Interesting article

 "The Vikings colonized Greenland for over 400 years, but their disappearance from the island is still a riddle" by Quinn Mercer (online). Why not assimilation into the Inuit peoples who had arrived in Greenland before the Vikings appeared to disappear? I do wonder about that. The survivors probably carry the DNA evidence if it interests them. Like the 3% Denisovan that we carry (some of my six siblings as not all of them have been tested for that) but our mt DNA signature is in the Blood of the Isles Database so probably there for thousands of years. Interesting really what DNA has brought to our knowledge bank. We also carry, my siblings and I, on average 2% Neanderthal so we are 95% Homo sapiens. I believe the Denisovan came down from our ancient mitochondrial mother but I can only trace back from my grandmother (Ellen Rosina Buller born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England in 1886) to her mother Ellen Taylor born in Birmingham in 1859 (my grandmother always said that her mother died when she was 37 years of age; it was something that shocked her even as a person in her 60s and 70s that her mother died so young (my grandmother was eleven years of age and had to stay home from then on to look after her younger siblings (four of them) although three were in school). Her father had been reasonably educated so he did teach her at night as he had promised she said. But he worked hard at two jobs and he too succumbed by the time she was fourteen years of age. He had been a medic in the First Boer War (injured and sent home to Birmingham in 1881). He recovered although always walked with a limp and went to work, married and had a family of seven children. However I digress from my maternal line. The mother of Ellen Taylor was likely (and DNA is starting to show this may well be correct) the daughter of Ellen (Roberts) Taylor born  1841 in Birmingham and she had married Thomas Taylor very young (just sixteen years of age and they had seven children). Ellen (my great grandmother) appears to have had an illegitimate child in 1879 which my grandmother discovered when her youngest sibling was sent to live with her half-sister in London, Ontario. I have a match with a descendant of this half-sister which is large enough at 18 cM to catch my interest when we share a great grandmother of mine and we have written back and forth. We would be at least half 2nd cousins 2x removed as she is much younger than I am and has several more generations from Ellen Taylor. The average shared by this relationship is 48 cM according to Blain Bettinger (Ancestry uses TIMBER to extract common lengths of DNA) and this match is in Ancestry and she is still thinking about moving her results into another database. But at that level I think that perhaps we are just half second cousins 2xr (we will not share mtDNA because she descends from a son of Ellen Taylor's eldest daughter). My great grandfather was cared for in the Workhouse at Aston because the hospital was there and living at this workhouse was Ellen Taylor and her illegitimate daughter (at least it appears to be by the information). I wondered if Ellen had been a nurse as her skill with caring for the two infant boys who later succumbed to the sooty Birmingham air was noted by my grandmother whom she taught to  help her take care of the infants. Also Ellen Taylor lived just a couple of blocks away from Edwin Denner Buller (my great grandfather) when they were children which was also very very interesting. They likely married sometime in 1885 (marriage not located but there were interesting stories of runaway marriages and what not; my great grandfather was apparently disowned for marrying a woman with an illegitimate child) as the names on the registrations of their children were Edwin Buller and/or Ellen Buller. But I continue back in time as the mother of Ellen Roberts (married to Thomas Taylor) appears to be Ellen Lawley who was born in Wellington, Shropshire, England in 1819 and married to Thomas Roberts. Joseph Lawley was the father of Ellen Lawley. There was family lore that this line had come from Ireland to Birmingham (and there was other family lore which I have disproved, incredible tales). Amazingly we have close matches in mtDNA with some of the individuals who went with the Rev William Martin from Antrim, Northern Ireland to the Royal Colony of Carolina in 1772. Individuals that match are able to trace back their ancestry to Planters sent from Scotland to Northern Ireland by Cromwell in the 1640s. There are also mt DNA matches with people who came directly to England from Argyllshire/Ayrshire in the early 1800s. The location on the Blood of the Isles DNA database for my markers is Argyllshire/Ayrshire. So very interesting and amazing really what you can learn from testing your mtDNA. I highly recommend it although not everyone is going to obtain such interesting results. As I checked on matches (I manage the H11 project at FT DNA) to me through the years (and we are over 500 now although that is roughly only about 10% of the total database for H11 at FT DNA) I discovered matches in the Scandinavian Peninsula suggesting a possible migration route for my particular mutations coming out of the Ukraina Ice Refuge during the last Great Ice Age and there are others in Poland and Germany but no perfect matches in southern England (on the Blood of the Isles Database) which I found to be intriguing. Having a Western Hunter Gatherer in the British Isles from my paternal line and this rather fascinating mtDNA on the maternal line has made my research extremely interesting. I did correspond with a DNA scientist in South Ossetia about fifteen years ago and I see new research is emerging (and I did have some matches on her database) that these mutations were located in this area although out of the Ukraina Ice Refuge likely but the timing of H11 as a mutation from H has changed from 48,000 years ago to the time of the last Great Ice Age meaning that the H11 emerged at the Ukraina Ice Refuge likely and primarily moved west into Europe and north into the Scandinavian Penninsula and then further west into Scotland perhaps and in Europe itself into Poland, Germany, England. So quite fascinating. 

