Blake Newsletter, Volume 14, Issue 3, 2025 is published on the website

The latest issue of the Blake Newsletter is published on the website. Again there isn't really a story in this one, mostly data and a short discussion of yDNA as mentioned yesterday. I did not draw any conclusions but merely stated the facts. More data is needed to really come to a concrete decision with regard to the East Anglia group. However, it was very enlightening and the results not unexpected given the settlement of this area of the British Islands being strongly related to Danish emigration. However drawing conclusions would be premature.

Attended Church yesterday and it was an interesting sermon once again; time escaped me and I will watch the service from Essex in my break time today. Amazing how busy life can be for this nearly 80 year old. There is never a dull moment for sure. 

Prayers for the lives lost in the floods in Texas and prayers for those still missing. How sad that so many of them are young children at a Christian Children's Camp.  

Yesterday heavy rain and it does look like more today but is not raining at the moment but very grey out. An unusual July with so much rain but does save having to water the sunflowers that have managed not to be eaten by the rabbit. 

Did think more about moving and I can see this is not an immediate thing but rather I am looking further into the future. For one thing my daughter who spends her research time with me loves the East End of the city where she has lived since just before she turned four years of age. Although she has memories of the other house where we lived they are vague and long ago. 

For myself, I did do a little more work on page 5 of the matches extracting 1 segment and 2 segment matches into my file where I didn't already have them. More on that today in between cleaning. I am back to Monday once again and it is the top floor that will be cleaned today. 

Yesterday was the first time that I worked on downsizing once again. I went through the Allen material and checked to see what was there and then wrote to the Allen family member that has been my contact person and verified that they would still like to have the material which Edward had taken to a meeting back in 2019. They are collecting up Allen material and I will now pass this box to them along with a letter showing the line of possession of the items from this same area to Edward's mother and then to Edward and now back to them once again. Many of the items are quite old and there are a number of tintypes including one that is special to me somewhat as it reminds me very much of my oldest daughter at 14 years of age (the tintype is of Edward's maternal grandmother Margaret Evelyn Allen who died 11 Apr 1914 at 34 years of age when Edward's mother was only seven years of age. The striking resemblance to my oldest daughter was amazing actually when I saw the tintype when Edward decided in 2008 to unpack his mother's hope chest that she had left to him when she passed away in 2000. His finds were especially poignant to him as there were pictures of himself with his father which he had never remembered seeing and for me to see a tintype of a child born in 1880 that looked exactly like my eldest daughter and was her great grandmother (mind you I could see the similarity in Edward's mother as well). Life can sometimes be amazing for sure. But the material belongs to the history of the Allen family which was very large with Margaret being the youngest child of eleven children. Her parents were James C Allen (son of Isaac Allen and Rebecca Crouse) and Hannah Catherine Parlee (daughter of John Casey Parlee and Margaret Folkins). The lineage very interesting and primarily New Amsterdam/New York families with Huguenot, Dutch, and English ancestry (dissenters primarily that went to The Netherlands first before going to New Amsterdam). All traced back into the 1600s by Edward and part of his nearly 70,000 member tree on his website. Edward corresponded with cousins all over the United States and Canada often spending a couple of hours a day responding on the email to comments and queries. 

So next Sunday the project is to prepare the Kipp family material (early Oxford, Ontario) family that migrated to Chilliwack, British Columbia in the mid 1800s to see if one of the Archives would like to have all of these early original pictures. I think there are two boxes that I need to work on and that will likely take me several weeks to list everything in the boxes. It does take the idea of moving for me to get back to working on all of this material. I suppose in my mind I do not really want to break it up but I must in order to properly preserve it. Genealogy is an interesting past time and one that I avoided very successfully for most of my life but in 2003 I took up the challenge by my cousin to produce the Pincombe profile for his book on Westminster Township. No one, especially me, would have ever thought that over twenty years I would be so deeply entrenched in genealogy but without DNA I doubt I would ever have proceeded so far into the studies. For Edward, it was being part of the Ontario Genealogical Society that interested him primarily I think until the overwhelming picture of his own ancestry did flow forth as he studied his lines. It was truly amazing the history in his lines that had been lost during migrations from the United States into Ontario beginning in 1800 and continuing in his lines right up into the late 1820s. Gordon Riddle inviting him to go to the meetings with him was his initial introduction to the Ontario Genealogical Society back in the early 1980s.  

