not work on the phasing charts yet as I am still working out the crossover points and that will take a bit of time - no rush. I already have two sets of crossover points that are pretty much the same (Gedmatch and 23 and Me). Hoping that 23 and Me goes back to providing the DNA details and time will tell when this new company takes it on. I realize that their aim will be research but I have no objection to that - DNA will rule medicine in the years to come. Our lives are already changing because we now know if we need to avoid some things because our genetic complement doesn't allow for trangressions into things like smoking and drinking, excess eating etc. That will control our lives in the future for sure as we become a more disciplined people. Actually that is one of the things I like about Prime Minister Carney - he is a very disciplined person. I actually did vote for the Conservatives as I knew I would but the Conservatives need to re-find their progressive conservative roots and not get lost in social conservatism (it is a losing side of conservatism and needs to be put aside in favour of good management of the government particularly finances and support of the military). Following the words of Jesus in my case and other religions have other beliefs is the important part of our moving forward in time in a productive way that brings humanity forward and gives us peace. 

I am thinking about the Blake Newsletter and not a lot to write but will note that there are not as many Blake tested in the Living DNA as I anticipated (my 2x great grandparents John Blake and Ann Farmer had 54 grandchildren and hundreds of great grandchildren and a great many remained in England (but perhaps not but I am not seeing them particularly in the United States or in other parts of the Commonwealth)). However, the losses in the Blake family during both World Wars was large - they did live in London and Hampshire (both areas bombed heavily during the war). On the other hand the number of Pincombe descendants in England is very large but George Pincombe's children did stay in the London/Surrey area, Philip's children also stayed in the United Kingdom and Richard does not appear to have had children. That covers the three sets of descendants of the children of Robert Pincombe and Elizabeth Rowcliffe who remained in England. Robert (third son of William Pincombe and Mary Charly) had five siblings and Thomas (4th son) remained in England and the preponderance of Pincombe testers does probably indicate some of his descendants (Thomas Pincombe married Philippia Williams 8 Aug 1803 at Winsford Somerset and they baptized 12 children of whom all but one appeared to have survived to adulthood). My Pincombe family here tended to correspond with the Rew side of the family (John Pincombe married Elizabeth Rew (my 2x great grandparents)) for the most part although they did go back to Devon at least once to bring Devon Reds to Canada. In general (except for my matches) my siblings had twice as many Pincombe matches as any other (mine were about equal for the four lines (Blake, Rawlings, Pincombe, Buller)) which did surprise me. I haven't made any attempt to link them back to their ancestral line and will not. The book will only come up to the census for the most part (likely the 1851 since it had more information). So it has been interesting doing the matches finally with the Living DNA results. Excellent setup for doing the work that I am doing extracting the matches for five siblings. I just never took it on before because I knew I had endogamy in three lines overall with the time period for the close cousin marriages being two hundred years ago now but you can see the effect into this generation where there appears to be very long lengths of Knight passed but they actually represent (bits of Knight, Butt, Arnold and Ellis). In the case of the Routledge this cousin marriage goes back to the 3x great grandparents so looking at the marriage of Thomas Routledge and Elizabeth Routledge 1785 in Bewcastle Cumberland. The Routledge family appears to have been in this area back into the 1400s having quickly departed the Highlands of Scotland about this time period (long story and have written about it before). My Routledge were of the Oakshaw family and there was a tendency in this family to marry cousins (to keep the properties intact generation after generation). The Blake endogamy goes back into the 1500s and 1600s so is less apparent but the matches for Blake in the United States are likely part of that endogamy as one doesn't generally see a match that is likely 8th generation difference (these matches tend to look like early colonial on their part in the Ancestry database) but the passage of particular chunks of chromosome does appear to indicate this Blake endogamy (looking at 23 and Me (where the results are (were!) visible) for Americans and especially when they had a tree to accompany their results)). 

