On to the second day of cleaning. One can feel April coming in the air as there is that sniff of winter past. Raining today perhaps icing not sure yet. Time will tell.
Cleaning the main floor today but will start later. I will do the bathroom first and scrub the bathroom floors and then vacuum. The last usually will be done first this week.
No work done yesterday at all. Cleaned pretty much the entire day.
Solitaire puzzles next.
One of the very first things that my eldest daughter and I did when we first moved to where we have lived ever since (nearly 48 years ago now) was to take a walk around this large block that we back on. At that time there were sidewalks all the way except for one of the streets that bordered on one of the four sides. But it was easy to walk along the side of this road so not a problem. That was 27th April 1978 and it is a 2 km walk. We loved that walk and did it every day until she went to school that fall for four year old kindergarten as a tuition student at the Roman Catholic School. Gradually we moved to different walks but I have always considered it good for children to have a hearty walk every day before lunch. We repeated that memory walk (she remembers moving here so also the walk) yesterday along with an additional 2.4 km around the other large block in our neighbourhood that links with that block. Walks down memory lane are important sometimes I think and often enough we do not have opportunity or time to do such things sadly in this busy world. At that time many houses were still being built along the various streets. Our own street just had the first seven built on it on the one side. They had been the show houses I think originally.
Not much work done as my eyes are still recovering from our marathon game time. Just two chapters left to go (thirty seven chapters in all in that game). We might get that done this week; time will tell as my daughter is very busy with her work now. No skiing this year but lots of good walking.
Will I always live here now; I have no idea. I would like a smaller place actually and that would be a good move but it will wait for a bit longer probably. When we had lived here about ten years Edward decided he wanted to buy a new house up on the hill. There were a lot of new singles but the yards were so tiny and what sold this house to us was the huge back yard. So he contemplated and looked at all the houses with the girls but they all preferred where we are and here we are still and that was many years ago now.
So today is cleaning day and I shall begin shortly. Palm Sunday service was yesterday at Church and the choirs as always were excellent. I have been to so many Palm Sunday services in my life but to me Lent and Easter capture my Anglicanism and commit me to it again and again year after year. I like the way that we celebrate the Life of Christ, His death and resurrection. As a young child I understood clearly the beliefs of my Church which remain unchanged through the centuries really. The Celtic Church in England moved to the Celtic Christian Church in England and evidence of this Christian Church in England can be found at the Council of Arles in 314 AD which was attended by the Bishop of York and the Bishop of London and others. This Council of Arles was held in Gaul (now France). The stories of Jesus passed quickly throughout the known world in these early days and there are many stories still repeated about Jesus and the early Christian Church.
Exercises all completed with about 3000 steps, 1 hour 15 minutes, cardio load of 33 and 378 calories burned. Heart rate from 49 to 147 with 2% peak, 13% vigorous, 46% moderate and 38% light. It is a good way to start the day and I do tend to feel energized. There is nothing that is too hard for me to do but if one hasn't done exercise one should consult with a doctor before taking up vigorous exercise for sure at the age of 80.
Solitaire puzzles to do next and then start the cleaning process. Although it does sound like I love cleaning I just love the organization that keeps me from having to clean in a panic!
The knowledge of the ancients has gradually been filtered down through our history but not entirely; there are still unknown areas particularly when an unexpected skeletal remain is plucked from its hiding place and viewed in the context of modern life. When I was a child we had barely scratched the surface; ideas about Neanderthals have completely changed from those childhood stories. Why they disappeared or in reality were absorbed into an ever growing Homo sapiens crowd as this new species moved across the face of the Old World. Then suddenly new digs revealed that even in those ancient times the new species moved across into the New World as we tend to see the separation between Europe/Asia/Africa/Oceania and North/Central/South America and the islands that belong to that section of the world. All of this has happened in my lifetime as one could visibly watch the length of time to circumvent the world reduced incredibly from those days when I first set my feet on the ground and walked free with a pair of glasses on my face at the age of 18 months. Gradually as more and more people test their DNA we become more and more aware of just how much Neanderthal is present in Homo sapiens and most interestingly where it is not present.
Yesterday was somewhat of a thinking day; I thought about a lot of things actually as the day passed. My eyes were tired from playing this game my daughter introduced me to and we both have a control panel and work together to achieve particular tasks. One in particular was most difficult as one had to land a space ship upright on three platforms which were successively smaller and smaller. I would have given up; at 80 I do not care if I succeed in such pastimes. But I would be spoiling the game so we hung in there and accomplished that task which took us on to the next chapter which was short and the chapter after that also short and now we have two chapters left and I do look forward to the end of this game. It is the first time I have ever played an entire game and may well be the last. Time will tell. I am not really a gamer. I like playing my daily Solitaire Puzzle. I like doing Sudoku puzzles but beyond that my interest just doesn't go to gaming.
While my eyes strengthened through the day I did think about humanity and where we are headed? Taking up Artificial Intelligence for the reasons that industry is galloping ahead is so that they will make more money although if one looks carefully at the effect of new science on economics it always costs more and the return diminishes as a product of that extra cost. Just because the size of industries has grown so radically this past generation in particular one gets deceived by the financial statements for these conglomerates and doesn't really see into the actual cost of incorporating new ideas particularly Artificial Intelligence. I do see a value in it; it could be a life saver particularly in some types of work like mining where human life becomes much frailer against artificial robots which can tolerate so much more than a frail human body.
The pollution in our world is affecting the ability of the human species to reproduce and one does think that that will only get worse so that a new baby becomes a much rarer happening and hence will be seen as a much more important event than it is now even.
The human existence has been one of constant learning and improving; it is built into our genes to always head towards something that works better; is more efficient and creates a better life for all peoples of the world. We can not know what peoples will survive into the future. It is a mystery. God in His wisdom gave us all the ability to work hard, be efficient and productive. It is exciting to consider what life will be like in 2100 and there are now people born who will, God willing, be there in 2100 to record it and watch as their progeny, God willing, move on into the 2100s continuing with this beautiful earth and the better life that has come to it by the ingenuity and the wisdom of the peoples who survive. But we always have to work at that eventual outcome. It pretty much never just happens.
Once you get started shopping it does get to be a must do that as well experience. However, I believe we are finished for a bit. Two new sets of drapes for windows that needed a change (for both the existing blind was simply worn out; did its duty through the years) and they are all up now and we are pleased with the end result. They both work; that was my main criteria. My daughter though had thoughts on how she wanted them to look so went with that as it saves me thinking about it. My husband was usually the one who got such activities going as my interest is low in that so long as it works. I am simply not a shopper; have little interest in the ups and downs of fashions and avoid shopping times that are intense.
Consequently because I had holes to file and sanding to do I did not accomplish much other than that yesterday. A little bit of painting to do here and there and also some staining where the holes were filled. That I can do although in the past Edward would have done most of it other than my helping when he wanted a second pair of hands at work.
Today perhaps some research. I opened the file and that was about it; nothing beyond that yesterday. I had another email from the member of the Hinxman family which is most interesting as we both pursue information on our family lines in the Andover, Hampshire, England area. His line had arrived in the mid 1500s with mine appearing to have been there for quite a while prior to that. The proofs though are what I am looking for and some do exist which is helpful. I have documents which I must transcribe and the time for that is coming as I start to create the genealogical charts.
My mind was too busy yesterday to continue strolling back into time. Just occasionally something brings back little memories and in retrospect they point out to me my character. Was I too polite as a younger person? I never think you can be too polite but perhaps you can be too welcoming sometimes although that is not a characteristic I would give myself but more something that Edward was comfortable at. We were often opposites in how we approached items but that was often a very good trait I feel in retrospect. Not having close relatives outside of my own personal large family of six siblings, parents, grandparents and one uncle and aunt only, no first cousins, I did not have his sense of closeness to what I have always deemed as strangers particularly and that includes second cousins etc. However, I did have my fifth cousin in for tea a while ago but we do know each other from our mutual work in DNA. That was an amazing discovery finding Susan in the midst of all that endogamy that exists in my Knight-Butt-Arnold-Ellis family. She relates back through the Ellis family which is very large.
So today some work on Gedmatch and perhaps the rest of my matches there which might be interesting will be completed. Slowly I am collecting up any missed matches this past six months. I am considering creating a family tree on 23 and Me to follow their suggestion that I could see a DNA pattern emerge for relatives (I would assume they are referring to phasing grandparents). It would be an interesting exercise to see what they come up with in this regard.
Time to do solitaire puzzles and I am a little late with breakfast although I have already had a snack with my exercise routine.
One of my most hated things to do and we have been shopping mostly for drapes and new hardware for them. Easier to manage than blinds for sure for this 80 year old but finding machine washable cold ones has not been easy. The hardware though these days is great and fairly easy to install.
