Records at Tawstock

A record at Tawstock for Edith Pincombe, widow, whose will is probated in 1572. The only known Pinkham there is Philip Pencombe/Pynkeham whose will was probated in 1564 at Tawstock. The FMP records are interesting. The earlier record on the Devon Lay Subsidy 1524-7 at Tawstock has a Philip Pengham. The 1543-1545 Devon Lay Subsidy had the spelling Philip Pynkeham. There is a Phillippe Pyncombe married to Wilmote Beare 10 Feb 1853 at Bideford. This is on Chart 10 with the father of this Philip  possibly  being Philip Pynkeham. The distance from Tawstock to Bideford is around 8 miles (we actually were in both of these places in 2008). It seemed very short but we were in a car. It is troubling though looking at the published book for the Pinkham family of the United States not to find a Philip in later generations. I found just one in the index in the 1880s. The repeating of Richard through three generations beginning with the father of the emigrant also interesting certainly but Richard son of William and Emotte Pincombe died at Bishops Nympton in 1648 and Richard son of Thomas and Joane Pencombe died at Bideford 7 Jun 1592 (he was known to have lived in Bideford). The children of that Richard at Bideford appear to be Helen and Thomas. William (Richard's brother) mentions the son Thomas (Richard's son) in his will. Richard became a much commoner forename in the 1800s and 1900s in the family in England and Canada. But the sister of the emigrants did marry Richard Elworthy perhaps accounting for the name being used later. But I will continue my work through all the data tomorrow. Time to lift weights and take a break!

I did have a look at Charles Nelson Sinnett's book "Richard Pinkham of old Dover, New Hampshire and his descendants East and West." I have had the electronic copy for quite a few years but wanted to refresh my mind on what he had said about the origins of the family. The last records in it are mid 1800s (this book I am writing will only go to the very early 1900s but there has never been a book of the Pencombe/Pincombe family of North Molton so definitely needs to be written). I remembered that the initial thought was this family came from the Isle of Wight but the author Sinnett did have some thoughts on that.  What I find confusing on some of the earlier researcher's charts is the forenames which do not resemble the generations that preceded which was common in English families of all levels through all of my searching in my lines. However, I will try not to be distracted. Again I would never attempt to revise and update Sinnett's book on the Pinkham family of the United States. But I will collect the material as eventually it will become part of the study and stored electronically at the Library of the Guild of one-name Studies in London, England. I will extract the entire file of Legacy and place it there. 

As I continue pulling records from Find My Past, I continue in my estimation that John Pencombe of Northmolton had only three sons (I am not sure if they all were full siblings as Thomas seems younger than John and William). William born closer to 1500 than Thomas but younger than John because he has Goods 2 listed on the 1524-7 Lay Subsidy whereas John Pyncombe at South Molton is G10 and his son Christopher G5 (the other son John is not listed on this 1524-7 Subsidy). But Thomas is earning Wages 1. John is definitely the elder brother of both Thomas and William. His son John remains at South Molton and this line eventually daughters out and their wealth created the Pyncombe Trust in 1731 (John generally used the surname Pyncombe as did his line).  The second generation is coming together but the ages are still somewhat weak but will continue to work on them. I feel that I am in a good spot as I have now put forth an argument that works for me not to include extraneous lines from the charts that do not come back to John Pencombe known to be at North Molton in 1486. But I continue collecting the information as I pull it. I have done some work on that but generally it is items that I have collected rather than all the BMBs in Find My Past - 50,000 records is somewhat daunting but I have given myself two years and so I will move ahead on that. 

Summing up my work ideas: Returning to Blake in a couple of weeks is a thought but my next step really is the Lay Subsidies and I need to actually go to the Family History Library to acquire that information. Publishing it with just the descendants of John Pincombe and Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe (the emigrants in 1850 to Canada) seems a bit weak plus I do have more material going back but didn't want to do just a straight line so collecting as much as I can seems more reasonable but also I am helped in this somewhat with the bottleneck that occurs in the 1600s with the number of descendants somewhat low but I am sure I am missing some of them. And so I continue with extracting data from Find My Past. 

 

Work Day

 Decided to do the front yard yesterday morning which included raking it and then cutting the grass with the lawnmower and took me about an hour to complete the process. Pulled a few weeds here and there and will see if it needs cutting again before winter. 

As well I ended up continuing to build the new set of family photo albums. I am still on the first album and have been through four of the older albums. So this may work to reduce it down to six to eight binders. Sometimes there are so many pictures close in time that I just put five or six into the section and eventually someone may decide to just keep one of them but I find that I can not just decide on that and will leave to the lookers of the future. 

