How do I really feel about my eyes

Do I wish that I was seeing all my life as I see now? One can not turn back the clock so no; life is what it is and you must just go with the flow. It is amazing what I now see in actual fact and is a distraction in my old age however I wouldn't say to anyone asking would you have preferred what your eyes do now? I have no idea people have to make their own decisions based on the expert opinions around you. Taking one's time is always the way; preparing for whatever is the best decision - not rushing. When I had the second Cataract removal operation a young person was there and he had had his first eye operated on about four months earlier and really wanted the second done but the Ophthalmologist was saying to take more time to get used to it. At that point only my weak eye had been operated on and it was a little over two weeks later but already I was amazed actually so I can see the value in waiting between the surgeries although I am old and waiting would not really appear to be of any value (the advantage that the  medical world does have is the volume of cases and how they flow and one must listen to their opinions). In essence I still managed to acquire sight that I  never had before the surgery. Was I just lucky? No ideas on that I do not know anyone with eyes like  mine except my father and I wasn't there when he had his cataract surgery back in  his early 80s. He threw his glasses away after his stroke perhaps seven years later and never attempted to read again in his early 90s. He had enjoyed doing his cross puzzles but again I was there so seldom after the mid 1980s as Edward wanted us to go with him to his Conferences and whatever else he wanted to do (usually in the United States) researching at various repositories. I was working full time and it just wasn't possible. When I was with my father I spent the entire day and finally we would chat a little but nothing so intensive as eyes. I had no idea what was in store for me at that time; I had lived with the sight I had all my life so I had no idea really what I was missing nor do I miss anything that I might have missed including all my trips to some of the greatest holdings of art in the world. I am not that sort of person. I could go back but I have goals that do not include running around the world. Was it a fluke that this condition (strabismus) passed from my great grandfather Blake (obvious in this very large picture I saw of him) to my father to me. From my reading since my daughter mentioned congenital cataracts strabismus is thought to be caused by congenital cataracts. So there you go; interesting but I did not end up going into medicine and do not attempt to answer questions best answered by the experts. 

Cleaning all accomplished and I  had a couple of hours to work on Chromosome 15 and all those matches. They continue in the one length to be large (considering how far back they must reach), to all be mine (none of my siblings match these individuals) and all have early American colonial ancestry. Why so large coming down so many generations? What is hidden in the genes in that section - one wonders and the future points to our understanding that. Because it is in understanding our genetic complement that we gain a clearer picture of why everything happens really. But how one lives the life we are given is also so very very important. 

Was it Buller or Taylor that large match in Chromosome 15 (it is in the Buller column because that was the surname of my maternal grandmother)? It looks perhaps like it was Taylor because some of the matches are taking their ancestor back to the Midlands and my suspicion is that the Buller line came out of the southern western counties of England moving to the London/Surrey area in the mid 1700s and then to Birmingham in the 1830s. The Taylor on the other hand I am finding the ancestral lines of that family to be in Warwickshire/Shropshire back into the 1700s and perhaps I will trace it back further. I simply have not done that. The surnames that come into that family are interesting -  Harborne, Lewis, Roberts, Croxall, Lawley, Hale, Birch, Asbury (back into the early 1700s). Documented some of them back to Ireland from England (both Eire and Northern Ireland). Finding Taylor can seem like a bit of a dead end but in reality it opens up like a flower showing its lines. I do actually have matches (somewhat large considering how far back the match is) with Lawley that trace back in that line amazingly (and others). But that book is on the back burner for sure - Blake and Pincombe must come first - my parent's surnames and in particular my paternal grandfather's great desire. As he approached the end of his life; he spent more and more time repeating and telling me his stories. I was only seven going on eight but he laid the groundwork in my brain for a good memory teaching me to rhyme off the Kings and Queens of England when I was just five years of age and Bible Verses and so many other little rhymes that he taught me. He knew how to stimulate those brain cells in a small child I realize now. Interesting really how much impact a grandparent can have in a child's life. I would say the same about my grandmother who filled that void in my life when my grandfather died when I was eight years of age. She did it gradually because she knew I was terrified of her; she was very strict but gradually I came to love her as much as I had loved him. I spent hours with her and she did talk about her husband quite a bit giving me a picture of this man I never knew but that she loved with all her heart and looked up to as he was fourteen years older and as fate has it he was over six feet and she was barely five feet!. Their life together just twelve short years but packed full of wonderful times you could tell by her stories and by the stories of my uncle who loved his father very very much and was only ten when his father died. 