Sunday and another beautiful day in God's world. I will go to Church a little later online. God waits and He listens for we Homo sapiens to do the right thing to do what He commanded - Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. Peace could come to our world if greed and envy and hate disappeared. 

I noted the comment that the so-called separatists in Alberta could well wreck the chances for a pipeline to the west coast just because they create instability. What a shame for Alberta as the MOU was a good idea and already has paid off with the Bridger Pipeline (part of the Keystone XL project already built in Canada to the American border) being approved by the President (more than five hundred thousand  barrels of oil going south every day and there will be money for Alberta but also for Canada - that is who we are (most of us that is); that was also the idea of the Founders in purchasing Rupert's Land). The separatist greed will go down in history mostly as a one liner. They want all the money from the resources which Canada bought with the purchase of Rupert's Land. We, Canada, created Alberta and Saskatchewan as administration units and expanded Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. The land belongs to Canada along with the treaty rights which were included in the purchase. Individual purchases of land are of course theirs technically as part of an administration unit namely provinces and territories (with the treaty rights keeping it in Canada) but if anything ever happens to your line disappearing not donating it to something everything reverts to the government (you can not take it with you). We thank the First Nations for their care of this land through the ages and their right to be in Canada for ever no matter where they live in Canada.  Canada takes care of all of Canada (remember the Great Depression). I happen to agree that ten years of fake greening of Canada (we do not see much in the way of results) was a waste we are better off to take advantage of what we have so that we can afford gradually and into the future to have a green Canada (and we should keep trying to do what we can do). Eventually oil will no longer be at the top of the selling as burning fossil fuels is hard on the environment world wide. The fifty year plans of the First Nations are much better than these greedy plans by a few to try to destroy what The Founders created. 

Tea drank and solitaire puzzles next (already 51 units of cardio from my first hour of calisthenics when I get up).  I have moments when I first awake when I push away the idea of one hour of exercise but thinking of the alternative I begin day after day with my slow moves to get myself stretched out and moving. So worthwhile but as always one should check with a doctor before you take up any big changes in your exercise routines especially when you are over 70. I will also run thirty minutes before lunch and after Church and then later in the day either yoga or weight lifting. 

 

   

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not enough doctors

 While I cleaned yesterday I continued to think about 3 million Ontarians not having a family doctor. When we were young there was a doctor on every corner nearly it seemed in the suburbs. They mostly had their offices in their homes in those days but everything has become so much more advanced toolwise that one needs an office in an area where everything is very accessible and close to hospitals too. Most of the patients were children for sure; the growing up days of the baby boomers. Although I was born just at war's end I went to school with children born during the war because I skipped a year ahead from 3 to 5. But we could see that huge group coming along behind us.  

Life was harder for doctors way back then; my husband's uncle was a family doctor and he died relatively young (in his 60s I think). His hours were very long and his patient load quite heavy as he was outside of the city in a small town (not a huge change for physicians in rural areas except the hospitals are better equipped than in the 50s for sure). But now the family physicians in the city are experiencing these enormous case loads and long hours plus the cost of maintaining an office is very large. So Edward did make an effort when Gordon asked him to go to the Ottawa Branch Meeting of the OGS way back in the early 80s with him. It wasn't something that we ever did; Edward and I. We liked astronomy and were members of the RASC in London and then again here when we first arrived along with the Ottawa Field Naturalists Society. My parents visited right away and took us off to the local Anglican Church (not surprising!) although I had already found it but I knew Edward wanted a United Church. Gordon and Edward did seem to enjoy the meetings of the Ottawa Branch and for the next fourty years that pretty much occupied Edward's spare time (although he was pretty involved in his United Church as Treasurer and singing in the Choir as well!). 