For myself I must continue extracting the matches from Living DNA and once completed work them into my databases and then begin the task (along with collecting anything new in the other genealogical testing sites) of working on the re-phasing of my grandparents and then moving to the phasing of my great grandparents. A task of love one might say but the love between my grandfather and my grandmother was strong and it has been easy for me to move away from anything that I thought about doing before I retired to this work for sure. It does keep the brain stimulated especially my latin learning which continues but I do need to move towards ancient latin and that will happen this fall I believe. 

Solitaire puzzles completed, tea drank and it is breakfast time and then cleaning.  

 

 

Bible Reading - seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine; Genesis 41

 I always found the story of Joseph interpreting the dreams of the King of Egypt very interesting. Genesis as the first book of the Bible takes us  a long way back in history and forward. Those early times of the history of man when he walked and talked with God are an important memory. I think we should always learn from the memories passed on to us. Why was this particular story important in our memory bank. I think because the availability of food is the most important thing in our lives; we must eat to live. Any massive waste of food is unacceptable in our modern lives. There are too many of us for any country to be permitted to destroy thousands of pounds of food because the Nazi leaders of that country are unable to smash into another country murdering and assaulting their people. It is the two year old in every human being wanting what is not theirs and striking back when they do not succeed. We must always defend ourselves from such butchery and treachery. I think the Bible Story reminds us that the most human need is food. 

Yesterday was a milestone as Edward's Schultz cousins came and picked up eight boxes of material both for themselves and for Edward's niece which was much appreciated. Two of the boxes are fired plates of birds that Edward enjoyed very much and I suggested that at the next Schultz picnic they could be shared amongst his cousins in his memory and it was rewarding to me that this might be able to happen. Edward would have liked that I am sure. Also the two Kipp family Bibles and one Schultz Family Bible (in German) are now in their hands and I will leave the distribution up to them. I do not want such original items to be lost on my watch. Three old teapots that belonged to Edward's mother's mother and her mother and mother in law will go to his niece as again I do not like to see them lost in the shuffle. A banker box of family pictures also for Edward's nieces and there will be more for them to have of their childhood and that of their father (Edward's brother). Then two boxes of Edward's research on the local Ontario Kipp family all of which is scanned but I still have a lot of pictures just not enough time to separate them into family groupings yet. A lot of them are also Kipp but can easily travel through the mail in the prepaid boxes (a great addition to Canada Post for sure). Eight boxes gone; it is such a relief for me. Just one small box for the Amateur Radio Club - more manuals for all that equipment and some other items and a box for the United Empire Loyalist and our summer of sorting and moving forward will end. Next summer already planned and the ground work will happen through this winter. The house feels lighter once again but still so much stuff that needs to find a home where it will fit a purpose. The one item still to be completed is items for the Salvation Army to resell and we will get that together this next week. I think there will be several bags once again. 

Today is cleaning day and a little reorganizing as the number of boxes continues to shrink. We are dealing with about eleven boxes now but other than the research boxes for the Kipp family of Chilliwack BC (early settlers in that area) and the NB Loyalist families - Allen, Parlee and Folkins which I hope to place in those province's archives the research boxes are nearly all sorted and have a new home. The Kip-Kipp Newsletter will be a two pager in the future discussing the yDNA results from the Y-700 test on Edward's sample, the autosomal results but not likely the mitochondrial results because women's surnames were not fixed until lately. 

Must get my tea and do my solitaire games. The day is early but there is as always a lot to do. Perhaps I will get a little transcription of the Siderfin document done in my break times.

Headline today - Moscow announces "appropriate response" to West's "indirect war"

Russia is not living in the real world; their lines of communication are so blocked that they do not see that they are the problem. They need to stop attacking Ukraine; get their armies out of Ukraine and the world can go back to doing what needs to be done which is mainly and primarily cleaning up the environment. Russia (the Nazis Putin and his enablers) lives in some sort of a dark age where reason no longer predominates in their culture but just greed - greed for land, greed for products and hatred of the west. Russia does need to start seeing the real world where people just want peace and a better environment. By the bombing that Russia does they threaten both world peace and the environment.  Considering the amount of material that was poured into Russia during the Second World War to help them fight the Nazis it is absolutely ridiculous that they would attack Ukraine for the same ugly reasons that the Nazis started the Second World War. The waiting game is still on; we will be ready when Russia tries to break out and start a Third World War. A Russian rocket has struck Zaporizhzhia; that is lunacy. 

