A starlit night

 What a beautiful view out the window at 4:00 a.m. The stars are blazing in the sky. God's view of the earth is perfect on this clear night. All Hallows Eve which precedes All Saints Day and what a perfect sky to behold. 

Woke up contemplating the why of my writing two books and came to one surprising reason as my writing the Blake book has always been for my grandfather Samuel George Blake. Born in England in 1875 he grew up in Upper Clatford hearing about his Blake family which had lived at Andover and before that at Knights Enham in Old Hall - he clearly remembered the name of the house where his ancient grandparent had lived back in the early to mid 1500s - Nicholas Blake of Old Hall who left his will in 1547. He was of Enham he said in his will. So that one was easy and takes no contemplation on my part. But the other book never really settled on an individual other than my mother wanted to write a book about her Pincombe family but really in my mind I now realize that it was all about the grandfather I didn't know as he died in 1925 when my mother was just eight years of age. She mourned him all of her life I do believe although had begun once again to live in her early teens when she became a Girl Guide and made such wonderful friends at that time. So really this book is all about John Routledge Pincombe - really the saddest person I have learned about in all my life in many ways. Coming to that conclusion in the middle of the night as I very often do actually do was not surprising; it was always sitting there at the base of my brain waiting to be discovered. I shall do my best grandfather that I knew and loved so well and grandfather that I never knew personally but his very being breaths within me because I am half Pincombe/Gray and that 25% give or take Pincombe is my heritage from that very grandfather. We share, my cousins and I, some unique areas in the chromosomes which is fascinating in itself. That is the gift of DNA and it will keep on giving through these centuries ahead as we learn more and more about each individual gene that contributes to who we are. 

In creating us God made us a product of those thousands of people way back into the past who contributed to the person we are today. Thank you God for another gift to us from you. 

Yesterday some work on both books but now I will set aside the Pincombe book until the document I ordered comes to me and then back to Pincombe once again. Having walked the grounds of St Mary Bishops Nympton Anglican Church and feeling a closeness there because from early childhood the place name Bishops Nympton grounded me to the earth and attached me to the lines of my past. But am I actually interested in genealogy. Not like some people who live and breath genealogy; for me it is a research trip into the past collecting which is collectable and postulating possibilities on just how particular unlinked individuals fit into the pattern. Then there are the missing links that seem obvious to me but finding the proofs difficult. Those are the links that someone may pick up in the future as more and more documents are transcribed from this exciting period of the life of mankind in the Pincombe sphere hundreds of years ago. But as I slowly draw inward and quiet in my 81st year, my energies will now go entirely to writing those books and then moving on to the next project which really must be to redo the index in the Siderfin books and add in the new information that I have located. An update to that revision of my cousin James Sander's book on the Siderfin family of his mother Elizabeth (Siderfin) Sanders. He did an excellent job of collecting up all that information that he put into his almost 50 page book and produced enough copies to spread it around the world to his cousins in America, in New Zealand and Australia and Canada. Thank you James for your work. He said he wasn't a genealogist in his foreword. I have taken the course work and passed the course work but am I truly interested in genealogy; I suppose in some ways I am which is a product of old age mostly I think rather than the kind of driven interest that my husband had from childhood looking for his father in everything around him. I will always remember when he found the only picture that exists of his father holding Edward as a two year old in a family picture with his mother and older brother as well. The excitement was wondrous to observe as he looked and gazed at that picture that had sat at the bottom of his mother's hope chest hidden under a loose piece of wood face down. Possibly it had not been out of that chest since it was put in all those years ago when Edward was a small child living on the farm with his family before the loss of his father. I was very happy to share that moment in time with him when he was 67 years of age. It took him a while to go through the Hope Chest - but suddenly he did that the couple of months before we went to Europe the first time together in 2008. He was a genealogist; the desire to be searching into the past was in his veins. With me, it is just a desire to write the book my grandfather Blake wanted and the book about the Pincombe family that my mother wanted. But discovering it was really about my grandfather to me was a surprise I think in the middle of the night contemplating. 

Must get back to bed and have an hour or so more of sleep. Going to bed at 9 gives me that freedom to wake up in the middle of the night and work away for an hour or so and then back for another hour or two before waking up in this beautiful new morning in God's world. He asks so little in return for what He has given us - Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. Thank you God for your love through the ages.