 A free day finally and I can work on my projects; do my exercises and hopefully go outside and work on the weeds/leaves as Saturday is pickup day for those leaves. The world around me does control some of my day for sure. My old phone continues to ring probably five or six times a day but I do not answer it and will eliminate it when we move. It has done its task for 47 years and I only have it as an emergency phone not for any other reason. I suppose I should put a message on it but many of the times it is just spam according to the readout and messages that lead to another number just carry that spam on and so I do not. I am considering putting a note on my door once again asking people to not ring as it disturbs me. I know if you are coming if I asked you to come; if the city is going to turn the water off or such things they put a note in mailbox so I do not need to answer that door unless of course the house is burning down in which case I will know that. I can not help people; I am too old. Turning 80 does that to you I think; moving towards 80 does that to you. It is a good thing. 

Tea all drank and time for breakfast. I am very hungry. It was 2 degrees celsius when I woke up and now I can see the daylight and it is  3 degrees celsius and sunny. My furnace barely runs at the moment as the sun heats the house but soon the cold will come; keeping it at 19.5 degrees celsius to be the tipping point when it turns on and brings it up to 20 degrees celsius - a nice working temperature. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unknown Taylor

52 Ancestor Challenge - Challenge 52

Blake, King, Coleman, Pearce, Farmer, Mary (unknown), Lambden, Sarah (unknown), Knight, Ellis, Knight, Vincent, Butt, O'Ford, Arnold, Molton, Cotterell, Bartlett, Alderman, Shepherd, Sherwood, Elizabeth (unknown), Happerfield, Collins, Rawlings, Tanner, Dove, Morgan, Lywood, Lanham, unknown, Peck, Pincombe, Charley, Rowcliffe, Pearse, Rew, Moggridge, Siderfin, Kent, Gray, Hilton, Cobb, Sproxton, Routledge, Tweddle, Routledge, Routledge, (unknown) Buller, unknown, Beard, Hemsley, Welch, Brockhouse, Cheatle, unknown, unknown Taylor, unknown, Harborne, Lewis, Roberts, Croxall, Lawley, unknown

The last of the 52 Ancestor Challenges and I end it with the grandfather of my great grandmother Ellen Taylor. If Ellen was legitimate (I actually have no reason to think otherwise but for sake of covering all the Ellen Taylor registrations than I do say this) than her grandfather would have likely been unknown Taylor. I know very very little about this family in Birmingham. A vague memory as a child of my grandmother saying that her grandfather was a shoemaker. A Thomas Taylor married to Ellen Roberts does fit that description.

Over time I have purchased all the birth registrations for Ellen Taylor born in Birmingham between 1859 and 1862 because my grandmother said that her mother was 37 years old when she died of pneumonia. That death registration I do have and it does state that she was 37 years of age when she died 27 February 1897. What that means to me is that she was born between 28 February 1859 and 27 February 1860. If she had died on her birthday I am rather sure my grandmother would have mentioned that as she was just 11 when her mother died and she always spoke of the tragedy of that loss. Ellen Taylor, daughter of Thomas Taylor and Ellen Roberts was born 9 Oct 1859 at Birmingham. That would make her 37 years 4 months and 18 days old when she died 17 February 1897 if indeed Ellen Taylor, my great grandmother, was the daughter of Thomas Taylor and Ellen Roberts. The suggestion has been made to me that I should try to find her siblings which I have tried to do. Thomas and Ellen Taylor moved away from Birmingham around 1870 to Ashton under Lyne in Lancashire although Ellen and some of the children (including Ellen) are found with her on the 1871 census in Birmingham. She is listed as a grocer so was perhaps selling off what they had in Birmingham prior to moving to Ashton under Lyne. Missing from the 1881 census the two oldest children named Thomas and Ellen (at Ashton under Lyne). All of the other children mentioned in the 1871 census are living at Ashton under Lyne in 1881. This family has not yet been found in the 1891 or subsequent census.