I am slowly getting past thinking I am spoiling Edward's set of binders that told the story of his life. He enjoyed them very much but now so that the  next generation can enjoy them it is time to downsize the pictures that have little or no meaning to them because they were not there; they are not in the pictures and neither are we because they are scenery pictures. Fortunately the binders actually end in 2001 which will help to make my task easier. I also suspect that in the future likely looking at them on the computer will be much more common as there is an index of the entire set of fourty albums and they will likely look at all of the pictures because we went to a lot of countries in our travels. But I will leave that up to the future and not attempt to second quess it. But for the moment fourty large binders is a lot of binders. 

I find my mind still contemplating the Blake family history but I do think I will set it aside if only for a week and work on the Pincombe family. The generational chart is considerably easier coming down from the family at North Molton, Devon where they arrived in 1486 and lived in North Molton for the first generation but moved away in the second towards South Molton and in the third towards Bishops Nympton and Barnstaple with Pincombe being in a lot of the villages in North Devon along the main highway that still exists there. My line was at Bishops Nympton from the late 1500s until the 1830s at which time John Pincombe and his wife (Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe) were living in Molland which is pretty close actually to Bishops Nympton having traveled those roads in 2008. They then emigrated to Canada in November 1850 via the Port of New York going to visit John's older brother Robert who lived at Genesee New York and arrived January 1851. All of this was known to me from my mother who was a Pincombe before she married a Blake. 

I do believe that this Pincombe family that arrived in North Molton in 1486 with John Lord Zouch came in one of two capacities - one would be part of a system that guaranteed that John Lord Zouch would remain at North Molton as he had supported Richard III and for that King Henry VII had stripped him of his estates and sent him to North Molton to remain there until he was told  he could leave - that is my suspicion since John Pencombe received land at North Molton. It makes sense. But he could also have been a supporter of John Lord Zouch but I am moving away from that thought. One notes I used the spelling Pencombe which does appear to be correct according to the Devon Lay Subsidy of 1524-27 where John Pencombe's name appears along with that of his son Thomas who is employed by his father. The two older sons have land of their own listed on the Subsidy - John and William. Now that I am into it I believe I will create the generational chart and go ahead with that. I do have a little information on John Pencombe's location prior to North Molton and it was at Pencombe, Herefordshire and I do have some other family names that appear to be part of this grouping. The yDNA suggests that  this is a Flemish family but they do not appear on the 1330-1550 Emigrants database so one assumes they came before 1330; but they are not Norman. I will continue trying to discover more about the Pencombe family in Herefordshire. 

So my projects are occupying me very nicely actually. I am getting work done on all of them and I am also working outside which was the plan.  Today I will work on the very back of the yard once again raking to pick up all the twigs that have dropped from the tree. There is work to do there; the compost bin is made of wood and is in need of repair but beyond me so I just make do with that and do not add anything. The earth there should be in good shape to spread around one day but it will not be me doing that. It is possible that I could get the trees cut a bit but I may leave that to the spring although will continue to contemplate it. I am not actually seeing much dead wood and the fall of branches is not all that unusual. 

Solitaire puzzles to do. 

I  have completed reading Esther and will begin reading 1 Maccabees. Esther was an amazing book which I was familiar with including Purim which is a part of the Jewish year. Peace is flowing like a river in the area that the Bible is talking about. Peace is beautiful and one would wish for it all over the world so that people can live their lives, do their work and raise their children. War is sad in God's world. God said to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and to love (respect) our neighbour as ourself. Those two commandments should lead us to peace. One could wish for that. Maccabees, Books 1 and II are not in the Revised King James Bible and I do not really remember reading them before. Today I begin. I did learn that 1 and 2 Maccabees was in the original 1611 King James Version  as part of the Apocrypha. We did have a copy of the Bible with the Apocrypha but I had forgotten some of the books that were included in the Apocrypha. 

Joshua and Jericho

 The Ark of the Covenant was carried into the Jordan River and the waters piled up on the flow side and dry earth appeared for the Israelites to cross into the Promised Land. Ahead of them was the City of Jericho. Jericho is said to be at least 11,000 years old. In these modern days it is located in the West Bank. When the spies from Israel spoke with Rahab who lived in Jericho and protected the two spies from the government of Jericho, she spoke of God as He wanted the world to view Him. He had dried up the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites could flee safely from Egypt and the pursuing Egyptians. The success of the Israelites against the Amorites had also told the people of Jericho that God was great. Chapter 2 verse 11 "....... The Lord God is indeed God in heaven above and on the earth below." are said to be the words of Rahab to the spies as she protected them and told them how to escape the city. She asked that her family be spared when the Israelites came and the promise was made and kept because she helped them. 