So another busy day in genealogy land where I appear to have decamped for the remainder of my time and will choose to remain there as I attempt to accomplish what my Blake grandfather wanted and what my mother wanted for her Pincombe family. It is a slow process but a rather fascinating one actually. Time is a gift and one must use it wisely to carry on the thoughts of a family into the future (my parents had seven children, nine grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren thus far and none of them carry the Blake or the Pincombe surname). This material would be lost and I know it meant a lot to my mother for the Pincombe material not to be lost that she had in her possession and the same for my grandfather as he felt the loss of England for us most deeply and I realize now that as that young child he kept telling me all that information in different ways every day that I spent with him (days that I treasured all of my life as I loved him very dearly as a child) so that at some point in my life it would come to the forefront (as it has). It is wonderful to put to paper some of these memories that he had. 

Breakfast is next, honey lemon tea drank and the solitaire puzzles completed.  

First day of cleaning accomplished

 Yesterday I completed the basement and main floor cleaning and will do the top floor today - I am somewhat speedier because my daughter is here doing her summer research so helps me with some of the cleaning. 

As well I worked on the matches and I now have  182 new files to put into my database. I am almost 3/4ths through the third page of 50 matches for the fourth sibling so moving along very nicely. More on that today as I clean. I also want to work on preparing the crossover points for a re-phasing of my grandparents based solely on these results and compare it to the earlier rendition using 23 and Me as well as GedMatch for the phasing. Collecting these new results I did find a couple of discrepancies where I had a good idea of how particular matches worked into my database although would actually need to do the research to prove that (or ask them!). Usually I do not write people that I match for the most part as my intent was not so much to gather cousins but rather to work my way backwards and that is pretty much on me to do as my families have not had a great deal of research done on them in particular other than the Pincombe and the errors in the earlier Blake line. 

Another warm day and already at 6:00 a.m. 26 degrees celsius and will be the hottest day I think of this heat spell. The house is still at less than the 24.5 degrees celsius  needed to turn the cooling on although it has been dehumidifying quite steadily the last few days which also cools the house. I keep it all closed up at the back during the morning and early afternoon and then close the front from the mid afternoon on with the back opening up somewhat so I do not have to turn the lights on. I keep my monitor turned off unless I am working. The air purifiers have been running on full (three of them) since early May and so far that has worked very well. I think though all the trees around us do help to keep the house cooler as well. But the summers are definitely getting warmer and warmer. 

Drinking my lovely hot lemon ginger tea and solitaire puzzles to do.  

Two more interesting sermons

 I do love to listen to people talk about the Bible that have made it their life careers. Their intricate thinking is really quite fascinating as they have delved into various repositories of knowledge pulling together interesting sermons/homilies to present at Sunday Service. It is all about how you have spent your life really and for them the pursuit of knowledge of the Christian Religion has been their goal and it is exciting to listen to them discuss their chosen calling. Did I learn anything new? I always thought that the man with the demons was Lots but he is now mentioned as Legions and I found the change in my thinking to be much more picturesque of the events that followed namely the casting out of the demons and Jesus giving the demons permission to enter into a herd of swine and the resultant of the loss of those swine over a cliff. Legions gives this a much larger image and perhaps in our day and age much larger does help us to understand how demons actually work in a society and effect so many people to do things that we fail to understand looking in on various areas of the world from the outside of what is happening inside. My mind definitely wandered today during both sermons as the world issues make themselves felt in everyone's living room as we watched the events of the past few days on the television. I do not really think we are approaching Armageddon to be honest I think this is a blip in the road where evil has tried to raise its ugly head in the world these past couple of years in particular and thrust away good. The existential battle of good and evil has plagued humankind for all time really but Jesus did bring us a message to eliminate evil - Love one's neighbour as oneself (one could easily insert respect as love just to give it a meaning that fits into today's thinking) but respect is what one needs for a neighbour. But enough of the contemplation as there are much greater minds than mine working on this very issue and I shall listen to the words that come from those in charge as I did do my duty as a citizen and vote. 