Personally I do better in didactic situations not social; I tend to find social situations to be a nightmare to be honest. I was volunteer secretary at Edward's Church (I didn't actually volunteer). The bonus was I was behind a table and could mostly be away from people and just be helpful if needed. After all religion was part of my very being which I knew very well and I had my own deep seated Anglicanism as my support in time of trial. But I had promised to go to Edward's Church with our daughter. Learning Edward's ancestry of dissenters opened my eyes actually and let me see my Anglican Church through Edward's eyes; not that I agreed with him (my faith is very different from his approach to faith although towards the end of his life he did come to see that my faith was a strength that he could hang on to); I do not think I have a Protestant bone in my body; Catholic through and through. With people like Roger Williams, John Bowne, Hannah Feake, Elizabeth Fones, Anne Winthrop, Rev Obadiah Holmes etc. (the reach back into history in his line was formidable in terms of the talent that was there coming down to him and it expressed itself in him as a scientist although the opportunities (unless one went to the United States) were not overly available at that time. He just really wanted to stay in Canada although as we traveled more and more to the United States one could see that he was rethinking some of that and was very supportive of any such thoughts in our children (although they prefer Canada as well but one has to go where the opportunities are for sure as is the case of my older daughter). One could also see where he got his Protestantism from (I was amazed at all the dissenters in his tree actually as he moved back in time)! But I do believe that families should worship together and whatever works for them is great (I am pretty much a wishy washy person and go with the flow unless I have a strong opinion which does occur but I could be a closet Anglican (still went to early Church at the local Anglican Church for a number of years) and in a way I am back in that closet again except I have You-Tube Services!). For Edward I think he felt the need (plus he did go to the United Church when we first met and I did go to Metropolitan United with him in London when we lived there) as we moved through parenthood and he was following in his father's footsteps (he was only two when he died) and being treasurer and in the choir; it was definitely good for his view of himself to seek that association out I think. Edward was a strong person actually; very capable and really quite brilliant and along with his classmates Canada definitely failed them back in the 70s by not hiring their own students first to academic positions in the universities. Edward's father was also an elder but that is no longer quite the same in the United Church. My maternal uncle was also an elder actually as well as being involved with the Missions and Services in the United Church in both London and Toronto. Plus Edward's father was a farmer and Edward did love his hobby of tilling the soil. I had not thought to do any writing up of Edward's work because he felt he had done all that he wanted to do. But I could go back to reprinting items on his blog I am thinking from his many talks. I was doing that but then got back into my own one name studies. But perhaps that would be a good idea and I would be more relaxed about any missing ideas that he expressed but did not write up on his website. A contemplative day I guess as I move forward in my own research but thinking of ways to keep Edward's research in the present. Most of his American ancestors came to Canada as settlers in 1800 and after. The latest one was in the 1820s - William Rathbun - at the annual reunion of that family he learned that William was said to have "an itchy foot!" which was really something quite stunning to learn from the members of the American family actually. William was remembered and that was 150 years later perhaps.

Although the girls did try hard to be with him for his genealogy endeavours it wasn't easy to be young in so many graveyards but they did their best including writing it all down for him from the stones that he selected. When he received his Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for all of his volunteer work but especially his genealogical work they were pleased to see that all that work that he did was rewarded.  

I am very busy working away on the books for my mother and my grandfather. As a member of the Guild of one-name studies we have a newsgroup that keeps us attached as a group and people often share ideas and thoughts. We were into mediaeval tracing the other day and that is basically where I am at with both of these books at the moment. It is exciting times in England between 1200 and 1500 and then you start to see more wills, the parish registers and land documents but there is still a surprising amount of material to pursue before 1500 although it is in Latin and so I continue learning Latin and it is amazing how much I am able to do with it. Published genealogies and Pedigrees can be somewhat suspicious and we did discuss that. It is hard to undo what has been in print for hundreds of years but correct the errors of Horatio Gates Somerby I will do and a few other items which simply do not make sense. But the Somerby work is the greatest problem because it has been copied so many times especially by Blake descendants in America.

For the next book after these two, I know my grandmother had no interest in writing a book on the Buller family but I may give it a go when Blake and Pencombe/Pincombe are done. She loved her father and mother very much (mother died when she was 11; three years before her father). But his injuries in the First Boer War made life difficult for him although he tried very hard she said. Her mother was just 37 years old and her father was 49 years old. So it would be interesting to put her family into words. They are in fact very interesting. My family would likely enjoy having all of that encapsulated into a book.