The story of the fall of the City of Jericho is also an early memory from Church and Sunday School. I think in  my mind I want to think that God early on wanted to send His Son Jesus to us and that He promised it early on but the reality is that those prophecies are still to come according to the scriptures. I think quite clearly God wanted the world to know that He was the only true God who had created this beautiful world. He insisted that the Israelites pay perfect obedience to His laws or suffer the severe consequences in order that He would remain amongst them. 

Am I right that Armageddon has come and we have actually survived; that World War II and the demonic Hitler did not succeed in bringing on the end of the world. The signs were so very strong in Revelations as seen in the world at that time it appears but was it something that came into my brain as a child. Why do I think that? I am I think working my way through my thoughts in that regard and whether God meant that peace would come to all the world and all the countries would work together with their people to make this a perfect home full of peace. That satan and the satanists would be forever banished from our world. That three of the Great Religions of the World (known to me) worship the same God - Judaism, Islam and Christianity - can exist in our world because only God decides how He appears to us through the ages. Jesus came to soften the very strict laws of the Torah and Islam has its own God given existence. 

I was finding the daily readings although appreciated did not clarify items in my mind that were being tossed back and forth between my thoughts. Reading the Bible from cover to cover will answer my questions I think. Choosing the Revised Version Catholic was always a personal choice as it includes Books that are not in the King James Version. 

The great discovery yesterday was most interesting. This family is descendant of Robert Siderfin and Grace Kent through their son Thomas as my line is descendant through his older sister Elizabeth (Betty) (Siderfin) Rew. The match as fifth cousins at 53 cM is large (not huge) but does vary between 0 and 117 with 25 being the most common according to Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project.  However that 53 cM match is on Ancestry and TIMBER does reduce the number of cMs if the particular length includes a common area (i.e. common to the British Isles or a particular area in the British Isles in this case). There is a noted pileup area between 44 cM and 53 cM on this chromosome. I do have a number of matches but this one that is traceable is very useful as it again definitively supports the idea that this Thomas is a sibling of Elizabeth (Siderfin) Rew. On Ancestry it is a single chromosome match following later in the chromosome so part of the deletion could be the common pileup area. Rereading and saw that I had put fourth cousin but I am a fifth cousin to the person on Ancestry. Age is catching up to me for sure. 

Today is cleaning day one and it is the top floor. We were busy yesterday moving some furniture around to make it easier to manage and so a good day to begin the cleaning just to clear away any accumulation caused by the moving about. 

We are into a very warm week this week with temperatures well into the thirties and the humidex as high as 48 right across Canada from Alberta to Quebec. 

Solitaire puzzles to do.  

 

 

Continuing with Ancestry matches

 I did manage to complete all but the last siblings matches in my Ancestry File so will finish that today. A couple of interesting matches and I do colour code where I recognize the lines that merge with mine in the past. It is the trees though that tend to be the most interesting with Ancestry although the amount shared is also meaningful along with the number of chromosomes shared. Just FT DNA to work on today and will work on that. I have decided that with these new books I will set them aside at the point where I am getting ready to publish and then a month later do my final proofreading. I suspect that in my rush to finish whilst my eyes were still handling somewhat the amount of reading I was doing I may not have followed through on my lists for proofreading which my daughter helped me to set up. Looking at the list yesterday I had not checked off proofreading the Index. The names in the index will be as in the text but I am somewhat concerned about the paging as I did not proofread the index. It was just a moment in my early widowhood when I was using James Sanders book that the thought came to me to revise it and it was never really a long thought out project but rather I dove in and did it and then my cataracts were dimming my sight somewhat, I just thought it was aging, and I rushed to publish it. Even the corrected version was part of that rushing after I completed the Companion Charting Book. An apology and a mention to any users that the paging in the indexes might be questionable because I did not actually proofread the indexes against the text. At some point I will do that and republish (there is more material that I could insert along the way although may just put it into my blog and let someone in the future carry on with a new revision). 

