It isn't that I am overly absorbed in cleaning but rather I hate to have to rush about at the last minute cleaning. If I am always basically ready then life is easier. Plus it is good exercise and spread out over time which doesn't hurt when you are older either. So today is the basement and another week of cleaning is done.
I do wonder sometimes if Edward had not gone off to the Ottawa Branch meetings of the OGS with Gordon Riddle if he would have gotten so involved with that group. I am not sure how long Gordon kept going actually. Edward would never have gone without his suggestion and invitation actually as he didn't go in London all the time we lived there but we did lots of genealogy traveling to the United States and all around where he lived as a child once we bought a car. That really changed Edward's life having a car (the advantages of a wife working I used to say). The Ottawa Branch of OGS and being Treasurer at Orleans United and singing in the Choir there were his principal interests other than his children (he even helped out with the Macoun Field Club when our eldest was keen on that) as non work activities. Mind you it was nice seeing him enjoy the Ottawa Branch so much the few times I went until he wanted me to drive him there much later after I took on the task of the Pincombe Profile. He especially enjoyed being part of Gene-O-Rama.
Before we moved here all of his genealogical work had been on his own with us traveling down into the States before the children were born on a pretty regular basis looking for items and he did attend some meetings at local genealogical groups there way back then. But once he retired we were back at that once again for sure. I think that might be the fun part of genealogy is going to all those interesting historical buildings - I found it quite fascinating. Not the genealogy that was much later like after 2003 when my cousin George DeKay got me to write the Pincombe Profile he wanted for the book he was publishing.
Gordon and Edward still corresponded back and forth after the Riddle family moved away from Orleans (Edward had an amazing number of correspondents and those letters were hard to write when I wrote many of them after he passed away about 50 or 60 or so) that he had corresponded with for over fourty years and more in some cases. When we went west it was to Edward's closest relatives - his nieces and mostly the Schultz family events and the Allen family events which were in northern Ontario (although we did not go north until 2019 although Edward did with a cousin of his as I vaguely recall) and just around the Kingston (also 2019) area and we would pop into London to see my family and then just my siblings after my parents passed away.
I practically never think about when I was going back to do my masters and a little surprise entered our lives. We were all enriched by the arrival of our youngest for sure and we closed in as a family for quite a while after that (perhaps as much as three or four years) although I was still too busy being a volunteer secretary at Edward's Church plus all my proofreading and copyediting for local printers and I was also treasurer for Camp Bitobi I think for about three years sometime later in that period. But my eldest daughter was old enough by then to babysit although we didn't go out a lot; didn't interest me particularly actually. Edward did love to be around people. Trips down memory lane for sure.
I did work on the Ancestry matches and should finish that today and then check Gedmatch to see if there are any new matches in there. I do like Gedmatch; it is well setup and I used to always pay for the extras but I do not have time to use the extras so do not at the moment. If I was to find that I had a really good set of leads on something I would.
It still intrigues me this match with Blake at South Newton. The wills there go back into the 1500s and 1600s and I did transcribe them but without really taking it all in. I will reread them one of these days as I have a set of ancient results for Blake both in the early colonies of America and in the British Isles. I need to do trees for those families in the areas around Calne now that I have had this very fascinating match. I rather think that I am looking at a likely marriage between an individual at Enham without a surname and a daughter of a Blake since surnames were uncommon in England until after the arrival of the Normans in 1066. Since it was fashionable to do so English families did acquire and use surnames certainly by the 1400s into the 1500s but also as early as the 1200s/1300s when I am contemplating that such a marriage took place since I have seen Blake records in the Andover Manor records in the early part of the 1300s. I did not see any earlier than that.
The Blake families in the 1200s are in distinct areas in England as seen in the Calendar of Patent Rolls and I have done a number of charts a while ago now but can be seen in the index in my blog.
Day is moving on and I must get the robot working and then I take over with my dusting and washing and the cleaning is done for the week. How nice.
Forgot to make my tea and must do that and then do my solitaire puzzles whilst the robot works.
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