David and Jonathan

David and Jonathan, the Bible Book (1 Samuel) that taught us about love between people; a love that saved a life. Jonathan the son of King Saul and David the son of Jesse shared a love of God the Creator and believed in Him. At least I read it that way. It is a beautiful book of the Bible which talks about this brotherly love between the two young men. David is now married to Jonathan's sister Michal who also loves David dearly. The two children of Saul risked much to save David. 

That the Messiah will come is still not visible as I read; it will be as I know when the prophets to come start talking about the Promised Messiah from God. 

Yesterday I completed for the most part the moving of the rooms and I am pleased with the result. I have one extraneous box looking at me and I will sort through it today. It is a brand new Bankers Box so likely we put it together and now I need to make decisions on its contents. I was also looking for the material on the Allen family. I had an Archival Box labeled "Allen" but it didn't have in it what I thought it might so I was back at square one and then I found the binder that listed contents as Kipp/Link/Allen but it too came up with very little. But then I thought about the one box that we put together but I haven't looked at the five business bags that we put into it. It is labeled latest research and that is how Edward managed his research by family line putting in the material that he wanted to work with on various trips here and there. He put into these business bags (from conferences) the different family items he was working on and today I shall also have a look in those bags to see if there is a devoted Allen bag as it was one of the last trips that we made before COVID to meet with Edward's Allen's cousins. It was two trips - one to Gravenhurst in Northern Ontario and another to Belleville I think along the 401 in south eastern Ontario. 

My work is cut out for me today and those two boxes will occupy me for the rest of the morning. I need to do this whilst I am still able and then I can get back to writing my books in the fall and winter. I do so look forward to all that snow on the ground for days and weeks on end. I get so much work done at that time. A note on the door asking people to please not disturb me as I am writing and soon the letter carrier will no longer deliver mail as well since we are going to postal mailboxes. I still prefer the idea of virtual mailboxes - it would be the making of Canada Post as there could be all sorts of spin offs from that when people want printed copy they can pay both to have the job printed and to have it delivered to their home. Canada Post offers the best delivery service in Canada; they are good at it. The monies would keep Canada Post solvent instead of always having shortfalls. 

Exercises all completed first thing this morning with a cardio load of 35 and 1 hour of exercise. It was a good spread of times in each zone - light 19%, moderate 37%, vigorous 39% and peak 5%. Today I will run for 30 minutes a little later and perhaps some weightlifting. Time will tell. 

Canada continues to point itself towards diversification of trade; breaking down any remaining provincial barriers to trade and increasing our defense spending. The pipelines are finally a go and I am very happy about that as well as the mines that are in the works/in thought process or just waiting to be thought about. The Gordie Howe Bridge got its official opening day in Windsor and everybody is happy. The extra 320 million in cost is likely financing the debt a longer period than planned. Extra maintenance for sure. 

Conrad Black's editorial today very well written as always. Thank you to him for so concisely producing a lecture that everyone can benefit from reading. The United States is our great friend and neighbour but we can and will stand on our own as we did at the end of the Second World War and well into the 1960s. We need to get back to that sort of strong defense ability, independence and break down those provincial barriers. I hear there are now British Columbia cherries on the market but haven't seen them here yet. I continue to support 100% Prime Minister Carney's ideas on how to increase our defense and diversify our trade around the world. 

Solitaire puzzles to do. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

The heat wave and fog

 The heat wave continues and fog this morning; not yet showing up on the weather but it has just rolled in. The air purifier was reading only 4 but jumped suddenly to 20 so closed the windows upstairs and will let the air conditioning do its chore. Cleaning all accomplished yesterday for another week. This week I have Tuesday off as I cleaned the basement on Saturday. I may water the sunflowers but they actually do not look wilted as the humidity is high perhaps. Will see how the day progresses. The sunflowers are huge now and covering the back window. 

No proofreading yesterday; the cleaning took me all day. I decided to clean the wooden floors with liquid and the mop after vacuuming so made a day of it; all that cleaning. Started another bag for Salvation Army with some of my clothes I have not worn for a bit. These past few years I tended to wear my favourites and the others just did not get work. Edward used to buy me things spontaneously on our walks which was sweet but I do tend towards my favourites which he also knew; maybe he was trying to convert me from being a non-spender to a spender. It didn't happen actually; I am not a shopper and very content to not be out shopping every day. He was definitely good for the economy and I do buy things but it is a list and done very quickly as stores are not my favourite places. 