Also a couple more interesting matches on Gedmatch and I am perhaps coming to the end of my kit today. We will see as I have some sanding to do before we install the next set of drapes. Some things like that I am good at as I helped my mother prepare the cottage for new items like that and painting the walls etc. An interesting way to learn is working at the chore actually.
I was reflecting backwards once again remembering writing to thank the minister at Orleans United Church for his letter supporting Edward for the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Hence letting him know that Edward had been awarded the Medal. I just forgot and the discovery that Gordon Riddle had passed away in 2013 which I did not know until much later (at this time actually) that reminded me I didn't thank this minister. So I did that and he wrote to say that his wife had recently had a birthday party for him but she didn't invite us. I almost wrote back to tell him to thank his wife but avoided that comment. It just sounds sort of rude in retrospect. I had such a good attitude towards the United Church before we went to Edward's Church (I had promised to do that) on that regular basis for about 20 years when our girls were young (and Edward volunteered me for Church Secretary where I was thankfully replaced by a paid secretary eventually after about five years or so; by then I was working full time once again and having this volunteerism still on my plate was a lot of work) . My Uncle (his wife) and my grandmother attended the United Church and I went with them whenever I stayed there on a Sunday as a child and teenager and quite liked that Church. I especially liked their attitude towards alcohol and smoking for that matter as I felt it was a very healthy attitude and one which God would support for his people. However, a long time ago now and mostly out of my mind. But occasionally pops in. I attend only my Anglican Church now and online. I did offer Edward's Church a set of pictures of the building of the Church Building (50th anniversary of its founding is coming up actually in 2028 I believe) but never heard back and got off track on that production of a PowerPoint file. I will see if the Ottawa Archives wants the original set of pictures in a binder that Edward prepared (I would say that he loved being part of his Church and sang in the choir for nearly all those twenty years and was Treasurer for ten years). It was a mention in our Bulletin one Sunday when he was still very upset about the death of his brother and his mother in a nursing home and struggling but she would not move here away from the rest of her family (quite understandable) of an upcoming set of lectures by the minister at Dominion Chalmers United Church that sent us to that Church for a couple of months I think. Absolutely stupendous lectures and we stayed for a couple of years actually; I love sermons on the Fathers of the Church and their many dissertations and this minister was absolutely excellent but I digress. I still do like the United Church; I just like being Anglican. We were not at the first six months of this new Church because I was active at my local Anglican Church (volunteer secretary which I did myself) but had promised to go to his when it started up and did do so the next fall after my eldest started her desensitization shots for asthma. I always remember that first Sunday - as soon as she saw our doctor Gordon Riddle she ran way across the room and I went with her (she was just five years old). Edward though stayed to chat with his cousin probably about the Kipp genealogy as they did share information. Later my eldest helped to roof the new Church and other such tasks as by then she was nearly a teenager (my other daughter is eight years younger) and quite skilled at such manual type tasks. Now she is a professor teaching many many students data science, metadata and so many other courses over time. Her students work all over the United States as she could not get a job in Canada. The jobs she applied for here went to Americans way back in the early 2000s so she took the one offered to her by an American university. She spends her research time with me though which is a real treat and in the future she will retire and come home.
I think it is being 80 that makes one reflect backwards in time actually. It is likely healthy and is excellent for my writing as I recall comments made by my grandparents and parents that aid me along the path.
Another working day but first I must do my solitaire puzzles.
Great news today with Canada achieving spending 2% of our GDP on the military and it will get better and better as we increase the amount that we spend on our military. It is 36 years since we were spending an adequate amount on our military. A great piece of news to start the day for sure.
Worked on Gedmatch yesterday and picked up a couple of new interesting matches. I should finish my kit today. I want to move on to FT DNA and Living DNA very soon as it would be nice to start writing again full time after the first of April.
I also did my Income Tax today and will pay that up shortly. I prefer to pay the government so that I do not get all that spam looking to steal my income tax refund. AI is really needed for some of this work although keeping it safe will also be a full time job for sure. It will be somewhat like the introduction of computers into the everyday work routine more than a generation ago now and it doubled the number of people working at that time as it is much more labour intensive than the earlier style. AI will reduce a lot of manual labour putting the onus on people to improve all of their skills in whatever field they are in because there will be a lot of training all along that path of moving into Artificial Intelligence and integrating it into our work week. It will be easier to spot and eliminate intrusions. It will require us to really work our brains to all become teachers in our work life as a computer constantly needs instruction and good review in order to get the best results from it.
My daughter is needing dental work and I managed to get an appointment with my dentist for review and referral whilst she is with me. It will need a specialist for sure and she has to go under anaesthetic so will do that here. She has asthma and requires caution whenever she needs to go under anaesthetic. Her wisdom teeth were removed at the hospital and I was certainly glad of that as her blood pressure went very low but she rallied under the good care of the nurses.
A lovely walk outside yesterday although it was pretty cold but much enjoyed. Sadly no skiing the snow is now sufficient for that so a bit of a disappointment but the walking is also very nice.
Solitaire puzzles completed and onto research.
I will be working on my kit today in Gedmatch so at the half way point looking at possible useful matches that are new (and sometimes old with new value because of the place where we are matching). Then on to FT DNA and Living DNA both of which I have given glances to over the last six months. Then I can move ahead with my genealogical charts in both books - Pincombe and Blake.
No new thoughts on how to proceed with the books. I mostly have a direction that I am following although tangents are always welcomed if they provide information that assists me in this pursuit of these two lines going back or coming forward whichever way one wants to look at it. I have the direct line which is our line right back and down to our parents although I continue to be of the opinion that I will bring everything up to Census time perhaps the 1851 as it has more information. There was an explosion in growth in the British Isles in the latter part of the 1800s possibly to replace so many people emigrating throughout the British Empire in those days looking for opportunity to put down new roots in a place that felt just like living at home in many ways (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India felt inviting for many). And so the people of British Isles heritage moved their DNA around the world. The advantage certainly was to increase the variety in DNA which gives more opportunity to eliminate DNA that is less desirable. Inbreeding is always a problem with DNA as it gives too much possibility of inheriting the same defect from both parents. This huge movement of people did improve the lifespan of peoples around the world I believe.
Moving forward in time is the aim of the human race and each generation should do the best they can do to make the world a better place. God gave us this beautiful planet for our species and we need to pass it on to the next generations as intact as possible so that they too can use their ingenuity and ability to make the world a better place to live in for sure.
Prayers for those recovering from the accident at LaGuardia. Prayers for the world which God made and left His commandments to let us know how to live.
First sibling completed and into the second sibling. I have changed the methodology that I was using and this will be a quicker study but I had to do the long form first just to make sure I was seeing everything that I wanted to see. I am looking for items that upset the apple cart primarily. Making sure that nothing exists that proves I am incorrect in my thinking. That of course is a mirage in many ways because the number of people who have tested their autosomal DNA remains small looking at a global existence. However, I just happen to be lucky to only have ancestry from the British Isles back into the 1400s as far as I can tell. But the Parish Registers certainly show my lines back into the 1500s some as early as the first registers in 1538 so I feel somewhat confident that I am capturing a true picture of my heritage since it includes the data for four other siblings and we all match in such a way that we are all descendant of our parents without a doubt.
The interesting part in all of this is the desire and consistent updating of the ethnicity of these five siblings by the various testing companies. They keep drilling down deeper and deeper into areas of the British Isles where I have proven ancestry. The occasional sudden shift like from southern Dorset to Lancashire in the 1800s was already known to me by word of mouth. A huge 80 year old birthday party for Charles Butt in his native Dorset called home so many of those descendants and this being an endogamous group it was huge and remains very large around the world. My grandfather was five years old at that time but he clearly remembered going to the party and seeing all those cousins.
Why did my grandfather recount these stories to me? Why choose a child of five years of age or perhaps even less as I can always remember him telling me stories. He would repeat those stories ad infinitum throughout our time together. Being the child I was though, adoring him completely, I listened and never said you already told me. I just loved listening to him tell me his stories of his life in the country of his birth. But the cause was his discovery of a book in the local Library written about the Blake family of Galway, Ireland. He wanted us to know that we were descendant of the Blake family of Andover and Upper Clatford where he was born. That was very important to him. Coincidentally in the latter part of the 1800s people came from America (Blake descendants) trying to find out more about Nicholas Blake of Knight Enham nr Andover who had been given a different family line by Horatio Gates Somerby (a fraudulent American genealogist who wrote stories for people in the United States about the Blake family that were incorrect (and there were other families who received the same makeover)).
