Tennis Elbow continues

Still relaxing and reading as my tennis elbow improves and I expect another week will see me completely recovered.

I have nearly finished Ann Gibbons book - The First Human. A very intriguing and well written history of the search by various world famous scientists as they have pursued their desire to find skeletal remains of the ancestors of homo sapiens.

Tomorrow I plan to read the Siderfin family book once again and carefully extract the information in case I have missed any details. A few queries have led me to think that I need to reread Saunders book and think through my process by which I determined the descent of my family line and whether I could be mistaken. I need to write to Devon and acquire photocopies of the wills that Saunders refers to in his book.

Continuing Tennis Elbow

My elbow is slowly improving - I didn't type yesterday or today until now. I expect another week or so and I will be typing away for hours on end (until tennis elbow comes back).

I am reading "The First Human" by Ann Gibbons and it is a very interesting book. I am learning a great deal about the early findings that I vaguely recall as they were announced but with my interest in DNA this is excellent reading.

Bishops Nympton Parish Register - 16 February 2009

I continued with the Bishops Nympton Parish Register and have completed the baptisms up to the end of 1824 (three more years (12 pages) until I reach my small block already completed from 1827 to 1837). These are forms now so the information is quite standard although sometimes the priest does name the actual farm that the family lived on - I found my Pincombe line at Park which is where they lived when the four youngest children were born. They lived at West Wood when the four older children were born including my ancestor.

We went skating on the Canal (8 km although we only skated 4.8 km) today and it was a very pleasant day to do so. This is a holiday in Ontario - Family Day so the canal was fairly busy.

I started reading another one of my Christmas books - "The First Human" by Ann Gibbons. Lots of background and I have read the first chapter only. It is interesting reading all of these books in light of the latest revelations with mtDNA and yDNA. Both the maternal and paternal line in my family are fairly unusual making geographic location possible for the mtDNA and somewhat of a mystery for the yDNA although it appears to be a very old English DNA possibly Neolithic. The best matches though are found in the Balkans (9/12) and Poland. But the markers appear to fit in with this very very early branch of I2a as there are others who, like us, do not have any absolute matches.

I am still thinking about my lecture and what I will say. It is just 25 minutes so I will not be saying a great deal. I have to decide if it will be elementary or just a strict look at some family lines. It is difficult to decide although I think I will just do a few family lines since that will interest people who have tested and people who are thinking about testing. This will be my last lecture as I find that it simply takes up too much time being involved with lectures and writing for other people. I want to concentrate on my own research now.