Once I have completed pulling the matches and entering them into my database I will return to my latin transcriptions of the wills and make a final decision on where to begin the Blake genealogical descent table for the Andover Blake family (I still tend towards Robert but should I mention Richard Blake found at Salisbury in the 1440s from Ireland). I think one contemplates whether he is English and his ancestral line went to Ireland earlier although I do not find anything in the Calendar of Patent Rolls. That he arrived twice (10 Jul 1440 and 7 Sep 1441) is interesting. Historically speaking in the 1440s the Normans are fully in control of England at this point and Henry VI is King (1422-1461 and 1470-1471). He is crowned King of both England (1429) and France (1431). By 1447 the term "The Pale" first refers to English rule and it was pretty much limited to areas within Dublin, Meath, Louth and Kildare.Ireland is seeing a change with a decline of centralized English control and the Anglo-Irish lordships are taking over control of Ireland. It could be mere coincidence that Robert has named his sons as Richard and Thomas. But I feel that I should mention this individual. Perhaps in time more British/Irish yDNA tests will come forth for the Blake family. There are a number of founding lines known in England already and the Emigrant's Database between 1330 and 1550 includes 50  Blake individuals (including three female Blake where it is not possible using the chart to determine if they were wives or Blake was their maiden name) coming into Britain but not all have a location of exit (i.e. the country they lived in prior to their arrival).  Using Paul Reed's papers and my own transcription and a couple of other items that support one thought or the other I will move to this next phase of the Blake book. It does occasionally cross my mind that my two brothers having tested their yDNA and the result being Western Hunter Gatherer it would be interesting to test my grandfather who was buried in London, Ontario at some point but at 80 probably it isn't going to be me I am thinking. It is his memories that I carry within my mind; he definitely did a good job of placing material within my brain which I have retained through these years because he said it so often and I loved him dearly and his words remain with me on many occasions. I still dream about Grandpa and I can remember that last day together when I was just past my eighth birthday. I found it hard to believe he was dead but I had kissed him goodbye lying there in his coffin. I just didn't want him to be but children grow up and accept the loss of loved ones slowly but knowing they are with God. He was born in 1875 in Upper Clatford. I think the future holds great excitement for those pursing the past in their family lines. I am fairly content with the first one hundred pages although will be reading it again and again. I need to complete my footnoting (I have done quite a bit as I have moved along but will footnote items that I may have missed). Already there are nearly 200 footnotes on the first 100 pages. Amazingly my sight is so much better now and the time taken after the cataract surgery not overdoing anything has given that to me I believe. I am still amazed that I now live a life without glasses except when I work on the computer or read a book. Wearing glasses everyday, all day, for 78 years does form habits that take time to change. Particularly putting your glasses on every day. I noticed that stayed with me; that hand movement for nearly two years.  

The Pincombe book appears to have drifted into some resting spot but actually I do think about it particularly with the Pincombe matches on Living DNA. These are the descendants of the Pincombe lines including common ancestry further back than John Pincombe and Mary (Charly) Pincombe.  The six children of John and Mary Pincombe all married but a number of them emigrated to British Colonies. My line (Robert Pincombe and Elizabeth (Rowcliffe) Pincombe) went to the United States and Canada as well as one son George who went to Australia (at least one of his descendants emigrated to South Africa). But two of their children (Robert and Elizabeth Pincombe) remained in England with the youngest Philip having a large family but living in Somerset. Looking at the six children of John and Mary Pincombe a number of their grandchildren/great grandchildren emigrated to various places including the United States, Canada, South Africa and Australia. I will return to Pincombe probably in May sometime. The newsletter for May 1 is for the Pincombe study at FT DNA. I am contemplating that newsletter. They are brief at the moment due to my working on these books. 

A cloudy day again and the slight wind in the trees tells me God is with us; at our side watching and waiting patiently for us to do the right thing in the world. Love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. 

Soon time for breakfast and the first day that is devoted to research; cleaning is all accomplished. I also have the car ready for summer and my daughter's return to do her research. This will be a busy summer for her as are all of them. But she gets a chance to kayak and enjoy the world around her and I suspect she worries that I will not be always here and at 80 that is a legitimate thought for sure plus she is my caregiver. But I try hard to take care of myself so that I can still be here until I am not. The wonder of the internet means that I chat with my daughters every day and I am blessed that I am able to do so. 

Surprise snowfall overnight

I missed the weather report that said snow and woke up today hearing the laneway being cleared by the company and realizing my black box was not far enough away although it was on the grass next door as I am hoping to get it emptied this week. Went out and moved it and cleaned out the snow and added some more so that it is about 3/4s full now. When the newspaper was delivered we didn't have any problem filling it but that is a long time ago. 

Just the sidewalks to clear and they will be around later to do that. This is southwestern Ontario snow as I call it; moist and great for making snowmen not our usual dry snow that does pack well on a hot sunny day but otherwise is pretty light and devoid of a lot of moisture. The trees all have a dusting of snow and look quite beautiful through the window of my workroom. Winter is lovely; I do love winter the best but a lot of the reason is all that solitude and time to work. Edward did not enjoy the solitude as much as I did and was out and about doing all his projects with me accompanying when he asked. He was so involved in so many things especially when he retired. For him, I think, being retired was sleeping in which he loved to do. That and just all that time to do anything that he wanted to do and his genealogical endeavours paid off big time for him in terms of unknown family to him but so well known to the world - Roger Williams, Hannah (Peak) Bowne, even the Royal Governor of Massachusetts and so many others. 