So I continue my pursuit of data that could point to something contrary to what I have put together thus far. This recent email from a descendant of the Hinxman family of Upper Clatford is interesting as he is on site there and looking at documents that might well interest me since there was a marriage between a Blake female and a male Hinxman way back in 1610 at Andover. Elenor Blake (daughter of Richard Blake and Jone (Blake) Blake) married Joseph Hinxman 10 Dec 1610 at St Mary Andover. A very distant relationship (I estimate that Eleanor is my 9th great grandaunt). So yes I will be looking keenly at anything he does send me as this is a difficult time in the records coming into the 1630s/1640s/1650s as Cromwell had taken over the government of England and suspended the Parish Registers. However, some brave souls recorded them anyway and that included William Blake of Andover (and Foxcott) who married Ann Hellier 5 Sep 1644 at St Mary Andover and recorded the baptisms of three children at Penton Mewsey near Andover and at St Mary Andover itself. It is the linchpin in my thoughts with regard to the descent of my Blake line that eventually moved from Andover to Upper Clatford with the marriage of Joseph Blake to Joanna King 8 Jun 1757 at Upper Clatford All Saints.
Tea all drank and now the solitaire puzzles to do. It is a good way to really jumpstart my brain in the morning. Another working day ahead of me; cleaning all done for this week.
Prayers continuing for our beautiful world. Special prayers for the souls of the two pilots who died in the accident at LaGuardia Airport. Continuing prayers for those in hospital recovering from the same accident.
Interesting to have the cleaning accomplished on Monday with the basement finished up yesterday afternoon (an hour by the robot and then an hour by me and all was done). I still got to go to Church and an interesting sermon on Lazarus. I found Lazarus intriguing as a child and wondered about him. Loved by his two sisters Mary and Martha (I discovered that I am a Martha in some ways as the work that needs to be done I do first generally). Is it a good thing or a bad thing to put the work first? Not sure really but I have always been firmly convinced that God expects us to adore Him always but do the work that needs to be done. I think I could always still listen to what Jesus was saying but keep working to get it done. But I also see the goodness of Mary like Mother Teresa always obedient and listening to our Lord. And yet I am a listener primarily not a talker. The sermon gave me a lot to think about in that regard actually. Do I do enough in my tiny orbit and I think the answer remains I am 80 and should concentrate on what needs to be done in the time that remains to me.
Prayers for the souls of the two pilots killed in the accident at La Guardia Airport. How sad for everyone and also prayers for the two crew members and the 72 passengers with nine still in hospital.
A beautiful day today with the sun shining like a golden orb in the sky. The wind is quiet and the temperature minus 2 degrees celsius. The heavy snow did not come and gradually our snow is melting. A slow melt is so good because the earth needs the richness of all that water after the drought of last summer. It will be muddy out there soon and we will be in to Mud Season for a bit whilst it dries up. I think I will get the company that clears my laneway to cut my lawns this year. That way I can concentrate on the flower borders and perhaps grass in some of that old garden area. The land is becoming more fruitful once again letting us just grow whatever but sticking to flowers for a bit will help to enrich the earth even more. I would love to move though but the practicality of two moves is overwhelming and probably I will not move right away. The desire though is very much there to move and be closer to family.
Perhaps today I will finish the first sibling's Gedmatch and move to the second. We will see how the day goes. Prayers for my eldest sister continuing.
Prayers for the world and a better life for all of her people.
Just the basement left to do and the Robot is doing its chore very well as usual. Then I apply handwork by washing the basement floor and dusting everything that is down there. It is decreasing slowly but surely. It is also Sunday and I want to go to Church so that will come first. Church on YouTube has been the gift of COVID and I continue to enjoy it. There are services all over the world but I do continue mainly with the Church Congregation which I support by tithe. Some day I would like to go back to Church once again but it does need to be something I can do readily without impacting anyone else.
No work yet but that is coming. I tried to book my appointment for my part in the provincial study (blood tests) but discovered they appear to be closed for March Break so had to look at the last week in March to do that. Will get that setup today though so that it is done. I have been in the Study for quite a while now and I think it is such a good idea to have these large studies particularly as a look-back when the next generations age into the future. Those of us over 70 years of age grew up in a different world in many ways. A world recovering from the Second World War and the Korean War. A world that did not have computers in everyone's hands. A world that had not contaminated the seas and oceans and the land with plastics. We provide an interesting collection of data for the future for sure.
Prayers as always for a world in conflict. I wonder what God is thinking as I do believe that we have come right up to Armageddon with the Second World War and managed by human ingenuity and effort (and I will credit the United States with a great deal of that ability) to pass that point of no return and rebuild a good life for the people of the world. The world rebuilt and we (my husband and I) traveled in Europe (myself eight times and Edward seven times). One would have difficulty seeing the devastation that I viewed on the News Reels as a child at the shows which I went to many many Saturdays for years and years. Europe was beautiful and rebuilt (including the British Isles). But it was perhaps the shrapnel damage on the memorial to Wolfe at Greenwich that did bring it home to me that it all really happened and the world stood still for a while as it managed to reclaim normalcy finally in 1945.
Time to check on the Robot as it has been running its normal hour. Tea all drank and Solitaire Puzzles to do. I do read all the news but I am no longer a thinker in that regard; I simply observe.
I did spend the last 2.5 weeks more or less off the grid so to speak. I spoke to animals and fish locally only. I did speak to my daughters on the internet or phone every day pretty much. But it was freeing one might say. I have become too much involved in the world around me for an 80 year old. It is time to contemplate the next chapter of my books and then the next chapter and just let the brain soak in all that information and then put it down on paper for anyone who wants to read it. I am glad that I have reached that stage of thought. I am still part of the world but at 80 one should concentrate on the little things and that is what I will do from now on.
I watched the news finally and as always asking God for prayers for the world. God was very much in my mind through all those days. I was surrounded by God's goodness - the fresh earth, the snow, the forests and it was just lovely. I could feel the love of God all around me; the dogs were constantly at my side wanting my attention at all times. We all slept in the same room together and everyone was at peace and relaxed. A beautiful retreat and I enjoyed it. It reminded me of retreating to the attic as a child where it was just me and my books and my writing. I did write as a child but none of it exists as I destroyed all of it before I married. I came with wedding presents as it turned out along with my clothing as I had never lived away from home before and that was nearly sixty years ago now. Hard to believe how my life has passed these sixty years (I was twenty when we married).
Yesterday I cleaned the top floor and today it is the main floor and that will be soon enough. Already I have done one load of washing and there are perhaps another couple to go this afternoon. I will clean in the morning. I received two pieces of mail (both of them could have been virtual easily). The rest was flyers and they could all be virtual. I dream of a virtual mailbox for sure. What a wonderful way it would be to receive your mail. You could still buy original paper copies and that is a money maker for the Post Office as they will be hand delivered so to speak and the cost is borne by those who need a paper copy.
No work done but I am thinking about it and eager to get back to it. The dogs occupied my time enormously; cats are very self sufficient but I can remember that from childhood and also the relentless hunger that dogs have to be with their people. Even the cats slept in the room with me when they were not prowling about the house (the door was open for them or the dogs but the dogs did not leave me). Only the fish were excluded because of their watery environment and they were in another room.
God's peace to all and may the blessings of God fall down upon His people in this fragile time of our world. We have been fragile for a while really since the beginning of COVID. But new strength is coming out of this fragility slowly but surely as we look at a world much injured by our occupation and here and there are bright spots where we have healed the earth. The healing of the earth will be the great news of the 2020s and 2030s I think. It is a slow process but the result wonderful for the children of today so that they too can enjoy this beautiful world as we did as children.
Pets certainly alter your life and I have enjoyed the last 2.5 weeks spent with two dogs, two cats and a tank full of fish. The time flew by and now I am home again and getting caught up on my cleaning. It will be late or early depending on how you look at the week. I will be finished on Sunday having left that day to the basement which is just a couple of hours probably in the early afternoon after Church.
Little accomplishment on my books but I did spend more time than usual looking at GedMatch and contemplating why I did or did not choose to record some of the matches that I did. First sibling almost completed and this week coming I shall be back on schedule.
My sudden decision to quit blogging was perhaps premature as I do enjoy the ease of using blogger instead of strictly a word document that I then have to produce a systematic system for storing. Blogger offers all of that and so I think I have returned but my aspect is a little different.
I have not watched any TV for 2.5 weeks not even for the weather. I have read the occasional news item and I can sense Canada starting to take its place once again in the world as an effective speaker on her own feet. Thank you to Prime Minister Carney and his very capable team but also I note that the Leader of the Opposition Pierre Poilievre has found his world voice and no more whining on a provincial level from him. This remake of Canada will take all hands on deck. For the Provincial Premiers you are Premiers of the entire province not just the big city that provides you with so many needs that they are going to have to pay more taxes to have instead of draining the provincial funds to keep the people who are in your face all the time complaining quiet. We have a lot of growing to do in Canada.
Exercises all done, breakfast done and time to start cleaning very shortly. My hatred for daylight savings conversion continues apace as I would like to stay on Standard Time so that it isn't black first thing in the morning. I love the early mornings with the bright sun.