Continuing with the redistribution of Edward's research and all of the Link material has now been transferred. The next set of data is for Schultz and Kipp-Schultz as well as some items to Edward's niece and the Princeton Museum. Wonderful cousins of Edwards are going to pick that material up from us and take it back to where it needs to go. Much appreciated as I am not doing that drive although I have offered to mail it. But some objects are very fragile and would be better in a car for sure. All that I am left with now is a box for the United Empire Loyalists and need to determine where to send all that material so will contact the two groups that Edward belonged to and see if they can decide. There is also a box of manuals and other items for the Amateur Radio group that Edward belonged to and I have someone picking that up as well. That would complete this summer's redistribution projects and next summer we will work on the original images of the Allen-Parlee-Folkins families and the Kipp families of BC to see if the repositories in New Brunswick and British Columbia would accept those two sets of data. 

I have a large box of scanning to do which I will work at this winter in between writing. The other boxes are the story of our family so to speak and we will need to manage that for ourselves and it occupies 40 plus large binders in terms of printed images. Two boxes of film and slides and other photographic discs through the years. It is a relief on my mind to have handled all this material in a fashion that does see it go to other interested people. Genealogy is definitely something you have to be interested in doing; I never really did get that interest. My one-name studies (although sort of like genealogy) are more of a deep search into the past rather than a modern look at how the family has evolved. My younger sister does that and has a great tree built of the family to which I do refer actually for anything recent. 

The Bible Readings this week have been about Joseph and his sibling rivalry which led to his being sold by some of his brothers and taken to Egypt. The exciting story of all of that is to come; a time when God walked and talked with mankind. But his guidance has been given and we must learn to follow the words that Jesus brought to us in order to achieve that peace that we so desire. 

Russia has shown us that that we must be prepared to fight back and fight back with all our might if they ever do break out into Europe. There can be no peace in our world unless Russia is corralled within their own borders as established at the end of the Soviet Union. Putin it appears is incapable of rising above his stupidity and getting out of Ukraine. Greed is a dreadful thing and a sin.

Breakfast soon. 

DNA and Surname Studies

I gave a Google Hangout on Saturday for The Surname Society on DNA and Surname Studies and promised to share it with my blog. I belong to both The Guild of One-Name Studies and The Surname Society. My world wide one-name studies are at the Guild and my localized one name studies are at The Surname Society.

http://www.kipp-blake-families.ca/TSS-Hangout-25Jul2015-DNA%20and%20Surname%20Studies.pptx

Slide 1
Title Page (PLCGS is an acronym for Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies which I obtained from The National Institute for Genealogical Studies which was based at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Information Studies when I graduated in 2007 in English and Canadian Studies).

Slide 2
List of Useful books for DNA and Surname Studies

Slide 3
I find this useful to add as I want people to realize what they may learn from DNA testing and how one should approach this rather novel and progressive way of looking at your genealogy. Personally it was the advent of DNA testing (and my cousin's prompting as he wanted a profile of my emigrant Pincombe family for a local history book) that really brought me into genealogy as I felt that I could actually prove my ancestry.

Slide 4
Useful abbreviations

Slide 5
I like all the testing companies that I have used. I do not have any actual preference as they have all served the purpose that I had in mind when I tested at them.

Slide 6
Getting into the nitty-gritty now, I suggest that if anyone wants to join a project that you manage you should let them unless they really do not carry the surname that you are looking for at all or do not belong to the particular haplogroup of which you are administrator/co-administrator.

Slide 7
My summary of the talk to follow. The first six slides were a warmup to get into the topic itself. From this point the slides assume some knowledge of the different types of DNA although I do give a brief overlook.

Slide 8
List of the DNA that I am going to look at and for the moment is the DNA tested by the companies at which I have tested either myself or my brother.

Slide 9
Y DNA or the Male line in one's ancestry. Our father may be known (as in my case) or unknown to us but the Y DNA which the sons of any particular male carry traces his line back generation upon generation to the first individual who carried that exact genetic signature (although a few mutations could have crept in through the centuries).