Next up, jumping jacks and tea and then back to a bit of writing. 

Today continuing with the first proofreading and then on to the second proofreading. Once I am satisfied back to the fourth generation which was affected by this document and then the fifth generation by the other document that I transcribed earlier I can move forward. I will insert the entire transcription of the 1653 document but only a precis of the will as I need to seek permission to produce that transcription and want to keep that list that I will need to do small probably starting this month in order to publish the book. The one picture in it and I think I will have the picture at the front of the book is my 2x great grandmother Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe daughter of Elizabeth (Siderfin) Rew. It is the closest that I come to the Siderfin line in picture. I did not visit this area of Somerset when we traveled about with my cousin Ivan Kent in the spring of 2008. He did ask if I had other spots I wanted to visit but we had done a lot and I appreciated all of his time and I knew he wanted to show me where he taught school during his career as a teacher of boys with learning disabilities. I only spent time with this cousin once in my life and I am glad that I learned a little about him as well as the travels that we made together. We were accompanied by his wife and my husband on our voyages. Ivan died just before we arrived in 2010 for another trip this one was to spend five days in London and then 20 days in Europe on yet another bus tour. Bus tours are a great way to see the British Isles and Europe and we did eight of them in total. I highly recommend them for their thoroughness. We always added to those trips once we had our location for each night and went to see items that were close by at the end of our traveling day so added quite a bit to what we actually did see. It is a challenge to get fourty people into and out of items thus restricting how much you are going to see. I always took our GPS with us on these tours and it let Edward assign definite names to the pictures which he took which he really enjoyed. Once he got used to the idea of flying over great expanses of water he was as excited as I was to fly there. It is so quick to fly although we were planning a return trip from Southampton on a boat that didn't materialize. Would I ever do that? My interest in doing so was small for sure. But then I have the memories from my father of his trip at the age of nine years with his mother (his father had gone six months earlier to set up house) on a boat from Southampton but for Edward there were no family memories passed down of trips from the continent (most of his ancestors were from the Netherlands, France and different Germanic states and much earlier). All of that knowledge of his ancestors was lost to time but he did uncover pretty much every one of his ancestor's trips to the Western Hemisphere in the 1600s and 1700s. Even the trips of his great grandparents Schultz had been forgotten in their actuality and they came in 1849 and 1866 and that of his 2x great grandmother Mary Ann Abbs who came as a fourteen year old with her family in 1832 from East Anglia (sadly she died in 1852 leaving behind ten children; his 2x great grandfather William Henry Link was only two years old and another story was lost but found once again by Edward). His American lines were very extensive with the last arrivals to Canada being in the latter part of the 1820s and that too was lost but family reunions reclaimed those stories along with tidbits about itchy feet drawing them towards Canada. I think Edward found that very interesting and we attended the Reunions of a number of his family lines still being held in the United States.They were excited to welcome their Canadian cousins and enjoyed the pictures that he brought with him of his ancestors. 

So today on to the Siderfin book once again. I have several weeks before I need to write the next Blake Newsletter so will try to get through the entire book footnoting it although that might be a challenge although hard to say; I know where the footnotes are I just have to record them and being a fast typist that isn't a challenge for me plus I have the databases at my fingertips. 

Talking with my daughter we had the idea of publishing his grave yard pictures on his blog so will look into that. I could do it by families and there are a lot of them that could be shared. It is a good thought and I will try to implement that with my blogging times. We have fifty binders of developed pictures of our life up to 2000 when Edward switched to electronic. I produced powerpoint presentations of our various trips but still need to do some editing on some of them which I will also try to get done this next winter. Our children liked to see those trips when we returned. Their lives are busy and it let them into part of our lives when we were away from them. 

On to the day; breakfast is next.

Sir Francis Baildon and his nine page will

I transcribed the will of Sir Francis Baildon when I was first learning paleography. It was an enormous challenge for me at the time but I struggled through it five years ago. The last few days I have redone my transcription and I am amazed on the one hand that I did so well at the time and astounded, on the other hand, at my errors!