Must make some tea and soon time to clean; solitaire puzzles are next. And I did renew my Microsoft Solitaire Collection (they are smart to bill you in Canadian dollars and they willingly collect the GST for that to submit to the Government of Canada). If you are going to sell something in Canada then there are taxes to pay. After all we did the right thing when we bought land that extended down into the agreed upon border between the United States and Canada and gave you that land freely. What is spent in Canada gets taxed in Canada but we have no claim on lands that we paid for but gave to a foreign government since it lay in their jurisdiction already agreed upon by land treaties (namely the purchase of Rupert's Land).
The last two weeks have flown by and the dogs and cats have been lovely. Nothing like time spent with animals; very rewarding.
Nothing done actually but perhaps today might see me nip into Gedmatch and work on the 1st sibling; I am almost finished.
17 March 2026
1. Gedmatch and working on the 1st sibling
If I get to that it will be because the dogs have gone to sleep for a rest.
Beautiful day outside although minus 7 degrees. Thank you God for this beautiful world that we all live in. This is Sunday and the fourth Sunday in Lent. Prayers for the world; they are needed.
Still not accomplishing very much but will plan for the following for the day at some point:
15th March 2026
1. Autosomal DNA chapter for Pencombe
2. Extracting 1st sibling from new matches on Gedmatch
Schedule for Friday, 13 March 2026
1. Continuing Chapter on atDNA for the Pencombe book
2. Extracting new matches from Gedmatch, 1st sibling almost completed
3. Extracting new matches from FT DNA
1. Writing the autosomal Chapter for the Pencombe/Pincombe book
2. Extracting matches from Gedmatch
3. Extracting matches from FT DNA
1. Autosomal Chapter for Pencombe book
2. Check Gedmatch for new matches
3. Check FT DNA for new matches
I still need to mention that my three Newsletters are published every month with each issue being published four times a year and available on FT DNA in their appropriate groups namely - Pincombe/Pinkham, Blake and H11. This does on occasion generate new additions to the studies which is helpful.
The occasional Kipp Newsletter may happen but really I can not think of one thing to write actually. Five years after the loss of my husband my memory of items is very weak for Kipp since I was looking items up when I was least interested in genealogy and when I came to genealogy in 2003 I did work primarily on my own family although still helped Edward when we went to repositories in the United States in particular.
However, I have decided to go offline with my diary and thoughts of life around me and memories of the past that have little or no value in the present.
So I will continue with the blog although perhaps not a daily thing possibly more weekly but time will tell. I will also mention when I publish the Blake and Pencombe/Pincombe books as they will be available in a similar fashion to the Siderfin books (Creative Commons License) online on my website. I do have thoughts on beyond the two books but they would not be associated with my studies at the Guild of one name Studies unless I decide to register them.
I know some people like my blog on the various families but I am concentrating on just two at a time these days so less interesting. It really was set up to be my diary but seems to have been interesting but I am considering going offline with it. It seems like a logical thing to do as all my time now is devoted to writing these books.
I started the blog in 2008 after we came home from our week at the Family History Society Library in Utah. A marvelous visit and I learned a great deal there and highly recommend it. I felt it was a way to store all my thoughts from the week and how I organized and utilized all that material in case I ever wondered about it in the future. This is the future and I have a copy of it and I am feeling that it is time at 80 to circle the wagons so to speak.
Enjoy your genealogies and all the best.
I think the deer could see me in the window and he didn't know me and probably has taken a slightly different path for the moment. We will see if he returns. It took him a long time looking at the window before he called the female to join him on their trek but they did not go their usual way up around the house choosing to slip through the woods another way. He did stand there and look for a very very long time actually. The one dog and I watched him but I had to put the younger dog into the mud room as she was barking.
The Bible Reading for today talked about the battles with the Amalekites thought to be descendants of Esau and had a habit of attacking anyone from behind selecting the weakest. One wonders who the descendants of the Amalekites are today. God said to destroy them entirely but He also said if there are people who love God and obey God in a country then that country should survive. Interesting to contemplate in our present situation where you have a country that attacks other countries in devious ways namely Iran and its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. The use of armed terrorist militias by Iran though is reminiscent of the Amalekites as they attacked the weak like the attack on the 7 Oct 2023 against the Musical Concert and the Kibbutzims.
Slow going writing the new chapter on autosomal DNA and the Pencombe family but that is alright I need to feel my way back into my writing as it is a while since I have written in the books for Pencombe and Blake. There is lots to occupy my attention around me but it is clearing my mind for writing once again. Still a lot to do for preparation of the writing to come over the next few months as I have not yet completed my survey of new matches and entering them into my table.
Dogs looking for a pat and must refill the water dish. The days pass quickly. Off to Church in a couple of hours online as always. Tea to make and solitaire puzzles to play.
The dogs manage a rainy saturday very well; rain or shine they are out and about. They like the rubdown when they come in as well. Still missing their family but coping. Each dog has its own coping strategy.
Yesterday I started my new chapter for the Pincombe/Pencombe book - the autosomal DNA and its impact on the study. Initially when I tested at Ancestry I matched one of my 4th cousins in the Pincombe family and we chatted back and forth and she offered to test her Dad's y-DNA at FT DNA to kick start a Pincombe yDNA study. What did I anticipate all those years ago now? I had tested my brothers and knew that our yDNA line was ancient to the British Isles - Deer Hunters they were dubbed by Ethnoancestry. I also did Chromo2 and there were fourteen who basically matched this ancient line in the British Isles. An expensive test so not a lot of testers at that time. What does it mean to be ancient to the British Isles? Basically these Western Hunter Gatherers were thought to have arrived via Doggersland perhaps as much as 8,000 to 12,000 years ago. If one looks at the yDNA study for the British Isles on FT DNA than one can see these ancient family lines scattered across southern England but all over in different areas of the British Isles. The families in the north Hampshire area all date back in the Parish Registers and for Blake they are found in the land records prior to 1538 when the Parish Registers do begin for a number of the parishes and soon after for most of the others in these areas where the yDNA for ancient British Islanders exists. Amazing to see so many still in particular areas. But I did not assume anything whilst waiting for these results and they are Continental and the earliest Pencombe families found by me were in Herefordshire at least back into the early 1300s but I do not find this surname in the England's Immigrants 1330-1550 Database at the National Archives. No details on why not but suffice it to say a known individual from the Low Countries to the east of France and south of the Netherlands did arrive at this time or earlier and take up the surname Pencombe possibly from the Parish of that name. What we do know is that a John Pencombe arrived in North Molton in 1486 with John Lord Zouch. What I do not know is the capacity in which they arrived together. Since John Lord Zouch was attainted by King Henry VII for assisting Richard III one is left to assume unless the records show more that he was either an attendant or a jailer ensuring that John Lord Zouch remained at North Molton until the King gave him permission to leave. So that was fascinating learning so much about the Pincombe yDNA line and we share Robert Pincombe and Elizabeth (Rowcliffe) Pincombe as our mutual 3x great grandparents (the daughter of the tester) and of course he is my 3rd cousin once removed since they are his 2x great grandparents. Since then many other known Pincombe cousins from my line John Pincombe (son of Robert and Elizabeth (Rowcliffe) Pincombe and Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe tests verify this line. This was a huge family in Middlesex County, Ontario.
Interestingly, over time, the Pencombe line did move to the Pincombe spelling but also Pinkham resulting in a rather interesting conundrum with the American Pinkham family (for the most part this family is descendant of the Pinkham family of Old Dover, New Hampshire) but some American cousins use the Pinkham spelling as there were a few lines coming out of North Molton that are American but still proving how they descend back to North Molton. The Pinkham family though in general in the United States settled in the 1600s around Old Dover, New Hampshire and do not carry the same yDNA signature. However, once again their signature shows ancestry back to the Western Hunter Gatherer and it is well known that England did not use surnames prior to the coming of the Normans in 1066. The uptake of surnames happened at various paces in the different areas. The Pinkham surname first appeared earlier than 1486 in Devon and I need to relocate that reference. I wrote it up in the Newsletter I believe so will have a glance at that.
So the time with the dogs moving along and we are at day 13 and counting down. The older one still is looking for them and waiting for them to come in the usual door. The young one tends to transfer to me when she stays with me and is just plain happy having a rest for the moment after a busy run around. The cats very happy and the fish are fish.
More work to do and brewing tea so will do my solitaire puzzles next.
Dogs still really pleased to be with me but do miss their family very much but it passes quickly. They are busy all day long and still have stamina to run about in the night. Amazing really.
Yesterday did I accomplish anything? Not really. I discovered that the chromosome browser is back at 23 and me which is handy for the work I am doing. I do like the way they record the matches between siblings with half and full match. I shall make a comparison but I am assuming they did not rework this so still the same as when it was done years ago. I have a few new matches at 23 and Me that are substantial and would be interesting to see although I more or less know how they will be matching me by the matches we share. I did send an invitation to one person who really interests me because he is that area where I have endogamy plus an extra match with another line as he matches a cousin that is Buller. We will see how that goes.