It was incredible that so much was lost. He found it amazing that I knew all of my ancestral stories but my first ancestor did not arrive here until 1818 and it was Thomas Routledge and his wife Elizabeth (Routledge) Routledge with their eight children, son in law and several grand children. They were joined in 1832 (still proving) by Robert Gray who married their daughter Mary Elizabeth Ann Routledge in 1835 at St Paul's now St Paul's Cathedral in London, Ontario. Unknown to each other but they did come from neighbouring counties sort of (Routledge from Bewcastle, Cumberland and Gray from Holme on the Wolds, East Riding of Yorkshire). Their daughter Grace Gray (my first born Canadian ancestor)  married the next new arrival in my family line namely William Robert Pincombe from Molland, Devon who was one of the children of John Pincombe (Bishops Nympton, Devon) and Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe (Bratton near Minehead, Somerset). The only surviving child of Grace and William Robert was my grandfather John Routledge Pincombe and my second born Canadian ancestor. John married Ellen Rosina (Buller) Pincombe (Birmingham, Warwickshire) who had arrived in Canada in 1908 and their daughter Helen Louise (Pincombe) Blake was my third born Canadian ancestor. My father arrived in 1913 with his parents Samuel George Blake (Upper Clatford, Hampshire) and Edith Bessie (Taylor) Blake  (Kimpton, Hampshire, aka Ada Bessie Cotteril (Rawlings) Blake). So I am fourth generation Canadian on my mother's side and first generation Canadian on my father's side. Since I was born before 1 Jan 1947 I was initially a British Subject but grandfathered to Canadian Citizen as I was born here in Ontario, Canada and hence forever more a Canadian citizen no longer a British Subject. I did find that fascinating as a child. Probably many times a year as a child those emigration stories were talked about and all the names were familiar to me. 

But life was different for Edward's families in those days in the 1600s/1700s and a lot of time was just spent surviving I suspect so that the stories simply did not pass down through the families. Well educated many of Edward's ancestors were but they had to turn to the plow to grow food for their very existence and that was hard tiring work so that at the end of the day there just perhaps wasn't time to talk about life as it had been. The Dissenters paid a huge price for their dissent for sure but the gain was huge and my husband would have been celebrated by his ancestors I am sure as he made the kind of accomplishments made generations earlier by his ancestors in learning. His first ancestors arrived from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam now New York in the early 1600s so his first footpaths on this Western Hemisphere were his Dutch and French (Huguenot - it appears that dissenters attract each other) ancestors followed quickly by his German (Palatines and in a way they too were dissenters) and Swedish ancestors with his small number in actual fact of English ancestors (all dissenters initially) arriving between the 1630s and the 1660s primarily and to Massachusetts for the most part. Edward certainly had his own opinions and the genes were definitely there for that. 

A trip down memory lane does work very well to get the brain moving in the morning. It reminds me why I am doing all of this work - my mother wanted to write a book about her Pincombe family and my grandfather a book about his Blake family and so here I am in 2026 writing the books. My memory serves me well very often and both of these individuals (my mother and my paternal grandfather) repeated themselves many many times. In a family of seven children that is not surprising that repetition would be a pretty constant item on the menu. 

For myself I look back and I think why would they choose only Pincombe or Blake and of course it was the name that they were born with and so their thoughts centered on that surname. My mother also remembered the surnames of her grandparents and great grandparents but also included in that mass of data were family lore which I still investigate when paperwork becomes available that I have not seen but family lore does not always lead you to the correct place but then these stories were repeated to her and sometimes the repetition doesn't always follow exactly the same line of thought I have discovered. The intent though is interesting and I do like to not miss any possible leads when I am missing information. So I search those brain cells of mine for any tidbits that sit there dormant for sixty or seventy years or more and pull them out and look at them. I have a very lucky memory it appears as just little bits of conversation (tagged in a way by the manner in which my brain works where particular words cause a flood of memory). Yesterday I started writing once again in the Pincombe book and will continue with that today along with working on my lovely new file as I input the new information, if I do as I am being very selective. Mostly I am looking for anything that could upset the apple cart which is important for me to find that now rather than later!

Tea all drank and time to do the solitaire puzzles to really wake up that brain. The laneway is cleared and now the snow shovellers have come and gone and the path out is clear once again although I am not going anywhere. It is Saturday and I prefer not to be on the roads on the weekend. I stick to school times for my outings as there is very little traffic especially walking traffic!