Yesterday was another good day on the matches  I completed the second page of the fourth siblings matches and I now have 177 matches to work into my database (a number of them clearly show the endogamy in the Knight family which was one hoped for goal). A couple of areas that had poor Buller representation has certainly been filled with new matches although unknown to me and likely I will not do the necessary research to try to trace them back. I do not really need that information as the trees will only come down to the time of census collecting in the British Isles (or anywhere else if I happen to look carefully at the actual matches). But this fascinating passage of DNA from parent to child through the generations is certainly the new and exciting knowledge of the 21st century. A couple in particular yesterday caught my eye. Again with this sibling as with all the others except me have nearly double the number of Pincombe matches to any of the other three. Mine just happen to be more equal although higher on Rawlings which was my largest percentage gained during the transfer of DNA from grandparents to parents to myself. That is why I am different from all of them particularly my brother Douglas who matches me the least. But by the standards it is actually a good sibling match none the less. 

Today is cleaning day and with my daughter here willing to carry the vacuum from the top floor to the basement every week I will begin in the basement consistently week after week and do plan on doing the first floor as well today since we are in for a scorcher with temperatures in the mid 30s degrees celsius. It is already 24 degrees celsius and feels like 31. The air quality is 40 and we are just plain lucky that the smoke has diminished with the heavy rains helping to put those fires out.  The fires in Saskatchewan were actually set by vandals which really should carry a long prison sentence for the danger that it created. Tomorrow is also predicted to be 32 degrees celsius as the high. We are having a heat spell and global warming in the polar regions is really showing up this year once again. The Robot is doing the vacuuming and I shall soon make my breakfast. The air conditioning is working very well although mostly dehumidifying as it is set to come on at 24 degrees celsius and the house has not heated above 23 yet and that was yesterday but today for sure it will turn the air conditioning on. 

The sunflowers are reaching ever upward as the rains helped them with that. My daughter hoed some of the big weeds but left smaller groups in the hopes that the rabbits eat that instead of the tougher sunflower plants now that they are well through the ground. We do have fencing that we could put around but would like to avoid that if we can. Certainly my hands will say thankyou as even with gloves on my hands took a beating on golf day with the old skin being rubbed off in many places but only two tiny actual cuts. One's skin does rather thin out in old age. 

Drinking my hot lemon ginger tea and it is very tasty this morning. Solitaire puzzles next and then breakfast.  

 

Sunday and two services once again

I have always loved Sunday and going to Church and online services have brought that into a possibility again with two Anglican Services within reach of my television once again. Although the people involvement doesn't move from the Church the beaming into the entire world of the word of God  from whatever religion you prefer is a wondrous happening of this 21st century. It was something my father missed being in a nursing home but the priest used to come and see him quite regularly which meant a lot to him in those six years that he spent there after his stroke took away his ability to walk. The last time I visited him the priest had been there a little earlier as he mentioned that to me. He liked it that I had continued to be part of his beloved Anglican Church although I also attended my husband's United Church with him and the girls. There is a wondrous nature to religion that still flows through the lifeblood of so many on our planet. The ideals of God and Jesus for Christians have built a society rich in caring and although abused by some seeking to justify their deeds of wrong for the most part the goodness of God flows through the human race in many ways but evil lurks with the satanic peoples of the world who continue their hatred towards peoples simply to keep themselves in power by giving them someone to hate and fear. Interesting really that century after century people still buy that - definitely it is a lack of education in freedom and rights. 

More work on the matches and I have moved to the fourth sibling. Some of the large matches of the other three are starting to come together and also be used rather than suspicious but I did anticipate that might be the case because of endogamy. I do not know these people that have large matches (i.e. many small generally) but gradually I am shifting through them and linking them to a grandparent line although still two on occasion (either one of the other). Still there are few uploads for people that we are matching as most are generally new matches in the British Isles which tells me that this time of redoing the phasing of the grandparents will solve some of the ambiguities in the phasing already done - for the most part this appears to be very clear cut but occasionally a match will arise that simply does not quite work although it is generally a small amount that is contestable. 