The dogs, the cats and the fish are all busy little critters needing my attention and I get distracted by them so do not actually think I will do a great deal of work whilst they are with me. We will have fun and even the news slips away from me although I note that the news is saying that the Russians are helping the Iranian to target American ships. Really this Axis of Evil needs to be gone from our world and yet there are millions of people who do not agree with them inside their own countries and God did say that if there are supporters of God within a country then the country should live on but how to handle the satanists really that is the question. Jesus told them to go away as they were evil and He was and is pure goodness. He transcends time and place forever in our lives.
Work to do and I must make my tea and do my solitaire puzzles first.
That is how I explain to them each morning when they wake up and it is me they are looking at and not their usual family; Day 15 and counting down to Day 0 for them. They seem to understand as we have done this a lot of times now and dogs can be quite clever.
The dogs, cats and I all slept fairly soundly all night and we were all within 20 or 30 feet or 6 to 10 km of each other in case we wondered where each other was. Fascinating really spending time with animals. Then this morning we saw deer which is always an awesome experience.
Not much done yesterday it was just a busy day overall. A couple of new interesting emails one from the Hinxman family (The Blake family at Andover and the Hinxman family at Andover (I think) married in 1610 at Andover - Joseph Hinxman married Elenor Blake daughter of Richard Blake and Jone (Blake) Blake (this was a likely 2nd cousin marriage with a grandaughter of Robert Blake (brother of Nicholas)). The Hinxman family I did not find before the 1550s but do have a William Hinxman married to Margery (unknown) and they had eight children one of which was Joseph who married unknown and his son Joseph married Elenor Blake. They had seven children and Joseph Hinxman is the best known to me. He also named his eldest son Joseph and was married to Martha Samborin 23 Aug 1675 at Andover St Mary. They had four children including a Joseph Hinxman baptized 16 Oct 1677 at Andover. The question in my mind was my 4x great grandfather Joseph Blake son of Thomas Blake and Ann Carter married 8 Dec 1728 at Penton Mewsey with Joseph baptized 21 Oct 1730 at St Mary Andover named after this well known individual and third cousin twice removed. Since this was an Anglican family the tendency to name sons Joseph wasn't as strong by this time as is more commonly found in Roman Catholic families still at this time. Must write back and will contemplate that over the next couple of days. I have not done much work on the Hinxman family other than looking at Elenor (Blake) Hinxman's children/grandchildren etc.
Fish all fed, dogs fed, cats fed and I am fed so the day begins and my tinnitus seems somewhat lessened surprisingly. I have had tinnitus since my high school days when coping with teachers appeared to be my biggest problem. I think teachers assist students a lot but they should really wait for a student to ask for assistance. Myself I had a direction and really did not want anyone confusing that direction. Comments like you really shouldn't do the Business course because you are university material. But I had a reason for doing that and the jobs that I got in my summers once I was old enough to work at 16 I wanted that type of background and experience and one can see that now typing and bookkeeping are extremely important in one's life. Teachers should stick to their subject matter and do a perfect job of passing that on to their students. Not interfere in a pattern already established by a student; if they do not have one then by all means if they ask help them but do not make haphazard comments that in the long run would not have been beneficial - one cannot know the future.
Of course school and I were never good friends; I love to learn and for the most part I hated the way we were taught but could I come up with a better system for a class room of 30 to 45 students? I was probably a singleton learner who preferred not to have to work with other students unless they were like me, extremely interested and keen in the subject matter. Other than that I have no idea on the best system but I suspect COVID pointed the way as students who were singleton learners were not as affected by home study; I myself have never had any desire to teach. When I did do substitute teaching on the Bruce Peninsula when my husband taught there for a short period of time; I ran my classes like a sargeant major and they learned what they were supposed to learn that day but any attempts to convince me to actually teach were rebuffed. I was not interested in that sort of work; if you are then do the best you can because the children deserve that. The sargeant major attitude was simply to keep control of the class at all times without any fooling around which one must do if one is a substitute. You are there for a moment in time and must just accomplish what has been assigned for that day or two days or occasionally more; these children do not need a babysitter - they need to learn and quickly; the world is changing rapidly. The Provincial Curriculum is well set up for such needs but could use tweaking where AI is concerned. But the students themselves may provide that fodder of change just from usage.
Must make my tea. Solitaire puzzles to do and on with the day. The dogs and cats are contemplating how long fifteen days is I am sure. I am probably stricter than their family.
Not out in the yard a lot but quiet time with the dogs is always an enjoyable time for me. Their family enjoys a rest without them and I enjoy some good time with them. Good pets to share just a little dogs. These are very large dogs but very friendly to me. I do enjoy their company.
Life has been hectic for a bit but slowly calming down. I want to get on with my projects once I have been through all the databases and the next item to do is to write my autosomal DNA chapter for the Pincombe family of North Molton book. I wondered if I might get some stray Pincombe results with the Living DNA Results but not particularly. The Pencombe family in Herefordshire seems to have disappeared when one checks out Free BMD. All the records on Free BMD are from Devon and perhaps just a misread by the transcription. Two are from St Thomas, one from Torrington,one from Devon Central and one from Barnstaple. Interesting that four of the six are from the areas where the Pincombe family of North Molton is known to have lived. On Find My Past there is a record for a Mrs Pencombe 1910-19 in the Herefordshire, Kelly's Directory published in 1913. There is a Baptism record at Wacton, Herefordshire in 1811 for Maria Pencombe daughter of Arthur Pencombe and Ann Kinsey. There are 873 results in total on Find My Past. I will go through those records over time just to have a look at what has been collected. The information I have on the Pencombe family of Herefordshire is primarily from the 1300s and 1400s.
I have to admit when a country goes out of its way to support and arm terrorist militias whose sole aim is to destroy another country (in this case Israel and all the countries of the Middle East apparently as they continue bombing them) how does one really regard such a country. The oil that is in Iran belongs to the people of Iran not solely to the leaders but it definitely doesn't come off that way to the rest of the world as the money that is earned from this very wealthy country appears to go towards supporting terrorism and not just around Israel. The world suffers from Iran's terror exports. When the Prime Minister was questioned on the issue of the war in the Middle East I felt all of the questions were totally inappropriate. He stated his case succinctly when first asked - Iran can not have nuclear weapons; they are a terrorist country and they export vast amounts of terrorism. What they should have been asking was how did the pursuit of trade go because that is the primary interest of our Prime Minister and what we want to hear from these far flung press conferences (so long as I am paying for the CBC I want to get the messages that are important to us as Canadians not a lot of valueless gibberish). I am disliking the questions by reporters more and more as they are just obvious seekers of glory if they get an answer that goes viral. They do not care and they should as they are in as much danger of the terror that Iran exports as anyone else and more so likely as they are closer to the line of fire with their faces plastered all over the networks. So more respect for our Prime Minister and let him do the job we elected him to do.
Sad once again to see children die as they are the victims in all of this around the world where satanistic peoples dangle threats of nuclear bombs at the rest of the world that just wants to get along; raise their families and do their jobs. The ignorance of the Axis of Evil - Russia, Iran and North Korea continues to be so very obvious. Iran and the other two are satanic but at the moment they try to pretend that they are good citizens of the world. God will handle it all at His own pace and time. We just have to keep on managing the side effects.
On to the day; I am late today but good time with the dogs did come first.
Today the top floor and then it will be almost complete. Yesterday went well although I was tired by the end of the day for sure.
I did complete the Pincombe-Pinkham Newsletter Volume 11 Issue 2 2026 and it is in for review. Perhaps on the website later today. Very brief this time as I am in the thinking process for the next chapter of the book and I have decided it will be on Autosomal DNA pointing out different lines.
The end of the week should see me back into the matches once again but the days fly by quickly.
Tea all drank and Solitaire Puzzles next.
Cleaning day and it is the main floor that I will be working on. Nothing unusual just the regular cleaning..
Yesterday passed very quickly as I watched the television somewhat with regard to the War against Iran. Support is strong for the United States in this especially in the Middle East but also we in Canada believe they are doing the right thing; the people of Iran in great numbers have risen against the government but it is difficult to face bullets with no ability to counteract that. Time will tell but the death of the Ayatollah and the reaction in Canada does show how we feel about the leadership currently in Iran. The leadership are a bitter satanic people to have destroyed all those lives and the lives they have destroyed in Iran itself trying to stay in power. To shoot down a civilian aircraft headed back to Canada filled with children, women and men was a callous act - so many deaths. It was the act of a despicable satanic leader.