 

 

Chromosome 5 completed

 Some difficulties in chromosome 5 as I did not separate out a few matches from the grandparent lines. Sometimes they were probably too small anyway other times just not enough information but I have kept them in the chart as I want to see how they correspond to other known matches. That will be something that AI will do for me once I have this chart ready to go. Could AI have made the chart? Perhaps in the future no idea on that although for privacy concerns in the databases I think that AI can not be just randomly used by people in a database although that is one item that these databases could offer in the future as part of their advanced searches such as Ancestry has now set up. Eventually I will use that because I can see some items that I wouldn't mind having more information as I pursue these early colonial Blake lines and as it turns out in I have also found that their are Buller/Taylor early colonial lines in America. I have the one known Blake line mentioned earlier (Sedgewicke-Blake in the mid 1600s in the Royal Colony of Massachusetts). The Buller/Taylor (and I do suspect Buller because like Blake they were out in the world in those early years) line appears to be a southern one in the Virginia Colony or the Carolina colony. 

I did start Chromosome 4 and there are  82 matches. This chromosome has eight known cousin matches several of them quite good lengths. Blake is heavily represented along with Knight, one singleton Rawlings and Dear back to my 3x great grandparents which was a good find. One match back to my 2x great grandparents Pincombe and Rew. The process through these chromosomes has been quite fascinating and I find myself contemplating doing Edward's grandparents with more confidence considering I do not have many of his closest relatives (sibling, sibling descendants, 1st cousins) but many many second, third and fourth cousins who were very kind to test for him in that decade before he passed away. I actually maintained all of the tests extracting the new matches as they came in since I was doing mine but he did all the work of actually looking at them and preparing charts (by hand) as he worked through them. I think he enjoyed that actually. I said from the beginning my genealogy would all be on the computer and for the most part it is but I still do have a couple of thousand fiche, books (not as many as he did - 2 bookcases (small)), DVDs that I purchased some on our trips to the British Isles and Europe. Records that I have purchased but I did scan all of them but did keep the originals if they were close family data. 

I also want to get back to the fourty binders of pictures and reduce them to just the family moments so that they are not lost over time. They are all scanned so in fact they would not be lost but it is nice to think that Edward's grandchildren will be able to enjoy the binders looking through them and perhaps his great grandchildren. His grandsons still miss him very much; he would have been so perfect with them but they are lucky to have a wonderful father who is also very good with them. As well they have a grandfather and a step grandfather that they both love very much and they were younger than Edward and will be with them for a much longer time which is wonderful. Creating the phasing of Edward's grandparents just seems to make it easier for me to do this downsizing. 

Moving on and must drink my tea and do my solitaire puzzles.  It is minus 26 degrees celsius in the great outdoors. The snow continues to be sucked dry by the cold air so not a good time to be wandering about outside here. The bare road is starting to show a sign that it is very cold out there. Apparently we are to get 10 to 20 centimetres of snow which will be light flaky stuff for sure in this cold if it actually falls.

Sunday today and Church very soon. I guess all the world excitement of the past week has distracted me from the actual day that I was living in.  

 

Beautiful white snow

 What a beautiful sight out of the window - everything covered in white snow. Another snow fall in December to protect the roots of the plants for the spring growth. It is a good thing; last year's December was cruel cold with no ground cover of snow to protect the roots. It showed in the spring. More snow is promised and the skis are waiting to be tried out once again. At 80 I will go cross country skiing once again. Amazing really to my mind but I am thinking of my two grandparents whom I knew so well in their declining years. But they were both very active until they suddenly were not; that is how life goes sometimes. 

A lovely walk yesterday with my cleats on my boots and I really enjoyed the fresh air. It was cold though, still minus 27 degrees celsius with the wind chill but I was dressed for it and just that little bit of my face that I covered with my enormous gloves that I used for clearing snow to warm it up as I walked. It was very invigorating and when I got home I made a cup of hot tea which was thoroughly enjoyed. Although I was not cold except perhaps my lungs were cooler than usual as they sucked in the cold air. The hot liquid quickly warmed the lungs up as it traveled down my esophagus to my stomach and it has always fascinated me when one is cold to feel the hot liquid traveling down one's throat and spreading its warmth through the body. 