Thomas Taylor (husband of Ellen Roberts) was baptized 27 Dec 1830 at Birmingham Saint Phillips son of Samuel Taylor and Ann Lewis Harborne and he and Ellen Roberts were married 29 Jun 1857 at Birmingham St Martin (Ellen was only 16 years of age when she married which fits the census and Thomas was 3 and Ellen 1 on the 1861 census).

Samuel Taylor had married Ann Lewis Harborne 3 Aug 1829 at Birmingham Saint Phillips. Samuel is possibly the Samuel baptized 14 Jun 1810 at Birmingham Saint Phillips son of Samuel and Sarah Taylor. This would be my 4x great grandfather but at this point it does not really seem to be a practical thing to do a lot of work on him. I need to first determine the parents of my Ellen Taylor before working backwards in time. Hence I will not list an ancestry for this particular Taylor as too much is unknown to really make that worthwhile. So I end my year of 52 Ancestor Challenges with the line about which I know the least amount. For this Taylor line I really do not know anything officially. I do have the occasional Taylor matches on autosomal DNA on all the sites but have not really attempted to do any tracing although do look at trees if they are available. The line going back from my maternal grandmother though is my mtDNA line and that is known to me and quite fortunately is a rather less common grouping of H being H11a2a1. That may eventually help to locate my maternal line which at the moment appears to have its ancient base in the Argyllshire/Ayrshire area of Scotland where it is found on the Blood of the Isles database produced by Bryan Sykes with matches also in Ireland. There is a large group that carries this same haplogroup in the United States and are descendants of Rebecca Martin married to Alexander Peden. Alexander and his wife Rebecca travelled on the James and Mary and were located at Spartanburg as a part of the 1772 migration from County Antrim Ireland to the Carolinas with the Reverend William Martin.

http://boydroots.net/downloads/MartinPassengers.pdf

One of my matches is descendant of this couple. I do not know if Rebecca Martin is related to the Reverend William Martin.

The suggested descendancy of the Peden family.

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~marylove/Peden/Peden.html


So ends a rather interesting year looking at my 4x great grandparents. A great deal learned about some of my people; a very worthwhile project.

I will begin next year's project on the first Monday of 2016 and it will be Charles Alexandre Bédard.

One year hence

It is interesting to look at the past year of my life and my research for they are forever entwined. I entered this past year with back trouble resulting from two falls about two weeks apart. I learned a great deal about my character as a result of those falls. I can be an absolutely very stubborn person and it was that absolute stubbornness that resulted in my basically standing for six months whenever I was awake and thus my back healed with careful exercises which initially did not appear to be working although I have done my yoga exercises for over 45 years. I had to finetune them to work with a healing back and so I did and the net result was amazing in retrospect. Six months after the accident I was able to return slowly to my research and sitting at the computer for longer than a couple of minutes. I still did do some research but not to any great extent. It gave me a great deal of time to think about where my research was going and the activities with which I was involved. The two were in a hopeless collision that I had to resolve and it took me the other six months to resolve that and to train my mind not to become involved in projects that did not directly lead to more information on my two one name studies or to enhancing my own family research. It has been difficult to keep myself from becoming distracted by other interesting ideas but as I turn 70 in just a couple of days I think that I am now facing forward and thinking clearly in terms of how to accomplish the most out of my research days to both compliment my one name studies which do quite fascinate me and my own family research which has changed in some ways this past year.

First of all, my DNA studies are now completely integrated with my family research. Although I still do all that paper research (while mostly microfilm records either online or as fiche that I have purchased), I am now looking keenly at all the autosomal data that I have accumulated by testing both myself and my brother at most of the companies. Me, I am tested at every main company except for National Genographic 2.0 and Britains DNA and my brother is tested at every company except AncestryDNA which I intend to resolve in the next month or so. I am somewhat overwhelmed with dna data at the moment and about to get another deluge of information from 23 and Me so will wait on that test for another month. I also want to do the Full Genome of my brother who has been so willing to be tested. He has been grand. But now I am able to produce these interesting tables combining all the companies results and my known cousins and triangulate results to give me a peek into the past.

Secondly, I have determined that five years is the length of time that I will spend on the Blake and Pincombe one name studies. I will still maintain them after that date but I will not actively research other lines than my own after I am 75 years of age. I hope that in the five years I will find someone younger/willing to take on the one name studies and give them all my acquired material or I will donate it to a local repository to be available to anyone who wishes to use it.