My husband has an interest in this will as one of his ancestors was Daniel Belding who married Elizabeth Foote 10 Nov 1670 at Hartford Connecticut (CT). Their daughter Sarah (born 15 Mar 1682 at Hatfield CT) married Benjamin Burt 19 Oct 1702 at Deerfield Massachusetts (MA).  During the raid on Deerfield of 1704 they were taken to Montréal and their first son was born there (Sarah was seven months pregnant for that trek through the snows of winter - it must have been a frightening experience). They were repatriated and on the return voyage their son (my husband's ancestor) Seaborn was born ( 4 Jul 1706 at sea). Continuing to come down Seaborn married Susannah Lobdell but the date and place of marriage are not known to me. Their son Benjamin Burt married Rebecca (surname unknown) and their daughter Sarah was born Jan 1771 at Ridgefield CT. We visited the cemetery at Ridgefield but couldn't find their gravestone (it was a dreary wet day and we couldn't find it; must return one day). Sarah married Philip Crouse 8 Apr 1791 at Queensbury New Brunswick (this is my husband's loyalist line). Their daughter Rebecca Crouse married Isaac Allen (another loyalist line) 8 Apr 1816 at Keswick New Brunswick. Their last child James C Allen was his great grandfather (born 24 Dec 1832 at Millstream New Brunswick). James Allen married Hannah Catherine Parlee (another loyalist line) 17 Jul 1856 at Burford Canada West (now Ontario). Their youngest daughter Margaret Evelyn Allen was born 3 Nov 1880 in McLean Township Ontario and she married Horace Lorenzo Link (loyalist line that came directly to Ontario in the early 1780s) 25 Nov 1903 at Audrey North West Territories (now Saskatchewan). His mother was born in Saskatchewan but they returned to Ontario when she was six weeks old in 1906.

That traces the line down from Daniel Belding and to work backwards now the parents of Daniel Belding were William Belding and Thomasine Sherwood who married at Wethersfield CT. The father of this William was said to be Richard Baldon (Balydon/Baildon) married to Margaret Ackrenden 9 Dec 1622 at Heptonstall West Yorkshire Riding (England). The possible father of this Richard Baildon was Sir Francis Baildon and mother was Margaret Goodrick who were themselves married at Ribston Manor West Yorkshire riding.

This is where the two questions enter. I found a book online "Concerning some of the Ancestors and Descendants of Royal Denison Belden and Olive Cadwell Belden by Jessie Perry Van Zile Belden. Printed for private circulation by J. B. Lippincott Company Philadelphia 1898. An interesting book in light of the articles published lately concerning the impossibility that Richard Baildon was the son of Sir Francis Baildon. Further on from this is the difficulty with William the supposed son of Richard born in America. In this book the only two sons mentioned are Samuel and Thomas. This appears to be another debate within the articles published on the Baildon family. Was William a son of Richard Bayldon? The one comment in the book mentioned earlier in this paragraph that catches my eye is on page 72 of this book (can be downloaded from Internet Archive) where I quote a quote from William Poley Baildon, F.S.A. and he was a member of the Council of the Archaeological Society of Yorkshire. The question that might remain in my mind is who was William Paley Baildon. Looking at the publication, William Paley was a barrister and had been collecting information on the family for twenty years searching through parish registers, court records, etc in Yorkshire. He created the pedigrees that are in the book.  The quote follows:

"There is only one family of Bayldon; all persons bearing that name by inheritance must have sprung from the Yorkshire manor of that name. Richard Bayldon, son of Sir Francis Bayldon of Kippax, baptized May 26, 1591, was the only Richard, so far as I know, who would have had money to spend in the purchase of land, as Richard of Wethersfield did."

Now that doesn't prove that this Richard is the son of Sir Francis Baildon. Once I am happy with the transcription of the will (my husband will put that on his blog) than I will proceed to work on the Postmortem Inquisition that he also purchased from the National Archives. Certainly the will leaves one breathless with the extent of this man's holdings but also as I transcribed it I realized the tremendous responsibility placed on his children to carry out his many transactions and to follow through with his legacies. All of this to begin five years after the death of Sir Francis Baildon. His death was in 1623 so the duties would have begun to fall on Richard in 1628 presumably. The actual value of the estates of Sir Francis Baildon at his death does not appear to be as substantial as they appear on the will. His debts were large apparently and so the children would have had to bear this debt along with their legacies and balance it all out. This Richard had also made application to leave England in 1613 so perhaps felt with the dissension around him concerning King and Parliament and the responsibilities of the estate of his father that he might do better in America. I think that attributing this Richard to Lawrence Baildon when no baptism exists is perhaps questionable and that is the tone of later researchers in this family.