I did complete all of the chromosomes but still doing some work on Chromosome 23 with regard to the crossover points since I do not have them from Living DNA. I have those points from Gedmatch and from 23 and Me and created a third set that looked at all the information in the nearly 100 matches I have in Chromosome 23. I am still reviewing that although there were no changes in the placement of the crossovers in this Chromosome. With one brother inheriting 100% Buller in his X chromosome from our mother who received it from her mother and is a mixture of  Cheatle (marriage of William Welch and Sarah (Cheatle) Welch) from her father's mother and Taylor/Roberts from her mother. The portion which is included in the entire first section of this chromosome which my brother inherited  and passed to my great grandmother Ann (Welch) Buller  is Cheatle and was inherited as well by myself and a number of cousins. Chunks inherited by other siblings is also part of this Cheatle bundle that has traveled through time from Sarah baptized in 1795 at Ashby de la Zouch to Canada now in the 2000s. The next section of that chromosome in my brother is labeled Taylor which I also share. The last section of this chromosome is shared by two siblings including my brother and appears to be Cheatle as well; we will see. I have inherited Pincombe referring solely to the four grandparent line at this point. There isn't any Pincombe though it is all Gray-Routledge as inherited by my maternal grandfather from his mother my first born Canadian whose parents were Robert Gray and Mary (Routledge) Gray. I do know that some of it is Routledge as I have matches with Routledge and both of Mary's grandparents were Routledge on her mother's side (Thomas Routledge married Elizabeth Routledge at Bewcastle 23 Jun 1785 coming to Canada in the late summer/early fall of 1818 and my first colonial emigrants (Mary was just 14 years of age at that time). Chromosome 23 will likely occupy me for a few days as I have always meant to have a good look at the matches. It does seem like a misnomer to label sections as Pincombe as no Pincombe Chromosome 23 is inherited by my siblings or myself since my maternal grandfather does not inherit an X chromosome from his father. However my maternal grandfather did have a surviving half sister who would have inherited Pincombe from her father (my great grandfather) but the X chromosome would be passed from Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe to her son William Robert Pincombe (my great grandfather) and hence also not Pincombe. Fascinating to learn all of this and the learning continues - I have always had a fascination with learning. The other 22 chromosomes though are full of Pincombe DNA passed from my mother (received from her father) to all of us. 

Slept in today; all of that fresh air but everything is done now that needed to be done to prepare for winter which is very much upon us. 

It was good to see our Prime Minister and the President of the United States on good terms at the FIFA event. Our countries have been best friends for over 200 years and some snowbirds have had enough of the cold and will travel, they say, to the southern United States to enjoy the heat once again. It will take a while to get the numbers up to where they were I suspect but gradually we are finding our feet with unemployment now at just 6.5% coming down from 7.1% a couple of months ago. The GDP has also come up but it will take time to rework our trade around the world for sure. 

Time to make tea. 

Twenty chromosomes completed now for the re-phasing of my grandparents

 Just three chromosomes to go and I will have completed this project of re-phasing my grandparents. The changes were except for one chromosome and just one side of it were minimal just a little adjustment here and there to compliment all the testing centres. One small blip discovered on Chromosome 7 in one length only and I will check that out again one of these days; mostly waiting for a match in that area for that one individual. 

The phasing of my great grandparents will begin and lots of data for that especially for Blake, Knight, Pincombe, Rew, Buller and Taylor. There is a fair amount for Rawlings and the last one I still have to be sure I am not seeing the matches of my earlier marriages in the Rawlings line with Cotterill/Cotterell (spelling varies). I did trace the two lines of interest back to a common parent with my Rawlings line having married into the Cotterell line in the mid 1700s and again in the 1800s. A brother of this early Cotterell was the ancestor of the line at Kimpton where my great grandmother was working. The priest recording the surname as one of the middle names of my Grandmother did point in this direction and the matches are coming with the companies suggesting a possible connection. I would say that in general I will look at the data and see where it leads me for sure although in my mind is a young girl and woman who loved her family and really it was never mentioned as far as I know until I was helping to put together the family tree for my parent's 60th wedding anniversary and couldn't find her birth registration or baptism. At this time it continued not being mentioned but the answer was soon found in the paperwork and about 100 British pounds later and a number of documents I had the answer. Myself I loved this grandmother that I never knew and really it does not matter to me; I love her anyway just because she sounds like a lovely grandmother to have had but missed because she died when she was 64 five years before I was born. But my grandpa said she loved the two grandchildren that she knew and that is wonderful that she got to know two of us. The young man of interest in the projected position of being my great grandfather died at just 54 years of age and his cause of death was mentioned somewhere and I made note of it because I have made a medical history of the family. We were blessed with really good genes actually but an inadequate exercise routine life style has taken its toll in the past and one hopes that it stays in the past. They say the youth of today is much more inclined to a good life style and that is excellent news actually. Other than arthritis which both of our parents had and the two grandparents I knew meant that perhaps we would all have arthritis. My answer is to run and walk a lot. It does help. Staying out of the frigid is helpful as well but the walking is definitely good for an individual I think with arthritis. 