What would the second book be? I could consider Rawlings but one of my cousins in Australia has done a lot of work on that as well as our mutual cousin (John Rawlins has his MBE) who wrote me maybe a dozen years ago now and said who is Ada on the 1881 census with William Rawlins and his wife Elizabeth (Lywood) Rawlins (her grandparents actually who apparently didn't mind taking in their illegitimate granddaughter!)?  I had mentioned my grandmother Edith Bessie (Taylor) Blake aka Ada Bessie Cotterill Rawlings in a post that he saw and that began a detailed correspondence over nearly a decade so I think I should leave Rawlins to them. Although I do have a good writeup on my paternal grandmother already (about 120 pages actually). I will have to think of which surname to work on next. I am not that interested in collecting cousins, my sister does an excellent job on that. For me it is the deep ancestry that yDNA and mtDNA leads me to and the surname trail back into the past. Although I never really did any genealogy all those years that Edward did, I appear to be spending my retirement (was going to knit baby clothes for packages to the north; and some sewing as well) doing an entirely different thing than I had intended. 2003 was definitely a watershed year in my life when George DeKay (my cousin) asked me to write the Pincombe Profile. 

I shall have to think about a second book to write at the same time as Buller. - there are some interesting choices like Cheatle which is a Leicestershire name and pretty much only there until the 1800s. A Cheatle married a Welch and produced the wife of Henry Christopher Buller. Lawley in Shropshire is another one still on my grandmother's side (the name appears to have originated in Ireland and I do know there is a percentage of Irish as several of my siblings have between 11 and 18% Irish). Why did they come to Shropshire in the mid 1700s? One wonders that. But with my searching over the past twenty years I have encountered a number of these families written up and because we corresponded our line is included. Interesting to contemplate.

The cleaning all accomplished yesterday and on to Pencombe today. Exercise (I do think I am an addict) but then one of the first things that I did when we were in the process of moving here was to take a break from moving in and walk around the large block  (no sidewalks then and the road was incomplete) with my three year old. I decided that was going to be the greatest thing having that 2 km trek to do every day until my little one was off to school (and me to work or school to do my masters!). What a treat I thought. That was April of 1978; we moved here on the 26th of April. Some friends from London lived closeby (yes we did have friends when we moved here) and that was when we noticed these carriage houses (they also had one). I fell in love with it immediately and we have been here ever since (not  much ambition where houses are concerned; Edward traveled a lot then and it was just a comfortable size for me to look after when he wasn't there). I no longer do the walk around as my daughters do not think it is good for me to go alone and to be honest I agree (older people should not wander around alone but COVID did show us how much exercise we could create in our own homes and yards). I have my treadmill, my stationery bicycle, weights, yoga mat and runners so I can do it all inside or in the backyard and can walk/ski around outside when they are here. Teatime and Latin next. Then on to breakfast. 

My own English ancestry (grandchildren can inherit between 0 and 25%; and I am not sure that my grandchildren inherited very much of my English ancestry; the youngest perhaps as he has autism but mostly he reminds me of his mother (he has an enormous resemblance to her) but occasionally I get a glimpse of my brothers there; just rarely)). My English ancestry sinks rapidly into the past having merged with Edward's 9th and 10th generation mostly European and maybe 5 to 10% British Isles ancestry; then Edward's 8th and 9th early American colonial ancestry in our children and now with our grandchildren French Canadian ancestry merges in back into the early days of Quebec and our son in law's family has found First Nations ancestry in their lines (I do want to get back into that research as well! never enough time) so way back into thousands of years ago on this continent for at least one line. Amazing really when you think about it. Which reminds me that is exciting naming Louis Riel as the first Premier of Manitoba. We are, in my lifetime, seeing The First Nations and the settlers walking together just as Tecumseh and Brock walked together. Our Governor General Mary Simon brings the long history of her Inuit peoples to her capacity as the King's representative in Canada and she does it so very well. With three grandparents born and raised in England and a father born there I am likely going to be a royalist supporter for sure! Will we always have a King? I think having a Head of State that isn't political is better myself. Politics can be such a downer sometimes. Although Conservative most of my life; I have voted Liberal the last ten years. But frugality in government is needed; better management of money but that is also on the companies that do work for the government. Do not cheat; do the job or resign from it if you cannot do it - let someone else do it. COVID was a difficult time; decisions had to be made quickly. Things had to be cobbled together to get efficiency but cleaning it up should be a process begun in the past. Part of the problem is the negativity in Parliament. Get the job done; work together instead of trying to score points. I am not impressed by point scoring. I am impressed by good government; good management of money. And I continue to blame all of the parties for celebrating a Nazi  in Parliament. You do so much mud slinging surely you could have caught that before it happened. Stop concentrating on belittling Justin Trudeau; he has done the job for ten years and quite well actually. He was absolutely perfect during COVID. He brought his citizens home from around the world without really any problems. He organized that very well in terms of filing income tax for instance. I have to be honest it surprised me; Liberals can not generally be counted on to be efficient. That is the Conservative strength generally but Social Conservatism is dead in the water for me. I will not support it. Jesus said to love your neighbour as yourself and those words come from God. The prefatory of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins with "We believe in the supremacy of God and the rule of law." God has many terms including The Great Spirit, Creator. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms represents the best wishes of a people for a government that supports all the people. 

