Cleaning day two

 Still one day behind and it is the main floor that will be cleaned today. Life is always busy. 

I did spend  more time on the Blake book adding to the acknowledgements and they are more or less complete now. I shall now begin the genealogical charting starting with Robert Blake who left his will dated 16 Dec 1521 although the coding for this will says 1522 but reading the actual will the year is M ccccc xxj so quite clearly 1521 and he lived at Enham, Hampshire, England. His name is spelled Robertij Blayke in the will and I do not think he has written it himself because there is a note added to the will in a different hand and in English rather than Latin. Interesting. I still remain conflicted for this Robert Blake since his eldest son appears to be Richarde and the individual coming to Salisbury from Ireland 10 Jul 1440 and 7 Sep 1441 as mentioned on the Emigrants' Database 1330-1550 held at the Archives in  England also had the name Richard (an interesting coincidence perhaps). He is said to be Irish in ethnicity. Record I have collected ages ago and not well documented in my early days:. a family tree (no longer online) showing a Robert Blake marrying a Maude Snell circa 1486 at Benham, Hampshire.  There is a Benham near Speen Berkshire other than that too far away. I have not been able to find that this Robert was in records prior to the early 1500s but I still have material to look at in that regard. It was the match on the yDNA that caught my eye (my brothers match an individual with the Blake surname who lives in Dublin or has history in Dublin (hard to tell really why one would put Dublin in as a reference). He could easily be an English Blake who went to Dublin sometime in the past or present so it doesn't colour my thoughts other than isn't that amazing. So initially I will begin with Robert Blake at Enham leaving his will in 1521 and bring the descendants of this individual as far down as I am able. I will continue working on the documents to see if I can find something earlier to connect back to the John Blake I found in the early 1300s in the Andover area and my suspicion that he took the surname of his wife as his own at the time of adaptation of surnames in the British Isles which was happening pretty much from the mid 1200s on. The advantage of taking on a surname that was Norman can readily be seen looking back in time. 

Today I return to working on the Gedmatch as I did get distracted from that. Life was busy for five weeks but great for the soul one might say. The retreat excellent and I highly recommend it. 

God works in wondrous and marvelous ways to bring to our attention the need to preserve this world and restore its newness so that it can also be enjoyed into the future. Sometimes that process is difficult because it takes money to make all that happen and so we must on occasion back-track a little in order to benefit in the long run.  Canada has so many resources to sell around the world and we must get them to tidewater to make that easy. As a people we have grown enormously this past year, recognizing our desire to live the life that we are used to with the attitudes that we have developed over time. Our First Peoples have great ideas and think in terms of 50 year plans which are far more beneficial to the country and to the people in it. Five years is too short and our politicians need to be aware of that and stop trying to buy votes by suggesting cutting here and there just because events tip the scales on occasion. All the money is needed to progress forward at the best pace possible. Shovels in the ground; it is spring and time to get this process going and growing Canada. 

I have always supported trades especially as I come from a trades family - my father and three of my brothers were all tradesmen and very accomplished. Trades are needed desperately and I do always find it interesting to tell the story of my father who dutifully went to school and trained to be a banker as his parents wished. But when he was finished and even got a job he told his parents he really wanted to be an electrician and he spent his spare time apprenticing to do that very thing. Gradually he moved to being an electrician and attained his Masters license and set up his own company. Soon he had developed the skills to create refrigeration including refrigerated rooms for restaurants and the like and air conditioning was soon in that list as well. Trades are very interesting; you get to work with all those fantastic tools and my youngest brother did all of his set up on the computer - lots of skills needed for trades far more than sitting at a desk inputting data into endless spread sheets. On your feet getting lots of exercise and there is a great amount of work for tradesmen these days. 

 Time to do my solitaire puzzles and then cleaning.