It poured with rain last night which was desperately needed as everything is drying out. Today is to be a record high temperature but I will keep the windows shuttered to the sun all day and that helps to keep the house cool along with the air conditioning. It is mostly the dehumidifier running actually that keeps the house dry and cooler although the air conditioning will kick in if it gets warm enough inside.  The Air quality is at 43 and the humidity 94% and the high predicted to be 29 degrees celsius with a high of 35 degrees celsius predicted for tomorrow. 

Probably inside most of today and tomorrow until the heat breaks and then back to kayaking and walking once again. Drinking my lemon ginger tea and doing solitaire puzzles and then some more matching before breakfast and then church.  

An afternoon of golfing

 We did eighteen holes of golf yesterday (well I only did 14 by then I had had it and didn't want to be in the way so just watched as my daughter played her last four holes. We didn't golf last summer at all so it was two years but it was a lovely day for a walk and I thoroughly enjoyed my walk and what golf I did do. The golf course was very busy yesterday but kept moving along. 

Looking out this morning at what little of the sky is actually visible. The one side of the window is pretty much completely blocked and about 95% of the other window although it is bright enough to type without turning on the light at 5:30 a.m.   

Perhaps today some kayaking and walking (the walking for me) as I do enjoy a walk along the beach in the summer. It was very busy last weekend and pretty much every parking spot was taken up. We have a pass which allows us to park for that minimum fee but does not promise a parking spot but it is handy not to have to stand in line and collect your parking pass plus we generally go three or four times a week so is probably cheaper. 

Worked on the Living DNA matches yesterday and I am on page 7 of the third siblings matches. Hope to complete that set of matches today and move on to the fourth sibling. I also want to start to work on the files to be used for phasing of the grandparents and great grandparents. I anticipate a few changes here and there mostly created by the endogamy in our lines particularly the Knight family and the families that feed into it namely Butt, Arnold, Ellis and a couple of other ones. But also the Routledge family which tended to marry second cousins or greater through the generations (my 3x great grandparents were 2nd cousins once removed - Thomas Routledge and Elizabeth (Routledge) Routledge. The Oakshaw branch of the Routledge family were particularly known for their close marriages through the centuries. But also Nicholas Blake married his first cousins Margaret (Blake) Blake and later Richard Blake married Joan (Blake) Blake but their relationship is less obvious (she could be a Blake from the Andover Blake family or from the Calne Blake family.  Then further back the Blake name itself in the Andover Blake family was acquired likely in the late 1200s/early 1300s when I postulate that a daughter of Richard le Blak married a John (no surname known) of Knights Enham. To me it is a logical statement as choosing the surname Blake when it was already held by several different well known families in the British Isles seemed rather strange but the advantage to a Norman marriage would have been huge for sure in now-Norman England having been conquered by William of Normandy in 1066! By the early 1300s most of the large land holdings were in Norman hands although the actual property holdings further down remained basically the same and many of the large landowners under King Harold retained their lands in return for swearing fealty to the Norman Kings. 

Perhaps outside and more work on the weeds - I need to weed the bricks along the sides of the laneway and a little weeding out front. One bag of weed pullings went out to the garbage yesterday. That cleared out the rhubarb patch and raspberry patch in the back right garden patch. Never an end of weed pulling for sure. The hostas keep the weeds down along the right side but the left side needs a lot of work. The sunflowers are growing now and very visible - my daughter hoed out the large weeds but left a little greenery with hopes that the rabbits wouldn't eat up all the sunflowers before they get to grow!

Up early and will have a nap a little later so that I am ready for a good long walk in the afternoon! Slowly approaching 80 and a nap on some days might just be beneficial. Tea to drink and solitaire puzzles to do.  