Must get to work; the day moves onwards.

 

 

Lawley family of Birmingham

An X chromosome match on 23 and Me with an email from the match looks at the Lawley family of Birmingham. My maternal grandmother's mother is known to me as Ellen Taylor. She appears in the 1891 census with her husband Edwin Denner Buller and three of their children including my grandmother Ellen Rosina Buller, their eldest child. As I dug back, I learned that Ellen Taylor had had an illegitimate daughter Florence Elizabeth Taylor in 1879. Ellen and Florence appear to be on the 1881 census at the Aston Workhouse. Her age there is listed as 19 years of age. Taylor is such a common name though and to attribute this is my Ellen is just an unproven thought. Florence is two and that would be her correct age. I know that Florence was with Ellen after her marriage to Edwin Buller. Ellen Buller has written a letter to the Birmingham Union in November 1887 asking that they take Florence as she can not manage her with one child and another due very soon.

I have spent a lot of time looking at Ellen Taylor including purchase of a number of birth registrations for Ellen Taylor born in Birmingham between 1858 and 1862. On the 1891 census Ellen's age is listed as 30 years of age and on her burial registration in 1897 she is listed as 37 years of age on March 5 (death registration 27 Feb 1897). My grandmother mentioned that her mother was 37 years of age when she died (my grandmother was 11 years of age at that time). The census was taken on the 5th April 1891.

I have a birth registration for an Ellen Taylor that best fits this known information the 9th October 1859 daughter of Thomas Taylor and his wife Ellen (Roberts) Taylor. At her death in 1897 she is listed as 37 years of age and a child born 9th October 1859 would be 37 years 4 months and 18 days on the 27th February 1897. However the census which was taken on the 5th April 1891 shows her as 30 years of age but she should be listed as 31 years of age (31 years and almost 5 months). If the Ellen Taylor on the 1881 census is her then this census was taken 3rd April and the stated age was 19 but if she was born 9th October 1859 then she should have been 21 years of age (21 years and 6th months). She could have lied about her age in the Workhouse. Her parents (if this is the daughter of Thomas Taylor and Ellen (Roberts) Taylor) were living at Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire in 1881. This Taylor family had been living in Birmingham and they are on the 1871 census (with the exception of Thomas who is already at Ashton under Lyne) including an Ellen then 11 years of age. The Taylor family had their last child, a daughter, Marion Taylor born September quarter 1880 at Ashton Under Lyne. Ellen is not with them on the 1881 census at Ashton Under Lyne.

Census Returns of England and Wales, 1881. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK, Lancashire County, Ashton under Lyne RD, Audenshaw, Class: RG11; Piece: 4041; Folio: 85; Page: 5; Line: 23; Thomas Taylor household, GSU roll: 1341966.

  Thomas Taylor   Age:52    Estimated birth year:abt 1839    Relation:Head    Spouse's name:Ellen   Gender:Male   Where born:Birmingham, Warwickshire, England     Civil parish:Ashton Under Lyne    County/Island:Lancashire    Country:England      Street address:Guide Lane   Condition as to marriage:Married     Occupation:Shoe Maker     Registration district:Ashton Under Lyne    Sub-registration district:Audenshaw    ED, institution, or vessel:4   Household Members:Name Age  Thomas Taylor  52  Ellen Taylor 39  Kate Taylor 13  Mariane Taylor 1  William Taylor 10

Missing from this 1881 census are four children: Thomas Taylor b 1858 at Birmingham, Ellen Taylor b 1859 at Birmingham and Eliza(beth) Taylor b 1862 at Birmingham. One other child Frank Taylor died Jun quarter 1875 at Birmingham.