Very little real work yesterday as I took the day off contemplating that it is Sunday and the Lenten studies, I am looking at two different ones, have been particularly interesting. But it is just contemplating how to manage the house and the yard that does occupy me somewhat at this moment. I am all set up for the winter but the summer will soon come and I believe I will have this company that clears the snow cut the lawns. That will leave much smaller amounts of land for me to take care of plus I think I will get the tree trimmed this year as well. I can see dead wood up in there and best to get that out. I would rather not chop it down as I look at the fir tree next door that is slowly dying and it is huge and this tree in front of my house might catch it if it comes down if I am lucky as it is strong and healthy. Plus I love trees and they are so good for the environment. Most people have taken the trees down that the city planted over 45 years ago. Some have replaced them with trees but a lot have not and it doesn't look quite so lovely having all those trees I have to admit. Trees do give character to a street.
I need to continue looking at Gedmatch to see if there are any matches that I particularly want to collect from there. Then I will move on to FT DNA, My Heritage and Living DNA to see if there is anything new in the last eight months that would assist me. The chapter I am creating in my brain for the Pincombe book is slowly coming into focus so will also work on that but first the Pincombe Newsletter was due yesterday and I completely forgot actually so will likely work on that first of all today in my down time from cleaning.
Drinking tea and must do my solitaire puzzles.
All those beautiful children, men, women shot down in the Canadian plane so many years ago in Tehran will be remembered once again with love and it is said that the Ayatollah Khamenei has died in the US-Israeli strikes. The young girl murdered for not wearing a hijab will also be remembered. All of those people who never came home again after being arrested by the Iranian Guard will be remembered but the Ayatollah and his proxies both within Iran and Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas creating terror in the Middle East especially in Israel will not be mourned by the world or many of their own countrymen. Khamenei was satanic; as evil as evil can be. Canada stands with the Iranian people injured by this man as our Prime Minister said although his words dealt more with nuclear weapons for sure as that is the greatest danger that was being presented. Iran using the threat of nuclear weapons by pursuing them to gain an upper hand is just evil in the same way that Russia's use of the threat is also evil; totally satanic.
The day moved quickly yesterday and I did little work actually. I am contemplating my next steps as I give my eyes a rest for a bit. They are 80 years old even if the lenses were renewed! I still marvel at being able to actually see without glasses and read so much. When the letters get smaller than I need my glasses.
I like to be organized and that is perhaps why my days are so very similar week after week. I get more done if I am totally organized. Although my free time tends to be spent on future organization in order to complete a project which isn't a bad use of the time.
There was an article on some cuneiform tablets found recently which I was reading first thing this morning involving King Nebuchadnezzar. There is so much verification of events in the Bible with all of these discoveries of ancient tablets. I have always found all of these discoveres so intriguing in particular the Dead Sea Scrolls. I moved on without saving but have found a couple of items referring to the same stones:
Ancient Cuneiform Cylinders Shed Light on Nebuchadnezzar II’s Work in Babylon - GreekReporter.com
The second one refers to this earlier article I note. But the first one I have not read so will do that one next. I can remember our priest when I was a child (his surname was Abraham and as a young child I did confuse the Biblical Abraham with the priest on occasion) and his sermons always appeared to be booming from the pulpit and caught the attention of this child with the wandering mind. I listened avidly to every word he said and having learned to read at a young age would try to follow the story as written in the Bible later in the day to learn more about what he had been talking about. Sundays are precious to me as I do love going to Church and soon it will be time for the on-line service.
Early mornings are generally my time to see what is going on in the world. How is Canada interacting with the world? But mostly at the moment my mind is on Canada becoming tariff proof because we need to have a solid investment with our country for the children of the future - it is really always about the future not about ourselves. When we become too deeply engrossed in our activities; our desires to travel here and there; our desires to do so many things than we do not concentrate on what is really important. The future of Canada is for the children of Canada; they have to live with what we do now in the present. It was this continual concentration by the adults in the past that brought Canada to its greatest in the first sixty years of the 1900s. But then we slipped into complacency and being a secondary partner along with Mexico also a secondary partner (various industries tried to make extra money by building in these two secondary countries where the cost was lower and then selling them in the United States at a greater profit to them) in what was meant to be a great trade deal. We were weak and did not develop our industries (allowed our industries to be out competed and closed) in a way that would benefit the future but rather always thinking in terms of the greater continent. We need to concentrate totally on Canada and making Canada tariff proof.
It will take time and hard work and being up to date on where we are at the present. Five contracts to widen Highway 17 from Arnprior to Renfrew was in the news but the road is widened now from Arnprior nearly to Renfrew with four lanes why not to widen the Highway 17 from nearly to Renfrew to Pembroke where the military have successfully widened the road for quite a while now to Petawawa (perhaps give the money to the military and let them get the road built; they are better at it). Perhaps that is what they meant and the news reporting got it wrong; I surely hope so. Then there is the portion of the road from Petawawa to North Bay and when is that getting done and beyond North Bay to Sault Ste Marie and along the shores of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay and finally to the Manitoba border. When is all of that getting built? I trust we do not hear anymore about a tunnel under the 401 in Toronto. Highway 17 has needed widening ever since it was built and we did get the passing lane eventually (I can remember when it was just two lanes as we went north summer after summer to canoe in the northern lakes in the 1960s and early 1970s). This road is so heavily used now and desperately needs to be four lane; shovels in the ground hopefully when the snow melts and the ground unfreezes. The road for the mines also needs to be done and the extension of the railway line if that isn't already done; hard to keep up with it all.
So I do pay my taxes happily every spring on the money that I have earned during the year (do spend it on the Highway 17 being widened) that didn't get taxed at source. I do not receive junk mail trying to steal my refund usually because I do not get one. It does make you wonder how the scammers achieve their information. AI would trap them very quickly. Take back the money they steal from people and put them in jail where they belong. Get a job, work for a living instead of scamming people.
Time for breakfast.
A little shocked to see how changed the world is today monitoring it as the day passes. Canada is a quiet place in the north and it remains that way really. We like our quietness and our calmness. Budget deficits come and go with the rise and fall of trade and commerce. I remember an Alberta recovering slowly from the depression and then the World War reactivated some of their economy (all this before I was born) but the recovery was ongoing and eventually the extraction of oil put them into the black and they became a have province. The natural resources in this province will sustain them for many years if the money is carefully invested like Norway did but it was wasted by earlier Premiers. That is the value of provincial taxes as it gives them a surplus in the good years to invest in items that produce a steady income to support all of the province's needs. Alberta pays very low provincial taxes.
Taxes produce a future for the generations to follow and are a good thing in my opinion. I do not begrudge my taxes to the government and always I pay taxes in March/April just because I prefer that. The donations I do as well but donations do not reduce taxes that much unless you have a lot of money you are donating. Yesterday my groceries were $135 for the week to come so I have not noticed prices creeping up as I was around $85 last year at this time but I did buy some extras like a bar of lovely 90% cocoa chocolate and some prepared canned tuna which caught my eye plus a few other items that make up perhaps $30 of it but that is still up somewhat over last year. Mostly I just buy basic things but a package of chicken was nearly $35 up quite a bit I think but it is lovely chicken. The salmon maybe up a little I do not always pay that much attention.
But I still believe in taxes being the best way to manage a country and ensure that all of the people are taken care of although I am a conservative in that regard as people should not expect the government to pay for their upkeep. It unbalances the tax system forcing the well to do to pay too much of their income into taxes - when it is over 50% of your income then you wonder about the taxing system unless you are the ultra-rich in which case they made their money on the backs of Canadians and should find a way to support the government and not expect to pay low taxes. Mostly it is the well to do who are using private medicine because they like the convenience whereas public medicine does cost a lot of money (I had to go private for my cataract surgery because I simply couldn't timetable it when I had 100% support as I knew when my eyes were operated on I would need that and I did). I also accept that that was my problem not the problem of the health care system. As it turned out this young ophthalmologist trained here and did a fellowship in the United States immediately recognized that I would be best with the simple lens. The original ophthalmologist paid no attention at all to my time frame which I do understand may not be high on the list with public medicine but I was telling her more than half a year ahead of when I needed the surgery to happen. But had she said so at the beginning (she was actually always on holiday at that time) I would have gone private immediately and had the surgery earlier but it was delayed by nearly a year (it took several months to get my records transferred as the secretary did not appear to be able to manage that quickly - having worked in the hospital that was a surprise). I do believe we should only hire people in our medical system trained in our country personally. I can now see like I absolutely never have and, do not wear glasses except for reading. I am getting old and so I keep resting them as I have a lot more to transcribe from Latin.
Completed ancestry yesterday and moving into Gedmatch full time for a couple of days probably as I look at all the matches that have been added since 2024. There are a lot of new matches but so far not too many that fit into my categories.
Tea all drank and on to solitaire puzzles. Another work and exercise day.
It should have happened in December before Christmas break and I begrudge the time wasted about 2 and a half months that things could have been happening. We need to move along and be quicker doing things. There are people unemployed and we need to get these ideas going so that they are employed. So that we are looking for workers and not having people without jobs. I have little patience for criticism at the moment.