Slide 10
Autosomal DNA which is contributed to by all our ancestors although they may not all show up in the resultant set that we receive because that is the luck of the draw one might say. I believe that autosomal DNA is now coming into its own and is quite important in DNA projects.

Slide 11
X chromosome is the mate to the Y chromosome in males and females receive an X chromosome from each parent. In males there are a limited number of people who will match you because your X chromosome is solely from your mother so is entirely her side of the family and excludes her father's father's line. but does include her father's mother's line since that is the exact chromosome which he has passed to his daughters. Perhaps not useful for Surname Studies but could prove interesting on occasion when sorting through matches.

Slide 12
Mitochondrial DNA probably has very little use in Surname Studies but I do mention one and that is geographic location for emigrant ancestors. Really not pertinent if you already know where your ancestors lived but in the case of people whose ancestors emigrated in the 1600s (or long before that actually when one looks at the First Peoples to the Western Hemisphere) as a married couple the mitochondrial DNA might point to a location where the particular haplogroup subclade is found.

Slide 13
Case Studies to be examined include my husband's Kipp/Kip one name study and two of my one name studies Pincombe and Blake.

Slide 14
My husband has been running his KIPP/KIP study at FT DNA for over six years now. His purpose was to find the genetic signature for this rather interesting family. His own line goes back to his 2x great grandfather Isaac KIPP who was born in 1764 likely at Northeast Town in Dutchess County where he is found on the census with his wife Hannah in 1790 living next to or with his father in law Jonathan Mead. Was this KIPP family the New Amsterdam family from the late 1630s (emigrated from Amsterdam Holland) or was it one of the KIPP families that was naturalized in the 1750s coming from the Germanic States. These two groups are the ancestors of many of the KIPP/KIP families in North America.

Slide 15
I then discussed the KIPP study and the members and that the study determined that this was not a singleton surname by the Y DNA results.

Slide 16
A list of the first 12 markers found for the New Amsterdam family and the significance of DYS426 being 13 in this family grouping thus separating this KIPP/KIP family from the other KIPP families in North America. There are differences in CDYa/b which it is hoped will permit separation of the three sons of the original emigrant or perhaps sons of those sons. That is still being worked on as this part of the study slowly grows.

Slide 17
 I summarized the comments above noting that one of the other study groups has similar results in the first 12 markers except for the significant DYS426 which is 12 in that family but they also have other differences which results in a Genetic Distance of 6 or 7 on 37 markers. Hence they are not the same family in a genealogical timeframe. My husband has done a lot of research on Dutch records now and has determined that at least prior to 1600 (and not sure how far back before that time) this family lived in the border area of Denmark/Netherlands/Germany although in the territory known as The Netherlands at that time.

Slide 18
One of my pet recommendations to anyone in a surname group that I am involved with is to encourage them to join the relevant haplogroup project for their surname. The administrators of the Haplogroup projects have been very aggressive in putting together fantastic phylogenetic charts of their members and I include an image that I wasn't able to show yesterday due to technical problems at my end.

This particular chart is for my Blake line (Blayke) and note that CTS4122+ separates my Blayke from Blake beside it. The interesting part of all of this is that my grandfather worked with the ancestor of this tester in the Train Yards at Eastleigh and they wondered if they were related. Probably not in a thousand years one might suspect. But interesting to see how the administrators are putting together their information into charts into a genealogical timeframe.

Slide 19
A second case study and this one for my PINCOMBE/PINKHAM one name study. This slide talks about some of the people who have tested and how these results looked. As a result of the first two items I decided to set the Y DNA study aside for several years. The third bullet item brought it back to life again and the fourth bullet item provides a short historical reference to a will that I have transcribed and how it might work into the story of bullet three.


Slide 20
This is my PINCOMBE family tree from my grandfather back to his furtherest back known ancestor (lived at North Molton, Devon). The black arrow marks the most recent common ancestor for the PINCOMBE tester in Australia and myself. John PINCOMBE (b 1808 Bishops Nympton, Devon) is my emigrant ancestor.