Tracing the other children of Thomas Taylor and Ellen (Roberts) Taylor has proven to be difficult but that would be the ideal way to prove the relationship.

Ellen Roberts was the daughter of Thomas Roberts and  Ellen Lawley; hence my interest in the Lawley family. Finding an X chromosome match with a Lawley descendant with ties to Birmingham was most fascinating. This match at 26 centimorgans is long enough to be significant. I do not match her anywhere else and the estimate is 4th cousin.

A match on the X Chromosome is interesting and limited in just which family will be that match with you.

This chart tells me that only the coloured areas can lead to a common match with an X chromosome for me. On my father's side this family was either in Hampshire/Wiltshire and later Essex. This does not appear to overlap with my match. on my mother's side it excludes my paternal grandfather's line. My paternal grandfather's mother's lines were from East Riding of Yorkshire and Cumberland so also appear to be excluded. That left me with my grandmother's father's mother Anne Welch who lived at Birmingham and had ancestry back into Staffordshire and Leicestershire. This overlaps with the match's ancestry. I am tempted to think that it is going to be in this Welch line. It is a coincidence that the surname Lawley is emerging I suspect but will wait on it. The tester's Lawley connection is on her mother's side so she has inherited from her mother a combination of X from both parents with the maternal grandmother being a Lawley. This grandmother inherited from her father but his X chromosome came directly to her from his mother and not the Lawley line itself. This is a surname that I have seen before in my searches and I must rack my brain to see if I can remember in what context I looked at that surname!

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.

Full Genetic Scans on mitochondrial DNA

I continued working on the subgrouping of the T_FGS study group and completed the assignments to subgroups. I now need to add the mutations that belong to the particular subgroupings to the description and decide on a colour scheme. Although this isn't my mtDNA, the sample is my husband's line, it was an interesting couple of years spent looking at the grouping for T haplogroup.

 I think that if you are interested in testing your DNA and in particular the mitochondrial DNA the most practical and efficient way is to do the Full Genetic Scan. Overall the cost has diminished greatly and it is a very practical way to test in that there are no further tests in this area. My family finder results amazed me as I have a fourth cousin or greater match with someone whose family has always been in England. I still need to sort through the material which she sent to me. I suspect that the attachment is through my mother's Buller line - perhaps Christopher's mother was of German descent. Living in London as he did plus being executor of so many wills has left me wondering about who he was. My Buller day will look some more at the Buller records at St Olave where he buried his wife, two of his children and then himself although they attended St Mary Magdalene Bermondsey and baptized their children at St Mary Magdalene.

Now having published the paper, it has freed my mind up to look at the H11 mtDNA haplogroup which is my line. Having this likely "resting spot" for my mutations in Agryllshire Scotland has set my thoughts towards how my line ended up in the Midlands of England. I remember my mother talking about her thoughts on her ancestry and she suspected Irish but could that have been Scot-Irish! Would my ancestor have emigrated from Ireland to England looking for work at some time in the past? My grandmother's mother used to sing an Irish lullaby to the children. But it was a popular lilt and a lot of people could have sung that particular tune I suspect. I really have very little to go on with my great grandmother Ellen Taylor's family other than her father being a shoemaker in Birmingham. As far as I can ascertain none of Ellen's possible sisters had daughters so any matches would have to be more distant. Ellen's likely mother did not have any sisters so I am back to her mother Ellen Lawley who was born in 1819 in Wellington Shropshire England. Other than knowing that her father was Joseph I do not have any further information yet. I am  hoping that she might have had sisters with descendants.

The Devon Genuki pages updated with the index of wills prepared by Beckerlegge, J.J. (Ed.)  Index of the Wills and Administrations relating to the County of Devon proved in the Court of the Archdeaconry of Barnstaple, 1563-1858. Since my mother's paternal family comes from this area I pulled out my families from the index: Blackmore, Bray, Burges, Charley, Harvey, Hobbs, Manning, Moggridge, Pincombe, Pearse, Rew, Rowcliffe, Snow, Stanbury, Tapp, Thomas, Upcott, Vicary, Whetson.  I also pulled the Blake entries for the Blake one name study. It would be interesting to discover the ancestry of that particular Blake family in Devon - there appears to be a thought that it might be the Hampshire Blake family from Knights Enham.