Shopping Day

To the market, to the shopping plaza and then to the grocery store and by the end of all of that I must admit to having been tired. As I waited for my groceries to be all packed, I found my mind wandering a bit but rapidly back when I realized that this clerk had remembered to email my receipt and I didn't have to wait for it to print with everything all packed up and we were on our way. It was a long afternoon but then I am nearly 80. I must admit I have toyed with the idea of just having groceries delivered and not bothering with going to the store but it is nice to pick your own produce and of course going to the market is such a treat in the summer with our farmers there selling their produce to us locally. The shopping plaza was collecting up a few birthday presents and some success some failure there so will have to do a little more shopping. I can shop in the early afternoon most of the year and it is very quiet and I am done very quickly. But definitely the clerks ringing up the groceries and packing up in the store should be older people as $205 worth of groceries was jammed into 5 bags when I provide about 20 bags to do that. If my daughter wasn't with me I couldn't have picked up three of them. 

We had a lovely meat loaf for dinner - fresh beef and fresh pork. I cook the chopped up vegetables in just a little butter for five minutes and then mix it into the beef, pork and oatmeal along with two eggs, salt and pepper, worcestershire sauce and then pack it into the glass meat loaf dish and cover it with a mixture of ketchup and mustard to keep it moist for the hour of cooking. Along with small potatoes on the side and a couple of salads we had a beautiful dinner and then cold slice meatloaf for a few days. I prefer jellied cold cuts and they are hard to find these days (at least the kinds that I prefer) so the meat loaf will be a nice treat. 

Worked on the matches yesterday and completed the fourth page for the third sibling. There are 154 new matches to enter into my databases. Will carry on today with the fifth page checking to see if it is time to go to 2 segments and 1 segment only. I found that five segments on the 4th page did not have any significant matches and four just a couple and the same with three so will check that out first and see how it goes.   

Life is slowly settling into the summer time and yesterday I pulled yet another bag of wild flowers this time out of the rhubarb/raspberry bed at the back which also hosts tulips in the spring.  Gardening is definitely not my thing but my daughter's sunflowers are springing up (about eight rows of them) which will be lovely to watch in the fall if they survive the bunnies eating up the fresh green. 

Early today and will have a nap in a bit after I drink my tea. I think my one room concept continues to come to me these days as the house is too big but not when my daughter is here; I do not need a car actually although it is handy to go and get groceries a couple of times a month when I am alone but that is it; I do not drive anywhere else except to have the tires changed twice a year which I may start to leave for my daughter when she comes at break times (Christmas) and summer research break. But I could just take a taxi back from the grocery store for sure. 

A bit of work and then my tea and then a nap! 

Continuing on the matches

 As I reread the Pincombe-Pinkham Newsletter I found a few unclosed brackets and a couple of other tiny items so will fix that. My mind is on my extraction of matches and it shows. Either that or I am nearly 80 and that shows. 

Continued with the match extraction  and the growth will be slow now that I am into page 3 of the matches with 144 extracted into separate files. When page 4 is completed in the extraction process (50 matches to a page) then I will check page 5 and see if it is time to go to 2 segments and 1 segment as I do want to get into the last two siblings match pages. The middle of the month is past and I am heading up to the Blake Newsletter for the first of July. Keeping up the regular work seemed easy in the winter but somewhat difficult in the spring and summer with the garden beckoning although I do not follow that beckoning very often to be sure. The rabbits and other four legged mammals are enjoying the products of my non-attendance for sure. 

Continuing today with the matches extraction and it is raining. Not so bad actually as one really can not easily garden in the rain and my mind can be totally devoted to the matches. 

Drinking my tea now somewhat cold as I was busy working the solitaire puzzles for the day! but is lemon ginger which still tastes really quite good even cool. One of these days I will get back to my green tea but I need to wait until I can manage all of that caffeine. I am a hyperactive person normally and do not need the added caffeine in my bloodstream at the moment - life is busy. 

