Canoeing

Yesterday, we decided to take the canoe out and for me this was the first time I have been out canoeing in seven years. A little stiff today but we had a good trip around the bayou at Pelee Island.

My accomplishments yesterday on family tree research were very low although I had a response from my query on the Sproxton family to a member of Genes Reunited and Ancestry (I believe it was the same person). She is descended from the brother of Ann (both children of Richard Sproxton and Ann Harland Sproxton). That would make us sixth cousins. It is the first time that I have tried to locate descendants of that line (especially as the spelling I had for Ann's surname was Sprowston (incorrectly transcribed from the register). Having read the register I can see how the error occurred!

I did not start the wills transcription but will do so either today or tomorrow. I need to read away at them for a couple of days before I start to transcribe if they are a bit faint or blurry. Sometimes I can directly read one as soon as I download it but usually they are very old copy and have areas of lightness and blurriness.

We are still busy watching JAG and All Creatures Great and Small. We are into the 7th season of JAG and the 3rd season of All Creatures Great and Small. We managed to watch for nearly 4 hours yesterday. I guess we were tired of working away on our family trees and my husband has been putting together his two journals.

Today I shall read on the wills and perhaps do some more extracting of Sproxton from the various databases. It is a most interesting family and they are primarily found in Yorkshire well into the 1800s. My branch (Elizabeth Cobb daughter of John Cobb and Ann Sproxton Cobb was the mother of Robert Gray junior) emigrated to Canada in 1832 from Yorkshire where Robert Gray junior had been a farmer but was having problems renting farmland and so decided to try his luck in Canada. He farmed here successfully until his death in 1876 and the farm that he was on still continues to be farmed by Gray descendants here in Middlesex County (London Township) although the City of London is growing outwards creeping forward towards the farm lands of my Gray and Routledge ancestors. It has already absorbed the farmland that my Pincombe family was on although it is still farmland but very much part of the City of London. The Gray family is interesting and three sons emigrated, two sons stayed as did the two daughters. One son became a clergyman and I need to glance at the others once again but they were all quite successful in their vocation. I think perhaps farming was just difficult with enclosure.

Proofreading DNA study - 2

I continued proofreading the DNA study and I will finish it tomorrow. I decided to add in more data which meant backtracking and picking up the earlier data sets. I am all caught up now and just have 30 datasets left to proof. Listening to my daughter, I will think about collecting the data in a more sophisticated manner if indeed this extra information proves useful.

We watched the last two episodes of All Creatures Great and Small, Season II. I have Season III and IV on order but it will be awhile before I see them likely as I am #10 and #11 on the list of people waiting for them. This evening two episodes of JAG in Season III were enjoyed. We also went for a 2kilometre walk after dinner. I baked a chocolate cake today - the first in ages since before I injured my shoulder. I couldn't manage to do things like that for quite a while and got away from it. I had stewed up a pot of rhubarb and chocolate cake is so good with stewed rhubarb. I expect we will eat a lot of rhubarb this year :)

Tomorrow I will finish off the datasets for the DNA study. I want to get back to the Andover Parish Registers as I set them aside to work on the proofreading. I may still be able to complete the burial register of the 1st register by the weekend. Then I can start on the next register. I also need to make my list of wills to order from the Hampshire Record Office.

Andover Parish Registers - 21

I worked on the Andover Parish Registers again today and the burial register specifically. I am up to June 1611 now and into the lovely script instead of the tiny writing. There are now 1045 burials in the register and I expect there will be around 2500 or more in the burial register by 1633. There was a "pest" in the village of Andover beginning in August 1603 as recorded in the register. It waged for about two years before it disappeared as quickly as it arrived. The death rate was quite high and especially amongst the elderly (i.e. widows). I have found a few Blake entries hidden in the small writing that I hadn't noticed before so shall set about seeing if I am able to place them in the family lines.