I must get back to transcribing Abbotts Ann once again. I shall put a high priority on those parish registers to complete them.

Private Tree on Ancestry

I have still elected to have my family tree private on Ancestry. Not because I have any living members on it other than my husband and myself but I still have a couple of lines that I feel are tentative and I do not want to add to any errors that are circulating about with respect to a few of my lines. Tracing myself back to my 3x great grandparents has been relatively straightforward and I believe that all of these lines are quite accurate except for my maternal grandmother's grandparents on her mother's side. I continue investigating the Taylor family at Birmingham with each release of any information looking at any and all Ellen Taylor births in order to be sure that I can eliminate them in favour of the particular one that seems the most likely.

My great grandmother Ellen Taylor had an illegitimate child 24 Dec 1879 at the Aston Union work house Erdington (I know this from my grandmother and from records I have acquired). Florence Taylor still appears to be at the workhouse on the 1881 census and is listed there (Florence Taylor and near to her Ellen Taylor - 2 years and 20 years respectively). I am not sure if the Ellen Taylor listed there is her mother because of the age listed (20 years old). The Ellen Buller who was buried in 1897 (my grandmother's mother) was said to be 37 years old (death registration 27 February 1897) and my grandmother also said her mother was only 37 years old when she died of pneumonia. Possibly her date of birth could have been 9 Oct 1859 if she was the child of Thomas Taylor and Ellen Roberts and this would have made her 37 years old (plus four months and some days). Would she have lied about her age in the work house? I always doubt that somewhat as people were usually too frightened to lie about details of their life to the authorities I suspect. The question is where was Ellen Taylor between 1880 and summer of 1885 (my grandmother was born (20 May 1886)? I have not yet found the marriage of Edwin Denner Buller (my great grandfather) and Ellen Taylor although all births to this couple are recorded as children of Edwin Buller and Ellen Buller whether registered by the mother or the father. Taylor is not an easy name to trace although in Birmingham this family belonged to a large family of shoemakers for a couple of generations back. By 1881 census, Thomas and Ellen Taylor are living in Ashton Under Lyne, Lancashire and they appear to have moved there initially in the late 1860s returning to Birmingham by 1871 where they are found on the census and their last child William is born. Marion their last daughter was born in 1869 at Ashton Under Lyne. A mystery that have not solved from the very beginning of my research as I knew the names of my great grandparents from childhood; their occupations; where they lived and when and how they died. The family lore of Thomas being a shoemaker was passed down to me by my grandmother. The resultant family lore and accumulated information points very strongly at the Thomas Taylor/Ellen Roberts family and I can trace this family line back one more generation at Birmingham and then further back but not very deeply I still do not feel I have sufficient evidence to claim them without a doubt.

My mtDNA H11a2 only has matches that trace back to Argyll Scotland or County Antrim Ireland and the Country Antrim people are known to be Scot Irish. The Roberts and then Lawley family are found in the Midlands - Birmingham and Shropshire before that back to the late 1700s. When did my line arrive in the Midlands from Scotland/Ireland? Well there was a lot of movement between Scotland into the Midlands and from Ireland over to the Midlands in this time period with lots of jobs available. I have not yet looked at the Lawley family to any great extent but again I am always looking at the wife of  and in this case the wife of Joseph Lawley. Every once in a while I think through this set of families to see if I am missing anything that might be helpful. First and foremost I need to find a marriage between Edwin Denner Buller and Ellen Taylor. Family lore is very mixed up on this couple with tales of being married in Paris France and other such incredible stories.

Finding Clement Charles Buller (younger brother of my Edwin Buller) working in South Africa as a jeweller proved to be rather an interesting thought and Edwin Denner Buller is missing from the 1881 census (as is Clement Charles Buller). Could Edwin have gone to South Africa with his brother (their uncle was a jeweller in England and on the 1871 census Clement is listed as a jeweller assistant)? Was Edwin there in 1871 as he is missing from that census? Did he come back home without permission? The marriage was not overly popular with the family and the reasons were also mysterious so I have tended to dismiss them somewhat although keeping them in the back of my mind. Where did they marry? it would appear not in Birmingham as I have had a search made. No marriage has been listed in the GRO that is likely this couple.

Some of my reasons for maintaining my tree on ancestry as private. I can contemplate parentage of Ellen Taylor but I do not wish to be placing that into a tree that is then taken to be accurate. I still need to find more proof!

