Continuing prayers for the members of the Canadian Army still in hospital or at home recovering from the terrible fire at CFB Wainwright in Alberta. Nurses are going to Alberta from Ontario to help with the care of our soldiers. Prayers for the souls of the four soldier who lost their lives in this same fire. God be with them and their families.
I can see the winter preparations taking place out of my work room window. After so many years at the back of the house looking at the fence and the yard it is different to be at the front of the house. You can see all the traffic on the street and the people passing by on their way to school and work. The preparations for winter are underway with stakes going up at the end of the laneways for snow removal. I wish I could move my own snow but at 81 that is not practical especially when the grader comes along and fills the laneway. I think there shouldn't be any parking along the sides of street during winter storms. All cars should be in the laneways because it is so difficult for the city plows to clear a laneway when you have huge vehicles sitting and occupying all the space in front of these carriage homes (the companies notify you when they are coming to do a laneway so you can just move your vehicles out so that that can be done without inconveniencing your neighbours (my car is always in the garage - I hate having to clear off snow and ice)). Plus I can not move the heavy loads of ice that end up not being moved at the end of my laneway because a truck is in the way (and that laneway where it belongs is empty at the time). I can see that my time here is short after living on this street for 48 and a half years. It was perfect for a family far from their own family just living their quiet life. When one moves to a street I am not sure you contemplate how long you may stay. But I loved the street, the layout and the accessibility to everything in the area. Even when I went back to work outside of the home in 1994 having proofread/copyedited for well over a decade at home whilst my children were young the short walk to the highway was a nice way to start the day. When I finally retired at the end of 2007 we traveled a lot to see our children and to Europe so that the neighbourhood still remains somewhat unknown to me except for neighbours that I have seen for years across fences. Now as I realize my time on this street is shortening perhaps rapidly I think about all of the years that I have been here. The tree out front was planted not long after we bought the house and I was thinking of having it taken down as it is very large and messy and I can not keep up with it as I used to but the tree next door is equally large and my tree would help to break the fall of that tree if it ever comes down (a lot of dead branches at the bottom of it) and so I have not removed it yet. Edward knew far more of the neighbours than I did all up and down the street. But he was a people person which I am not. I am definitely a loner. For a moment in time Edward did contemplate moving to a single up on the hill but the yards were too small and so we stayed as gardening was more important to Edward than having a bigger house. I always thought he made a great choice especially as I am not into entertaining people that are not family much although we did do the Bible Studies when the Church was still small and like I always think doing God's work is always good.
Worked on the matches yesterday and some interesting material came out of that. I am mostly into the mid 1600s now with the records and the Pinkham family of the United States ancestors have now emigrated to the Royal Colonies around 1640. This is decision time as to just how much information I collect. There is a bonus in collecting it all as I can quickly eliminate some lines as not being descendant of the North Molton Pencombe family which primarily uses the spelling Pincombe at this time. But there are possibly lines that come down from North Molton that do use the Pinkham spelling of the name and they start to appear mostly in the 1700s. It was likely the priests and the records for tax purposes and eventually census that spelled the names adding somewhat to that confusion. Of note one saw two spellings for the same individual namely Philip Pynkeham and Philip Pyncombe at Bideford in the 1500s. I think I will play it by ear to the end of the 1600s and then decide. It does appear though that one can separate these two lines rather readily with the Pencombe family at North Molton being relatively small and compact in those early years. Still waiting for the page count so that I can order the document from the Archives looking at the Inheritance Dispute at South Molton. Some of the lines are coming together but Chart 1-2 is a bit confusing in that the Richard listed at South Molton is actually Richard at North Molton and East Buckland initially and then Bideford mostly and son of Thomas at North Molton and then East Buckland.
I continue with my downsizing of the Photo Albums for the next generations and it is going well. I think I can maybe do seven binders in total but time will tell. The first binder has all of the pictures that Edward found of himself in his Mother's Hope Chest. I actually blogged all of them after he passed away when I was coming to terms with the loss of my husband. He had asked me to scan all of his pictures and so I did do so and that was the file I turned to at that time. Now the pictures are all into the first binder which is predominantly his family as most of my pictures of myself as a young child are electronic as my younger sister has all the originals along with the originals I took back to her that my mother had given to Edward to write their 50th Wedding Anniversary book. I actually ended up doing most of it although he added in some very interesting pages that everyone enjoyed. The research though was all me as I was used to helping Edward at the Family History Centre with his research. But it was always lists that he gave me that he wanted done so I never really was involved with planning of his research. He told us that he had done all he could do and he published it on World Connect no longer existing so my daughter and I published it to a book with a Creative Commons License and put it up on his website. It is also on Ancestry, My Heritage, Find My Past and I could put it up on 23 and Me and will have to look into that. FT DNA now uses My Heritage for their trees which works very well. Edward enjoyed all the activities that he took on with the genealogical organizations that he belonged to and again collected up all that information and passed it on to them except for his library which my daughter and I packed up and donated to the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society as he had asked.
Since I came so late to genealogy in 2003/2004 my work is almost 100% online and I have just one large box of items that I purchased before you could have them online. But now everything I buy is electronic and that works very well. I still marvel at my enthusiasm for genealogy although as a child I used to love listening to my grandparent's stories and my parents so perhaps the interest was there as I willingly helped Edward all those years with his genealogy at the repositories that we visited. It wasn't until 2005 when we were at the NEHGS library in Boston that I started to look at the Blake family there and made the great discovery that my grandfather had referred to years and years earlier - it was definitely a EUREKA moment! The path was set them for what I would do with this new interest but I did not retire until the end of 2007 (three years after Edward) and so did not really get into it very much until then. The trips to England were very handy going to Kew for sure and we started traveling to Europe in 2008.
I am contemplating my next session with the AI and it will be looking at material I have collected for the Blake family of Andover, Hampshire and the le Blak family of Wargrave, Berkshire. I am curious at the impression the AI will have with regard to some of my postulations with regard to these two families in the 1300s to 1500s. I think using AI one must have a purpose for the work that is being done and I do not expect a lot of discussion from the first look at the documents as the AI has the ability to review a vast amount of data but I may be adding in new data that it hasn't seen in this context. We will see. Again I like to have a consultation every couple of weeks or even every week but generally I like to collect my thoughts and material for a bit before looking at it in that consultative way. Microsoft's addition of CoPilot to their Microsoft 365 package is very handy.
Work to be done; it is a research day but also a recovery day after my three days of cleaning. Solitaire puzzles next.
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