I did listen to the talk given by the Conservative Party Leader and there were some really good points there like working with the current government and getting it all done. I think of this as a Unity government at the moment and anyone who upsets the apple cart will find at the polls that most Canadians want these things to happen and as quickly and carefully as possible to give the greatest benefit to the Canadian people. That is what Confederation was all about; benefit to everyone in Canada. The provinces are simply a tool to make it easier to handle local issues; they are not autonomous and if you do not have enough money for health care then bring in a health tax and stiffle the complaints.
I go to a doctor maybe once a year and the $750 health tax I pay is barely scratched by that visit although overhead affects this for sure as rent/equipment costs money and doctors pay for their own clinics (plus I pay more than that monthly in Income Tax which also goes partly to health care). I am actually part of the Ontario long term medical study and have to get my blood work for that and will very shortly when one of my daughters has time to take me. It is not that far away to drive but I have never given six tubes of blood and then driven and this is not going to be the first time when I am 80. Looking forward to the results of that test actually. I sort of think these days that people should know how much a doctor's visit costs even if the system is universal. Generally I think doctors are underpaid often enough for the work that they do. I like and dislike universal health care - it becomes too soft a cushion and one doesn't regard the actual cost of their medical care. Yet I do not want to see children without health care wandering about and it is a measure of a community that the people who live in it care for the people that live there.
We have to be careful when we are over 75 and driving I think. Extremely careful with our mind totally on the road at all times and not to drive if we are tired. It is a must and if you fail to follow that you should not be driving. The world depends on that driver behind the wheel being aware at all times; no drugs and no drinking of alcohol.
Yesterday I worked away on Ancestry with some work on Gedmatch. A few more very interesting matches on Ancestry with Cotterell cousins and given the frequency of Cotterell on their side the matches were quite good for sixth cousins as they traced back to William Rawlins and Mary Ford (my five x great grandparents) through their daughter Mary who married Stephen Cotterell. They have a good tree and now I have all the children of Stephen and Mary which is so very helpful. There was also a long length of shared matches in Ancestry also very handy. Is the Cottrell family at Upper Chute/South Tedworth related to this Cotterell family? Are they both related to the Cotterill family at Kimpton (and I think Stephen is by the records I extracted but I am always looking for anything that contradicts any of this research). I do like it to be correct. So that made the day very interesting and obviously I do have Cotterell DNA (unless they are in a common area but that is the treat of Ancestry as they remove common lengths with TIMBER so generally your match is a true match with a similar family line). Since my only connection would appear to be through my paternal grandmother the priest recording her name as Ada Bessie Cotteril Rawlings was capturing what he believed to be true plus she was registered with that name and I must check the dates on those two items. I think the baptism was before the registration actually. In both cases Rawlings should have been Rawlins as her mother was baptized as Rawlins and Cotteril should have been Cotterill if the father was from the village of Kimpton. So very interesting and I am avoiding it looking like a soap box opera as far as I am able and sticking to facts.
My mother used to watch all these soap box operas on the television and when I used to get home from university she would say come and watch and so I did a few times just to give her company but it gave me a dislike for soap box opera and whenever politics or anything begins to look like a soap box I avoid it if at all possible.
Collection Day and I have already been outside to put the collected items out to the curb. This is the first time I have put out a garbage bag (I didn't even bother with the container which generally sits way at the back of the garage) which has basically one white garbage bag in it which has dental floss for six weeks, a few bandaids and the furnace filter which I checked and it is garbage not recyclable. Amazing really how much is being recycled. I am busy using the bread bags to collect up the smaller plastic bags from freezer goods and others, I use one of the yoghurt containers to collect up the small tinfoil, flexible plastic lids and the like, items that look like paper but do not tear so have plastic in them and then I put that filled container into the waste container and start a new one. It is starting to look neater when I put it out to the street but it all recycles. How wonderful that is. I do want to start buying my meat in butcher paper though although having these sealed plastic containers gives it a longer shelf life so it becomes problematic and I understand that. So I use that method when I want a little more time and the butcher paper from another store which generally has that for immediate usage. A new company has been formed to take care of all that addition to recycling; great for business.
We are a country that produces boxes and other paper containers and we need to move to that where it is possible. It is easy to recycle paper. I can remember life without plastic bags so it can be done but it is more difficult to keep items fresh, to keep brown sugar from caking and there are other examples. One step I have taken is to use a freezer bag for storing brown sugar and wonder if a movement towards brown sugar in paper bags would work and just store it in the freezer bag. It can still clump in the lighter plastic but the freezer bag does a really good job and you just wash it and I have been using the same one for a couple of years now.
Today I continue working on Gedmatch as Ancestry is mostly complete although will check for new matches and I am going through the four accounts that I have for siblings and looking at all the Common Ancestors and placing them into their coloured groups for ready recall in the future. That was how I located one set of Cotterell (sixth cousins) sharing 20 cM as my cutoff is 23 cM in Ancestry which can be quite a large number and likely I am missing items between 18 and 22 cM and in particular this one but I can only do so much of this and I have a lot more to do.
Drinking my tea and time to do the solitaire puzzles.
I never grow weary of cleaning actually; it is a lovely redundant task that keeps one physically fit and the house clean week after week. When the dogs are here there is a lot more work to do for sure but they they are towards me friendly warm and loving and I enjoy their company. Perhaps in the future I will be enjoying all that lovely restful time with the dogs. They love the yard and it is full of snow which they will also love.
Yesterday I did have a look at Gedmatch but did not find anything new that I would use from the first kit I looked at. I will do more of that today. I still have a small amount to do on ancestry. I like to do them together because that is the only way you can look at the chromosomes on ancestry matches and not that many really move their kits to Gedmatch - I have no idea what the percentage would be in total but I find it to be around 5 to 10% of my database. Since they dominate the field with 28 million tests and possibly more that I or AI may not have found the latest. Another interesting statistic shows that 53 million people have tests across the four main testing companies but that doesn't include Living DNA which has a sizeable database as well. Considering there are 8 billion in the world this is just a drop in the bucket (less than 1% of the world's population). Mind you it is a higher percentage in North America where the testers predominate except for the British Isles and I do not know the percentage there that have tested with Living DNA. I know I have lots of matches there as well.
More contemplating of the Blake in South Newton and I will dig out all that information and construct a tree coming down using the wills from the 1600s on. Proving that they are from the Calne Blake family is the thought in all of this and South Newton is 47.6 kilometres to the south of Calne. I just sort of thought it was that family as the Calendar of Patent Rolls does have this family involved in various activities around this area south of Calne over into Somerset. Although actual connections may be difficult but word of mouth does cover the Somerset family to a certain extent and I need to pursue the South Newton group and see what is there. Of course this all goes back to my premise that the Calne Blake is actually the descendants of Richard le Blak who applied for a Market Permit in 1274 whilst living in Rouen Normandy and in the Pipe Rolls of Hampshire we do find a Richard le Blak family at Wargrave (near Windsor, Berkshire) and then a gradual movement to the west apparently (still to be proven but why would people randomly choose the name Blake - it really doesn't make sense to choose a name that other people have and really is not something that I could see any of my known English relatives doing) to Speen Berkshire and then to Hungerford Wiltshire and eventually ending up in Calne When You look at a map this is certainly a possibility. There are a number of le Blak individuals on the Pipe Rolls at Wargrave and nearby Wargrave. It does make sense that a Norman would come to the British Isles with his commercial intentions and set up near Windsor where the King was. Anyway I still have two years slotted for this book and I am sure I will need every day of them. But as I said if I do not feel what I have found is conclusive I will publish what I am happy with and the rest of the original book will be placed in the Library of the Guild of one-name Studies for academics and genealogists to regard in the future if they so wish.
The Pincombe book is falling into place as I am now looking at a new chapter before the genealogical descent charts. I am thinking I will put in the DNA chapter closer to the beginning of this book than I did in the Siderfin Book where it is basically at the end of the book. I place a high value on the DNA because it helps me to sort lines often enough. There are some lengths of DNA that simply persist on and on through families and leads them back to their MRCA just by the cousin matches.
Another day, tea all drank, snack eaten after exercises earlier, time to do Solitaire Puzzles, have breakfast, and later a nice run and lifting weights. Back into the regular days without cleaning.
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.
Today it is the main floor and I will begin in an hour or so. It is minus 17 degrees celsius and the ice is building up here and there. Yesterday was busy although I did not accomplish a lot with the ancestry matches. I continued to check out the match with a South Newton Blake family. I will do a bit of searching on that as I have collected quite a bit of material on the South Newton Blake family including all the wills. They just always struck me as likely being descendant of the Calne Blake family. Some of the family sizes were large and certainly land was passed to the eldest and any monied items in order to keep it intact. I can understand the principle and it worked well for the times. Generally the other sons went into the military, the church or business as that grew to be a suitable occupation. Other sons stayed and worked for the eldest. That was just the way of life.