Thirdly, I will from now on have a 52 ancestor challenge beginning each new year where I selectively work on family lines  - next year is already dedicated to the 4x great grandparents of our grandchildren and many other grandchildren as their descendants number in the tens of thousands on their French Canadian side and their Colonial American side. My side, English, has considerly less descendants due to very small families in some of my lines that went on to produce offspring. The two World Wars were particularly hard on many of my family lines in the southern part of England. But even before that I have a number of only children in lines in more than one generation.

Fourthly, I need to plan (with my husband of course) several research trips directed at learning as much as I can about several lines that are quite veiled to me although the DNA results are certainly showing that I am looking in the right direction. I just need to read what is available in a couple of particular repositories.

Fifthly, I have a couple of large scanning projects that I want to complete this next year. I will redo my calendar to suit these changes in my thoughts. I will turn two half days into scanning days.

Since my dedicated research days on particular family lines (namely Monday although that occasionally comes a little earlier) is not involved with my own family lines I need to have some "spare time" built into my calendar plan to accommodate DNA research with respect to my personal family lines. I have started to write to cousins to see if I can persuade any of them to test for particular lines. My mother's side now has a couple of interesting results that let me look back into her lines but I still have very little on my father's side of close family relatives so that I have a control group to look at other matches as they drop into my various matches at the many companies. He was an only child and I only have a few 2nd cousins on his side.

For the remainder of this year, I will continue working on my 4x great grandparents - Jane Morgan is to come and I know very little about her. That will just be luck I think finding out more about Thomas Rawlin's wife's line. Then on to the Lywood family which has been well researched by Warwick Lywood with his one name study although the name of George Lywood's wife is Elizabeth Lanham rather than Canham which was a rather great find earlier in the year. Then my Peck line and Martha Peck's father was unknown and remains that way - was he a Napoleonic soldier? a great unknown but Elizabeth Peck will be written about. Then John Rew the grandfather of Elizabeth Rew my 2x great grandmother married to John Pincombe, the emigrant, and staying with the Pincombe theme I will look at Philip Rowcliffe father of Elizabeth Rowcliffe married to Robert Pincombe and Mary Charley my 4x great grandmother and mother of Robert Pincombe. Then back to Somerset and Grace Kent married to Robert Siderfin is my next 4x great grandparent. Up to the East riding of Yorkshire to write about Robert Gray and Jane Hilton my 4x great grandparents whose grandson Robert Gray Junior was my emigrant ancestor in that line. Their son Robert married Elizabeth Cobb and my next 4x great grandfather was her father John Cobb of Kilnwick ERY. Then finally on the homeward trek I reach into the family lines of my maternal grandmother looking at her grandmother's Welch family. John Welch married Margaret Brockhouse 16 Feb 1783 at Rugeley Staffordshire and they are my 4x great grandparents. My 2x great grandmother Ann Welch's maternal grandparents were William Cheatle and likely Sarah Woodcock married 23 Feb 1773 at Castle Donington. A recent DNA match may help to prove this line. Then the last ancestor challenge of the year is my unknown Taylor line written up something like I wrote up unknown Buller quite a while ago now. I suspect he is the father of Samuel Taylor married to Ann Lewis Harborne and one of these days I think the DNA matches will tell me part of that story. Was he Irish? I am curious about that as his wife was English going back another three generations. It will be an interesting last post of the year to write. That gives me a total of 16 4x great grandparents to write about in the 52 Ancestor Challenge and there are 16 weeks remaining. And Challenge 36 was published for this week  - William Dove.

DNA and The Surname Society

As The Surname Society continues to grow, I am convinced that this tool will aid me greatly in my pursuit of my own personal ancestors. I have found a lot of them and do travel back a long way into the past with many of them. The advantage to being a late emigrant to North America and knowing each and every one of their emigration stories, where they came from and why they came.

But even with that much knowledge, I do have a couple of lines that need help and they mostly lie in my maternal mtDNA line and my maternal grandmother's father's male line Buller. I hope to meet more people interested in these particular lines although also welcome anyone interested in my 22 personal surnames and the four surnames of our grandsons' French Canadian lines. Although being on My Heritage has been a real eye opener into those French Canadian lines that are a brickwall as there are so many people searching for that information.