When next we are at Kew, I shall try to spend some time looking at all the Baildon material there to see if a stronger case could be made for Richard Baildon at Wethersfield being the son of Sir Francis Baildon. I will also look at the other Baildon families in Yorkshire although we have read through the Heptonstall Parish Registers. Always though one must bear in mind that the tendency in the 1800s was to try to link back to an illustrious family in Europe and that tainted many of the genealogical studies of colonial families produced in the United States in that time period. Plus there is still the query about William being the son of Richard; the name Baildon is uncommon and Belding/Belden equally uncommon. However, I shall not delve into this mystery as it is my husband's mystery and not mine! I just transcribed the will and that is my big part in the Baildon mysteries.

Anglican Church Archives Ottawa Diocese

We spent the day at the Anglican Church Archives Ottawa Diocese. They have over 800,000 CMBs for this area in an online database. My husband was particularly looking for members of his "Link" family and he found over 100 records that we extracted into a flat file. It was necessary to type them one by one but was fairly quick work with two of us working on it. Then sort into register numbers and look at the five early registers that were most interesting. His Link family were at Osnabruck from the early 1780s until the first quarter of the 19th century. John Link (bc 1816 Lower Canada) moved to Queensville by 1839 and married Mary Ann Abbes there before 1841. Unfortunately for him, there are few records available for these specific events but he is on the census which is helpful in 1851, 1861, and 1871.

We had packed a small lunch (egg salad sandwiches, a grapefuit drink and an apple) and went for a walk in the Park of the Provinces/Territories and then ate our lunch there. It was cool under the trees and once again one can marvel that a capital city could be so quiet just a few blocks from Parliament Hill. It is a beautiful setting and many people eat their lunch there sitting on the stone walls. Then a walk down to the Ottawa River towards Parliament Hill and back up again. The walk is a strenuous one and left us ready to sit once again and work on the records at the Anglican Church Archives.

These Archives are located at Christ Church Cathedral on Sparks Street. We attend Church there as well. We were the only researchers in the Archives on that day and they are now open three days per week from 8:30 to noon and then 1:00 to 4:30. There are a number of tables to work at (large tables) so it is easy to look at the large registers.

We want to start going to Library and Archives Canada once again. I always have a lot that I can do on our son-in-law's French Canadian ancestry. With hundreds of emigrant ancestors, the trail of many of them travels back through nine generations or more. Some came in the early 1700s making the trail back a little shorter. Many French Canadian family stories have been published and that is quite helpful to lead me to the original records when they are missing from/or hard to find in the Drouin Collection which is online on Ancestry.ca.

Farley family

I received a contact on Genes Reunited for the Farley family. Mary Ann Blake (sister to my great grandfather Edward Blake) married David Farley June quarter 1853 at Andover Hampshire. Mary Ann was baptized 2 Oct 1831 at Upper Clatford. They had nine children including George Farley who married Edith Pearce. George was born March quarter 1855 at Andover. Their daughter Muriel was grandmother to the person who contacted me. My contact's father Richard is my third cousin. Mostly I find fourth cousins so this was quite an exciting contact. Since I do not have any first cousins and few second cousins a third cousin seems very close although probably not to most third cousins :)

The contact is fairly new to genealogy and can not add anything to my Blake quest although being "on the spot" so to speak there is a potential of her learning a great deal about the family and I hope she keeps me tuned for any advancements. I can at least provide information on what is known for sure.

Today is a canning day - we will make chili sauce which is a five hour marathon but tastes delicious at the end. All that work for seven or eight jars! The elderberry jelly turned out very well though and it is the first time that we have made elderberry jelly - usually pies or the birds eat them all!

We worked on the Schultz family the last couple of days. We are making up a new chart with all the discoveries of this past year. That is our primary need at the moment to complete that and prepare for a visit to the Archives of Ontario, Queensville and Baysville to visit the local cemeteries there and look around a little to see where the Abbes, Link, and Allen families lived in these areas. My husband's mother was a Link and her grandfather's mother was Mary Ann Abbes (a newly found ancestress).