My husband has recently made a couple of trees public on ancestry which will assist a number of researchers. The one tree was prepared by Herman Whithoff who is now deceased and in his memory the tree is now made available to researchers of his many lines. Sixty years of research went into his family trees and they are extensive links back into early New England and New York. His own research goes back over fourty years and he has the most complete list of Kip/Kipp family material available. He welcomes queries and is busy now extracting all of the census material from the US and Canadian Census through the years. Watching him work through his Kipp family has inspired me to take on and do hopefully as well with the Blake family.

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.

Results of Research at Salt Lake City - 6 Dec 2008

No new work on the images from Salt Lake City today. I decided instead to look at Abbots Ann where my Pearce family lived. Elizabeth Pearce married John Coleman 7 Oct 1771 at Abbots Ann. John was baptized 13 Feb 1737 at Upper Clatford which seems to tell a tale of declining fortune in this family. The Coleman family had been Inn Keepers at Goodworth Clatford. His grandparents Clement and Katherine (Holeridge) Coleman had continuously held a licence there from 1716 to 1726 (Clement died in 1721). His father Clement was baptized at Goodworth Clatford 25 Oct 1704 and married to Dinah Bever (marriage date unknown which is a reminder that I need to check the fiche for Goodworth Clatford and Upper Clatford for this marriage as I work my way back). Elizabeth Pearce I hadn't been able to locate so decided to spend some time looking at the fiche for Abbots Ann and discovered Elizabeth Pearce's baptism 26 Jul 1739 although very very difficult to read. Her parents were William Pearce and Elizabeth. Possibly this is the marriage between William Pearce and Elizabeth Hopgood 25 Apr 1736 at Collingbourne Kingston as I can not find a marriage in this time frame in the Abbots Ann Register. There are two earlier Pearce marriages at Abbots Ann with one for a William and the other for a Peter (1707 and 1704). It was this Peter that attracted my attention as I found his Inn license from the 1720s time period at Abbots Ann. I have started to transcribe the register for Abbots Ann but it is a very slow process as the earliest register is one of the worst that I have seen. I did feel that this was a successful find though for Elizabeth Pearce.

I added Roberts to my webpage just to increase the possibility of locating descendants of this family line. Ellen Roberts married Thomas Taylor 29 Jun 1857 at Birmingham. She was less than 16 years old (b 18 Oct 1841; bap 6 Dec 1841 St Martin Birmingham), her mother had died two years earlier and the name of one of the witnesses at the marriage was the next door neighbour of this family on the 1841 census (Sarah Hadley) whom Thomas married 27 Dec 1859. Thomas himself died in 1860 or 1861 as he isn't alive on the 1861 census (Sarah is a widow with his three sons). This is my mtDNA line with my thought that this Ellen is the mother of my Ellen Taylor (b 9 Oct 1859 at Birmingham). Ellen Roberts had three brothers: Thomas (b 2 Sep 1843; bap 6 Nov 1843 St Martin Birmingham), James (b 5 Oct 1845; bap 8 Jan 1846 St Martin Birmingham), and Joseph (b 27 Sep 1847, bap 18 Oct 1847 St Martin Birmingham). Joseph was married to Mary Maria Odams Dec quarter 1869 at Aston Warwick. They had four children: Elizabeth b 1875, William b 1878, Alfred b 1885, Nellie b 1888 all born at Birmingham. The parents of Ellen Roberts were: Thomas Roberts and Ellen Lawley married 29 Nov 1840 at St Martins Birmingham. Ellen's father was Joseph Lawley and according to the census of 1851 Ellen was born at Wellington Shropshire. The possible trek back on my mtDNA continues to be brickwalled in the Midlands.

We attended the Opera Doctor Atomic at the theatre live streamed from the Met in New York City. It was my first event out since I took ill. I debated going as I am still having some pain in my ribs where I fell down but it ended up being quite practical. We sat near the level and by the edge as I didn't want anyone to accidentally knock me down! Opera was very well done.

Christmas Tree up this evening and will finish decorating when everyone is here tomorrow.

Finished proofreading Ed's UEL newsletter that he produced for the Branch. I want to continue to decrease my external commitments and I am looking at what else I can handoff or eliminate from my responsibilities. Although I enjoy the DNA work I have decided I do not really have time to become heavily involved in course writing which is one item that I have been mulling around. I have spent a fair amount of time reading and preparing but I do not think that I want to spend the time on it.