My cousin asked me to test on Ancestry DNA and facilitated that process since the DNA testing is not yet rolled out to Canada officially. I had tested her at FT DNA thinking we might share Buller DNA since we are fifth cousins once removed. But we did not share any DNA at all. However, she had matched a known third cousin once removed to me at Ancestry. So I tested and indeed I did match my third cousin once removed in the 4th to 6th cousin with a Very High Confidence of accuracy. In all I have seven such matches at the 4th to 6th cousins with very high confidence. I can place a second one of the matches as she is my fourth cousin once removed in my Pincombe family lines and is known to me. The other five though are a mystery but they have quite small trees and I am likely looking at 3rd or 4th grandparents as being the likely common ancestors. Plus their ancestry is totally American colonial thus far and I do not have any American colonial ancestors. Indeed my first ancestors did not come to Canada until 1818 and it was the emigrant daughter of this family that married the next emigrant in my lines in 1832 and then 1851 the next emigrant arrived to marry the daughter of this couple. Not again until 1908 did I have another emigrant who married the son of the next couple and she was my maternal grandmother. In 1913 my father arrived with his parents and married the daughter of this last couple. So a very shallow history on this side of the Atlantic.

Ancestry DNA has come up with a very unique way of displaying matches called DNA Circles. I do not have any yet because you need four people to make a circle and thus far I just have the two matches and must wait for others to add to their family trees, make them public or simply actually have a tree on line. I am hopeful though that I may find leads to my two lines that are most puzzling.

I am able to name 28 of my 32 3x great grandparents with 100% accuracy and the other two sets are likely but I would like to have the marriage registration of Edwin Denner Buller and Ellen Taylor and Ellen Taylor's birth registration. Then I would be completely satisfied that Thomas Taylor and Ellen Roberts are indeed my 2x great grandparents  and that Samuel Taylor/Ann Lewis Harborne and Thomas Roberts/Ellen Lawley are my 3x great grandparents. One of the matches (not yet known to me) is quite interesting leading into my grandmother's ancestry but it is my Welch line which is known to me back into the early 1700s.

So hats off to Ancestry for a really great addition to their DNA material.

Slowly trying to work my way back into genealogy but suspect it will be as mentioned earlier into January before I am really back to transcription and blogging on a daily basis.

Back again

Amazing that it is more than a month now since I wrote to my Blog. It has been a busy time in that I thought I sprained my knee a couple of weeks ago. Went off to the Doctor last week and he felt it might be arthritis and I duly went and had my knee xrayed. Just waiting to hear back on that. It is steadily improving from my hardly being able to stand on it. That is novel for me since I do a lot of exercise including aerobic running. I have given up the running now and will use the elliptical machine that we have. I had been thinking of using it for a while anyway. I will miss the running though as I have run since I was a child.

In terms of genealogy it has been a slow time as I have been busy working on other items. My husband gave a talk so I helped him write the script and prepare the slides. Then I had some sewing that I wanted to do.

I have been faithfully waiting for my Family Finder results and they came in today. My reason for doing the test was my mtDNA line. I am basically stuck at my great grandmother Ellen Taylor although by family lore she appears to fit into the Thomas Taylor/Ellen Roberts family with Thomas and Ellen marrying 29 Jun 1857 at Saint Martin's Church in Birmingham, Warwick, UK. They had seven children with the first five born in Birmingham, the sixth born in Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire and then the seventh in Birmingham, Warwick. By the 1881 census they have moved to Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire. They are missing the oldest four children Thomas, Ellen, Eliza and Frank. Frank died in 1875 at Birmingham which gives a time period of 1875 to 1881 for their move to Ashton. Ellen had an illegitimate child at Birmingham in 1879 and was in the Workhouse at Acton in 1881. She later married and Edwin Denner Buller/Ellen Taylor were my great grandparents. I have not been able to trace down any of the siblings and was hoping that I might be lucky to find them on Family Finder as their descendants would be my third cousins. This Thomas Taylor was a shoemaker which fitted the family lore.

My results only had fifth cousins or greater and I wrote to one of the matches as they had the COBB surname which is one of mine. I may wait now and see if any of the matches writes to me that I had more in common with and shall do some research on what constitutes an interesting match at this level.