Geocities is closing down at the end of this year and that was where my webpages were located since Rogers is our IP. My husband decided to create a domain name for us - kipp-blake-families.ca and we have now transferred all of our files over to the new domain. I will put a note on my Rogers webpage to let people know that I have moved. I will not update that page but will now only update the new domain. We had thought about having our own domain for quite a while so this will be quite nice. We also will have some email addresses that work with the domain name. At some point we may move and our rogers may not be the best IP then so it would be good to have permanent email addresses.

We spent the afternoon at the Cumberland Museum as it was an open house day for them. It was quite interesting and I learned a few new facts. We walked about 10 km all told today and we were quite tired. On the way home we picked up the dogs and brought them over for a run and walk around the block which they always enjoy. Then we watched "All creatures great and small" for the first three issues of the second season. We just have the last four issues to watch now for the second season and I have ordered in the third and fourth seasons. That is all that our library carries. There are still Seasons 5 to 7 so shall have to think about that for a bit.

I also proofread another 20 entries in the DNA database. I still have 150 to read. It is quite slow going and I am not finding very many errors. It feels more like you are accomplishing something when you find errors!

Tomorrow I shall continue with the registers and try to reach 1615 or so as there will be pages after the lovely script that will be hard to read I am sure :) Also I will continue proofreading. I am trying for 20 to 30 a day which should see me done in 5 to 7 days. I also need to make my list of wills that I want to order from Hampshire. I never quite got around to it as I got distracted by the Hinxman wills on the PCC list.

Andover Parish Registers - 18

I continued with the Andover Parish Registers working on the burial register of the 1st Register. I reached July 1590 with 145 burials now in my database. I found the burial of my 11x great grandmother Elizabeth Blake. I would love to know her maiden name and perhaps one day I will find that. However with her birth likely 1515 to 1520 that will be difficult I expect.

We found All Creatures Great and Small Season II and watched two of the issues. There are six tapes with three issues so a total of 18 issues in a season. There are seven seasons in total.

A quick trip to buy a camera strap and a tiny tripod which is a surprise for me for Christmas - I know that I will enjoy having it.

Tomorrow I will continue with the Andover Parish Registers working on the burials. This will likely be as many entries as the baptisms - possibly well over 2500 up to 1633 so a fairly long task to complete. The next register should be very very interesting although I want to have this register as well.

Andover Parish Registers - 17

I completed the Marriages portion of the first register for Andover and there were are a total of 632 marriages from the initial entry in 1587 to 1633. There are 887 names for marriages on the IGI for Andover in the time period 1613 +/- 20 years and 184 names between 1588 and 1592 and 32 in 1587. That is a total of 1103 names and roughly dividing by 2 gives the number of marriages (a number of these entries have only one or the other name in a marriage though in actual fact) as 552 so my 632 would seem to be quite reasonable. I could do a count on the number of marriages where I have only one name and that could well give me the same final count. I will do that in one of my spare moments!

I started the burial register portion of the first register and have completed to March 1587, the register started on 1 January 1586. There are a total of 55 burials thus far. I am using the other two charts to help me with the surnames as even in this short period of 40 years family names have changed in their spelling and some families have disappeared with new ones arriving. 20 of the 55 burials are children or infants (not specified in this early register). However the names of the parents are given which is very handy. I do not have any deaths for the Blake family in this time period which is as expected.

We celebrated my older daughter's birthday yesterday with a barbeque. It is nice to have the entire family together and we sat around and looked at picture albums.

Today we will have a look and see which of the series for "All Creatures Great and Small" are available at the Public Library. We have the first season but would like to see the other five seasons. I tried to buy them but can not afford the price right now so will borrow them from the library since they appear to have all of them.

Still watching JAG and have completed Seasons 1 and 2 and working on Season 3. Earlier we did watch Seasons 4 and 5 but will redo them. We bought Season 6 so just need 7 to 10 (7 and 8 are available in the store).

Today I shall continue working on the burial register and I will also watch the other load of laundry. We have managed to hang them outside consistently since the end of March. We hope to do so until the end of October since that saves on our electricity usage and helps the environment. Plus it probably saves us a few pennies on our bill!