One other item caught my eye and it was in the Cottrell line. A large match with a Cottrell family at Upper Chute, Wiltshire and is located 3 miles NE of Ludgershall and 7 miles NW of Andover and interestingly 7 miles north of Kimpton. I am, as I said, ambivalent about the father of my paternal grandmother. Interesting that the young man similar in age to her in this family is also named George. But why did the priest use the spelling Cotterill on her baptismal record - strange really. I will have a look at the records on Find My Past and investigate. This is sizeable at 54 cM on ancestry considering the use of TIMBER. This is primarily though a Northhamptonshire family so was surprised. The furtherest back is a John Cottrell born 1804 at South Tedworth, Wiltshire. The shared matches are certainly interesting and include my two brothers tested at Ancestry. The other question of course is this a descendant of Stephen Cotterell and Mary (Rawlins) Cotterell where Mary is one of the children of my 4x great grandparents William Rawlins and Mary (Foord) Rawlins. Knowing that their daughter married her second cousin a William Rawlins leading to a possibility of large matches if I happen to actually have Cotterell/Cotterill/Cottrel DNA inherited from my grandmother. But this is the largest match that I have had thus far. This George Cottrell married in 1879 in London but in 1875 he is named as the father of a daughter in London (my grandmother was born in 1876). Very very interesting that the name is George perhaps and close enough at just seven miles away. His marriage appears to be to the mother of the child born in 1875. Wouldn't that be amazing to find a solution. The only way that I am going to match a Cotterill/Cotterell/Cottrell is through my grandmother as my tree shows thus far. None of her direct line ancestors though are Cotterill/Cotterell/Cottrell that would have passed DNA to her.
So Ancestry, as always, proved to be most interesting and I always check my matches there simply because of the vast amount of information that comes with the match even though it lacks the actual area where I am matching on an individual chromosome.
Charging up my FitBit as it was down to 30% and I generally charge it as soon as I notice that it is 30% or lower. Sometimes I do not notice until it starts to send me messages but generally I notice before 20%. It is now up to 92% and does charge quickly this new one. The older one was taking somewhat longer to charge so another bonus in having a new one. This is a Charge 6 and the last one was a Charge 5. I have been a FitBit user for a lot of years now but about seven years ago I stopped using it for almost an entire year because I felt like it was driving my life. Now I have a different attitude to the FitBit and how I use it and perhaps one has to progress to that.
So this looking at matches I have missed over the last year as I work away is proving to be most interesting. I have my lists for the others but I do like to go into Ancestry first and then have a look at GedMatch and then start pulling the matches that I found in the other databases. I am looking for anything that would upset the applecart so to speak. But also for anything that is new and adds information that I have been thinking about and Ancestry has certainly filled the bill on that one the last couple of days. Just a few matches to go there and I will be into even more indepth looking as my excel file will be built completely with all of the sibling's results filled in and any MRCAs noted on the Ancestry matches file.
Tea all drank and must do solitaire puzzles, then breakfast and cleaning.
Once again Ancestry has updated their ethnicity estimates especially within the British Isles. I had selected one set of data as put forward as my father and one set as my mother. They are correct. My mother has ancestry in southwestern Ontario and my father's ancestry totally in Hampshire and area although some interesting additions here and there. So you see my father's journeys all being in England plus coming to Canada as a nine year old with his parents in 1913 whereas my mother's journeys are all in southwestern Ontario. The percentages though struck me as not what I might have anticipated but I have four tests on Ancestry and need to build a table with all the results and look at them in that sort of frame of mind. For instance I inherited little Pincombe lots of Gray and others inherited lots of Pincombe and little Gray as it turned out. Again I inherited heavily from Rawlings and less Blake where the others did inherit heavily from Blake and less Rawlings. That is why I am different although percentage wise I am very like my next youngest brother; very unlike my next oldest brother and similar to my two sisters, one eight years younger and one six years older. The other two brothers have not tested (one died in 1999 prior to autosomal testing) and the other I have left it all up to him and he just never got to it and really with all the data that I have he shouldn't feel pressured for sure. He is the image of my grandfather and it continues to be the case as he ages except my grandfather was always thin and he is not as thin. But I can see it more and more every time I see him.
So that completely occupied me yesterday when I wasn't at Church (online). Although I do see it somewhat as work I always feel it brings me closer to my family so also see it as a family time. My older sister had a fall and broke her hip and is slowly recovering so prayers being said for her recovery. I continue with working on Sunday although I must admit I do feel a twinge of guilt that it is work but then it is also time spent thinking of loved ones and God would like that.
We won silver in the playoff Hockey game; the team did well and really looked equally matched and the sudden death overtime goal broke some hearts and cheered other hearts. That is the way with sudden death ends to games! I like the way that Norway runs their Olympic training actually. The interview with someone involved in all of that was most interesting.
But ancestry continued to intrigue me through the day as it will take me quite a while to work my way through the 21 matches. I glean as much as possible especially looking at the matches in common.
My mind wanders today back to the early years at Edward's United Churh in the late 1970s to 1985. I was volunteer secretary of Edward's Church for a number of years (he volunteered me )). I was marking papers at the same time for a professor that I would work with doing my masters and our daughter was all settled into school. Edward was very content at work and he and his cousin Gordon Riddle talked about their mutual Kipp genealogy and Gordon had invited Edward to go with him to the Ottawa Branch meetings of what is now Ontario Ancestors. Although planning to do my Masters all good plans sometimes get changed for excellent reasons. I returned to motherhood instead of doing my masters welcoming our surprise baby when I was 36 nearly 37 and working at home proofreading and copyediting for private printers for about a dozen or more years and finally a secretary was hired to replace my volunteerism for the Church taking that off of my plate as I was very busy. The Riddles had moved at some point no ideas on that as our directions rarely crossed after we left Orleans United Church in the mid 1990s and never after they left Orleans. We were no longer attending Orleans United Church regularly after 1996 (Edward's brother had passed away and the minister at Dominion Chalmers sensed Edward's need to talk occasionally and that was certainly a drawing card to going there for him every week) as we went to Dominion Chalmers for a couple of years and then to Christ Church Cathedral when the minister at Dominion Chalmers retired (he was excellent; a brilliant early Biblical scholar). Christ Church Cathedral is Anglican but Edward loved the music of the organ and the choirs so was content to be there and as he said to pay me back for going to his church for nearly 20 years. I think he used to go sometimes to special services at Orleans United as I do recall being there also once or twice in the early 2000s. The women's group there used to make up lunches for Gene-O-Rama which they sold to the Ottawa Branch. I was busy in those days working full time. I also took a course at St Paul's University on developing encounter groups for people dealing with mental illnesses - a very interesting experience for me where I learned a great deal about myself having been in just such care many many years earlier (back in 1974). I do not keep in touch with Edward's Church other than donating some money for music in memory of Edward, as he requested, which I do through Canada Helps. Funny how little things pop back into one's memory on occasion. Not sure why I thought about all of that really.
Cleaning day today and working away on the matches in Ancestry. One match I actually wrote to in the Blake line - a very small match but it was with a Blake in South Newton, Wiltshire. Corresponding back and forth I learned that his father's line was from Salisbury. That of course brought to mind that interesting arrival in the Emigrants Database 1330 - 1550 with a Richard Blake coming to Salisbury 7 Sep 1441 from Ireland. Presumably these people listed are not British Subjects. I shall continue my correspondence with this individual as his tree begins in 1735 at South Newton where Mary Blake was born as was her son John Blake born in 1781 at South Newton and his son James was born at Salisbury. Looking at it now a little more intently I had not noticed that the original birthplace of the line was South Newton. I tend to think of South Newton as associated with the Calne Blake family. That a small match would occur with an individual that is at least 7th cousin or greater is surprising. He has built a huge tree and I have not yet investigated it for any other possible lines. A glance now shows me an Arnold line and of course my Arnold family was in Dorset to the south of this area. This is a very large family so would not jump to conclusions on that too quickly. I tend to think if there is relationship between the Calne Blake family and the Andover Blake family it is quite distant likely in the 1300s to possibly the 1400s simply because the wills of these two sets of Blake mentioning each other in the 1500s do not state cousinship or even kinship but rather friend which was a term also used by people who had a kinship but was distant and considered not really there as far as I can tell. I can be corrected on that anytime. The amount shared 10 centimorgans across 1 segment. I generally find that the use of TIMBER by Ancestry to remove ethnic related DNA lengths can affect this final length by 0 to as much as 5 or 10 centimorgans. The smaller the amount the smaller the effect I find generally. Perhaps I can persuade him to take his kit into Gedmatch. We will see. But it was very interesting to see. I do know some pieces of DNA that are common can be so stubborn and exist in a line going back quite a ways certainly as far as 10th cousins but this would need to be in the range of 16th to 20th cousins I would think.
So that was an interesting find. Just realized I didn't finish my blog.
It is cleaning day and must get back to it. Working a couple of solitaire puzzles as I forgot that as well.