We are moving along here in Canada with our new way of doing business with the provincial barriers pretty much resolved by the first of July - free trade between provinces with no restrictions will make a huge difference here and some companies are really prospering where the products came up from the United States in that north south pattern that has existed on this continent for thousands of years. But time changes and so must we. Canadians do not generally institute change that is noted on the world scene; we are a helper country for the most part doing the best that we can do to help the peoples of the world when that help is needed. But we are a strong ally to our friends and neighbours which indeed include both hemispheres since we share a border with the European Union through Greenland and with the United States here. I think Prime Minister Carney does bring the strength of Canada together in a way that is good for us as a country. I also think that once Pierre Poilievre returns to the house he too will bring forward the conservative part of this country in a good way supporting the initiatives which both parties (Liberal and Conservative) put forward during the past election and which received 85% of the support of all Canadians voting. The mandate is strong and a party in opposition can do as much good as the party in power in these instances when much change is needed. It is good to see so many First Nations in the house as well and as Premiers in the Provinces/Territories. We need to keep having the voice of the First Nations in our decision making to keep change flowing as quickly as is possible. 

 

 

Last day of cleaning for this week

Today the top floor and then the cleaning will all be accomplished. The weather looks like rain today so perhaps not a walk on the beach which we enjoyed last evening although rain had been promised yesterday but it was still okay to walk after all. 

The Pincombe-Pinkham newsletter was completed and perhaps the next one will have more exciting details as this was merely a summation of items and ideas for where I could obtain needed material for the next chapters to come. 

Continued with the matches and about half way through the third page of 50 matches. Still some new ones although not very many but I am now up to 140 new matches to put into the system. Not all of them will go in but I will put them into my interesting file but not entered so that I can look at them in the future. One feature of the Living DNA bookmark is looking at the chromosome results for everyone in the box which I have not yet looked at very thoroughly other than to note that it was possible. That will be interesting to work with as well. I am pleased with the Living DNA setup as it is a time saver for extracting the information for a set of siblings. Although I am not actually using that to a great degree I could do so and likely as I check the account in the future after this very first go through on my part years after I tested has been most interesting. I could see back when the chromosome browser first came out that I was showing endogamy quite extensively in some of the results and just avoided it at the time as life was pretty busy. 

The weather today does look a little gloomy so will be a good inside work day which is my favourite - gardening is never going to be something that I eagerly go out the door to do. At least I recognize most of the plants that have survived my not recognizing them. The Hosta does dominate the garden as Edward found they were less work for him and occupied a lot of space keeping the weeds down as they are much more aggressive than the smaller weeds. 

The sunflowers are doing well and the rows are very visible now. I think it was a good plan to just turn the garden patch into a sunflower garden. It will be lovely when the flower heads form. The many animals who run through this yard will enjoy the seeds. The larger birds might also nip down and clip off a plant head perhaps. There is a good clear run down into the garden. I shall watch for that as well. The raspberries are doing very well and all this rain will give a lot of berries for sure. 

Tea drank, solitaire puzzles completed and time for breakfast. I am a bit late today. I was working away on a couple of projects before I went down to make my tea. The time does pass quickly.  

The commitment of time

Cleaning of the basement all accomplished yesterday and today it is the main floor. I shall begin after breakfast as usual and should be all accomplished around 11 or so. The routine of cleaning is so very helpful and the exercise is also very good. 

Yesterday good work on the matches and I have nearly completed the first 200 for the third sibling. A few surprises here and there but for the most part this was smoother going than the first two because many of them are repeats so the page for them is already set up and just have to add in the new result for that sibling. Endogamy though does appear to be seeping through the results and particularly in the Blake line which I anticipated although it is actually the Knight/Butt/Arnold line because Maria Jane Knight married Edward Blake in 1870 at Upper Clatford but also the parents of Edward (Ann (Farmer) Blake and John Blake had 54 grandchildren and hundreds of great grand children but that didn't cause endogamy!

I must get outside though and do some weeding and I also need to finish the Pincombe-Pinkham Newsletter. Perhaps I should tie myself to the Newsletter first thing and get it done. 