Slide 21
I talked about the problems that I had with this PINCOMBE/PINKHAM single surname study. Mostly it is the small group of testers and no matches. My history of this family is known back to about 1485 but the other testers are looking at the latter part of the 1600s for their furtherest back ancestor. I found some interesting earlier history for the PENCOMBE (spelling used by the earliest PINCOMBE at North Molton, Devon) family in Herefordshire in the 1300s. At the time of the mismatch I also noted that the surname PINKHAM was found in Devon/Cornwall earlier than 1485.

Slide 22
My PINCOMBE/PINKHAM study was an inherited one from an earlier researcher to whom I am not
related as far as I know. The earlier study had been deposited at the Society of Genealogists, London, England, UK and the original researcher Dr Richard PINKHAM (Gloucestershire) had begun this study prior to WWII when he first collected his information including abstracting the wills at the Devon Record Office (bombed in WWII and all records destroyed). I do not want to undo 50+ years of research; I do not mind incorporating new material into the existing study. So I adopted a wait and see attitude as my method of resolving the conflict mentioned in Slide 19.

Slide 23
Resolving such a difficulty may not occur very quickly and there are several other ways to look at a study anyway so I continued (and still continue) collecting documental evidence for the PINCOMBE/PINKHAM family. I blog about the Pincombe family and with my own success with Family Finder and PINCOMBE/PINKHAM really encourage any female PINCOMBE/PINKHAM to test with Family Finder and join the project. Then luck enters into the equation and the match in Sweden is certainly very very interesting especially as his haplogroup is not very common in Sweden (more common in the British Isles).

Slide 24
Autosomal DNA has played a role in the PINCOMBE/PINKHAM study as I have two different matches one with a known fourth cousin and one with a known third cousin once removed with our common ancestor being in the PINCOMBE family. I mention that finding a descendant of the John PINCOMBE and Johane BLACKMOORE family would add greatly to the study and prove this line although the paper proof is probably more than adequate (I have transcribed the entire set of parish registers at Bishops Nympton) the DNA verification is always exciting as well.

Slide 25
The BLAKE/BLEAK study is the final case study in this presentation looking at Y DNA principally with a little autosomal mentioned. The actual Y DNA study is administered by Bill BLEAK although I am a co-administrator along with two others. This study although begun in 2004 is still in its infancy. Interesting results are coming out of it but more testers are needed. With such a large surname 50+ testers is not enough to really draw a lot of conclusions. I publish the Blake Newsletter four times a year and report on the DNA progress of the study there.

Slide 26
A little background on the Blake one name study.

Slide 27
This Case Study looks at the descendants of a group of families - PARLEE/ALLEN/FOLKINS and I mention GedMatch as being a good site to enter your results and collect your matches by surname if possible or at least by matches.

Slide 28
More on the PARLEE/ALLEN/FOLKINS families and they descend from United Empire Loyalists brought to New Brunswick by the British following the American Revolution. I propose that as you put known cousins into the Chromosome Browser start marking portions of the Chromosome as belonging to a particular surname if possible. As you acquire more and more members it may be possible to find particular areas that are specific to a surname and then when unknown but likely related people join you can predict their lineage by their matches. An interesting way to look at surname projects I think.

Slide 29
Talked about mitochondrial DNA project and I am involved in two - the T haplogroup project and the H11 project. both at FT DNA.

Slide 30
H11 Haplogroup phylogenetic chart (build of February 2014). I have over 100 members in my study with their full genetic scan and a couple of these subclades appear to belong to particular areas in Europe (Europe includes both East and West). My own haplogroup H11a2a1 appears to be NorthWestern Europe and primarily the British Isles). The haplogroup H11a2a2 is primarily an Eastern European group. H11b1 appears to be mostly Eastern Europe extending into Central Europe.

Slide 31
Mitochondrial DNA is not really useful in Surname studies except perhaps that a location of an emigrant couple might be discovered.

Slide 32
X chromosome studies is again the least useful in Surname Studies. Males have limited matches so might prove useful on occasion.

Slide 33
Quick review of the benefits and drawbacks to Y DNA studies although I think that testing your paternal line is absolutely essential and any drawbacks are really very unimportant. How to attract members is always a problem but publicizing your study is the best means.

Slide 34
A query slide with my email but I should mention my knowledge of DNA is limited to the above.

Slide 35
List of suggested books and I do own them all and find each of them to be most useful.

Slide 36
Thank you for reading this far!