I can trace back in this Taylor family and this Thomas is the son of Samuel Taylor and Ann Lewis Harborne and they married 3 Aug 1829 at Saint Phillips Birmingham. They too had a large family Ellen, Thomas, Eliza, Ann, Samuel, Edwin, Jane, Emma, and Jane (two Janes is interesting but it holds out in the census). These families are all Shoemakers including Ann Lewis Harborne's father John Harborne married to Mary Lewis (wedding not yet found) and John was the son of William Harborne and Sarah Hale and Mary the daughter of John Lewis. Both of these men were shoemakers in Birmingham. William Harborne married Sarah Hale 3 Sep 1785 at Saint Phillips, Birmingham. William's father was Thomas Auburne and his mother Elisabeth Birch and they married 27 Jan 1750 at Saint Phillips Birmingham. I haven't pursued this interesting line yet as I am waiting for confirmation on this being the correct line.

The Roberts line is also interesting with Ellen's father being Thomas baptized 27 Nov 1814 at Sheldon Warwick and born at Bickenhill Warwick. His wife was Ellen Lawley and she was born c 1819 at Wellington Shropshire. They married 29 Nov 1840 at Saint Martin Birmingham. Ellen Roberts was only 15 years old when she married Thomas Taylor. Her mother Ellen Lawley had died in 1855 and her father remarried shortly after Ellen's marriage where one of the witnesses was her future mother in law. Thomas Roberts and Ellen Lawley had four children: Ellen, Thomas, James and Joseph. I have traced down Joseph and I believe that James was in the Navy. Thomas proved to be too common a name to accurately trace him down. Ellen Lawley's father was Joseph and I have not pursued this line any further yet. Thomas Roberts parents were Thomas Roberts and Maria Croxall and they married 2 Apr 1810 at Sheldon Warwick. They had four children: Mary, James, Thomas and Maria. I have only traced Thomas down. Thomas's parents were John Roberts and Hannah Asbury and they married 26 Dec 1774 at Bickenhill Warwick. This is as far back as I have traced this family. They had three children: Mary who died at 16 years of age, Sarah and Thomas.

I have also been working on our son in law's French Canadian ancestry and I am slowly working the lines back. I am pulling the marriages as I go back but I will need to then pull burials and baptisms. It is a long process but going ahead very nicely. I have a few lines that I need to do deeper research on in order to find them but for the most part I am able to go back generation after generation all the way to France. In a way it toughens you for your other research as you become more exacting on what you will accept for linking families back. A good training process for me and it will help with my own research.

Webpage Update and Bishops Nympton PRs

After overhauling my webpage "Table of Contents" the day before, I spent a little time compiling a list of people that I have in each generation back to the 6x great grandparents that I have not yet put on my webpage or that I am missing. I was missing 1 at the great grandparent level, 1 at the 2x great grandparent level, 5 at the 3x great grandparent level, 10 known at the 4x great grandparents level (with nine unknown), 11 known at the 5x great grandparent level (with 47 unknown) and 19 known at the 6x great grandparent level (with 185 unknown). A lot of work to do at the 4x, 5x and 6x great grandparent level even yet (241 people to find although some of these will be included in my Routledge/Knight lines that collapse together). I have 2 Routledge cousins at the 3x great grandparent level and 2 Knight cousins at the 3x great grandparent level (reducing the number of lines as I work my way back) and then a likely Knight line in common at the 6x great grandparent level. It is amazing how quickly your tree collapses when there are first/second/third cousin marriages. I then added the Cotterill, Sherwood, Alderman, Habberfield, Dove, Harborne and Lawley lines to my webpage. That brings me to the 4x great grandparent level which I am now proving. As I prove each line back I will add them to my webpage. I find this an interesting way to display my information plus I can begin adding transcriptions of documents about people for whom I receive requests for information. This has its pros and cons in that people might not then write to me and I would not gain their insight into the family lines.

I continued working on the Bishops Nympton PRs for marriages bringing me up to 1803. I continue to find so many interesting witnesses to these marriages that I am finding my process through this material rather slow. I have quite a number of lines at Bishops Nympton since my families were there from 1599 up to the present. I did correspond with one family member but haven't heard back from her. I believe she is descended from the brother of my 3x great grandfather.