Lovely morning at 7:00 a.m. and it is 18 degrees celsius and we are expecting rain and it is always handy to keep everything green. The Air quality at 46 is high for this time of year but is considered to be good.  I do not see rain in the forecast online but time will tell. Certainly it is cloudy. 

Yesterday another lovely walk on the beach and I have to start getting ready to do my driver's license renewal. I only use it to drive to the local grocery store a couple of times a month but I will read the rules book and be ready. I booked my Optometrist appointment and I need to book my Driver's License appointment so will look into that today. Since I will be 80 there is extensive testing I think so will prepare for that. I do not see myself driving other than to the grocery store though. For one thing our roads are still are in disarray with the new train coming and I just do not want that hassle although I do, twice a year, drive to have the tires switched which is the only other time that I drive. Otherwise I just take the bus as it is easy and gets me where I am going without any need to figure out the parking or anything else. 

Cleaning today and the newsletter and the matches and must try to keep that order until the newsletter is completed. 

Drinking my tea and doing my solitaire puzzles. 

Two Thought Provoking Sermons

Yesterday I did attend both Anglican Services - one here at Christ Church and one at St Peters and St James Hereford. Both had two extremely thoughtful sermons which provoked a good deal of thought in my brain throughout the day and this morning I found myself going back to the thinking pattern and contemplating Solomon and his wisdom once again (although the sermons themselves looked at the Trinity but one of the readings in the week was about Solomon and his talk with God). Greed and hate have raised their ugly heads once again in our world and although it has been sitting as an undercurrent for quite a while especially in the case of Iran's hatred of Israel but the Russian desire to commit genocide against the Ukrainian people is also a long lasting plan on their part dating back over the century past. Iran has created three sycophants to carry out their satanic plots against Israel namely Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. This satanic murder of six Palestinians who were helping with the US food distribution group is just the continuing usage of the Gazan peoples as collateral damage in the Iranian war against Israel which has been relentless throughout the last couple of decades. That a people would allow themselves to become willing to be the collateral damage and even allowing their children to be killed in order to satisfy the hatred of the Iranian government for Israel continues to confound the world (why did they not send them to safety!). Palestinians need to destroy Hamas not the other way around - they must stop being willing victims. Then the equally satanic leadership of Russia has destroyed the glory of the Russian people for their extreme sacrifice during the Second World War as they fought night and day to cast off the Nazi invaders in their country. Satanism must be gone from our world - the Iranian leadership and the Russian leadership (and North Korean leadership for that matter); so long as it endures then there will be useless waste of people and property namely the Israelis, the Palestinians and the Ukrainians. The picture is constantly coming into clearer and clearer view of the need of the world to eliminate these satanic peoples so that we can have peace.

More work on the Living DNA matches yesterday and some interesting ones that have three out of four of my grandparent lines appearing to come together in another family (very occasionally generally just two lines). Given my own lack of first cousins, few second cousins but all known to me and hundreds and hundreds of third cousins I do anticipate the possibility. However I always find this a little suspicious but I must remember in England in particular many of my lines became quite large in the 1800s (John Blake and Ann (Farmer) Blake (my 2x great grandparents) had 54 grandchildren many of whom had large families). The Buller families in Birmingham (particularly the daughters marrying into other lines) had a dozen children in some lines. The Knight/Butt families that went to Lancashire in the late 1800s also had large families (again my 2nd and 3rd great grandparents). So it is possible but some of the lengths are quite long but again I do have endogamy in those Knight/Butt lines where two different Knight/Butt lines come together as sticky lengths of chromosomes giving me longer lengths than one would anticipate in third or fourth cousins. The possibility of marriages between my lines is much greater in England than here where the proportion of English descent is smaller and in particular 100% as mine is.  But I will continue with that today along with the cleaning. Basement today and it is already set up to run the Robot vacuum cleaner. I have to establish the perimeter for the vacuum to remain on the rug which I must set up each time and that takes perhaps four minutes give or take. 

Drinking my lemon ginger tea and will do my solitaire puzzles.