Back to the writing of the books to a certain extent now and I did spend a bit of time extracting any new matches but I shall be rather picky these days and just select matches that give me extra and new information.  The days of collecting vast amounts are in the past I believe. I will get my entire genome done once it is set up and I already have a kit that I want to buy but it waits for that. Other than that the DNA is just going to compliment the books where it is valuable. There are some sections of Blake that have passed down through the centuries and I am always alert for Americans with deep Colonial ancestry who match but the matches are so far in the past but they are large and in what is generally referred to as a common area or pile-up area in the chromosomes. I may get into tiny studies on that we will see. 

I have missed doing the Pincombe Newsletter and the H11 Newsletter and will get that done in the next couple of days. All my concentration was into those matches for sure. I learned quite a bit in tiny ways as the changes were, surprisingly except for one chromosome where I knew there were problems and just on the one length, very minimal which I hoped for but was prepared to be corrected if changes emerged. Collecting over 2000 matches during the past decade plus did pay off for sure in terms of a good phasing of our grandparents. 

Today the car goes in for its snow tires and I take it in soon. The radials are good tires and until 2012 we never owned snow tires. I shall be very cautious and the walk home will be lovely. Although it is pretty cold but I will be dressed for it. I had the flu and couldn't take it in two weeks ago I was too sick but someone else desperate for their snow tires would have gotten that appointment so worked out for everybody. I started it yesterday and ran it for about five minutes until is was part way warmed up so hopefully at minus 20 it is going to do the same today. I also have to pump the tire probably we will see if the light goes on. 

Tea drank and solitaire puzzles to do and then the day of research (and taking the car in) begins.  Still avoiding the news in terms of my thinking about it a great deal. We need to become tariff proof and that is the aim. I still think that we need to give some space to the car companies that are afflicted by tariff to do what they have suggested they will do - Canada is a huge market in terms of car buying and I suspect no company really wants to lose it and will try to work around the difficulties that exist and might just be solved when CUSMA comes up for renewal - really everything is a bargaining point. We have a great deal to offer for sure but we must be a more independent country but still every bit of best friend and neighbour to the United States. One cannot share the huge border that we do and be any other than best friends. We have a lot to offer each other for sure (during any cold spell any one in Canada does think about the warmth of the Florida beaches or so many other warm places in the United States). We can outlive the cold but the warmth is nice on occasion! Our two hundred plus year friendship has been something that God wanted to see between His people; I am very sure of that. They are a larger country and like a big brother really but big brothers want to see us be as successful as they are in order to have this continuous land mass stable and efficient and prosperous and best friends. 

"Elbows up" and on our way but the route is heavy going

 One thing I am sure about any one who can live in Canada through the winters is up to the job of "Elbows Up" to get the jobs done here in Canada to bring our country to its glory as a producing nation but in a kindly way that we have learned from the First Nations. The land is our wealth and our security and our life and we must protect it as much as one can but it will give up its goodness to support the people of the land. We just have to find the best ways to do that and those best ways must fit into a business plan. I note that Enbridge is supporting the pipeline from Edmonton to Houston, Texas which is a straight through flow of crude to the south and allows for a healthy increase in that shipment. Although I would love to see an eastern pipeline to Ontario and the East it is  highly likely that Ontario would be the only province that had an actual pipeline built in the east and that the St Lawrence Seaway would have to be the conduit for any going further east. Does Ontario use enough crude to justify a pipeline? That becomes the great question although shipments to Quebec for their usage (which is also significant) are possible by road and by the seaway. Probably those in the know are putting those numbers together to determine if re-establishing our refineries to save the 3x the cost of buying it back is a good business case. 

The Nickle mine I find to be such a good idea and so long in the  making - I believe it dates back to the early 2000s although I am not that knowledgeable. Governments have just ignored Northern Ontario and the wealth there for her people is huge in terms of jobs and actual second job creation effects by the mine itself. Once one mine is effectively created under this new attitude then others will follow in their season because the support will be there. In a way that compliments Northern Ontario creating jobs and the consequential offshoots of better educational facilities (more funding for them), housing and all sorts of good things for the people. 

Monday is coming and it is Budget Day. An election would cost a fortune and I hope that is on everyone's mind as the House sits in debate and then votes. There is no value in an election at this time; criticism without constructive plans is useless. We can not live in the past; the past has changed very radically in just this short time. One doesn't fight tariff - how one country does their business should not be allowed to put us into a crisis ever again. Time to come to our greatness as a producer. We already lived through a past Conservative government whose answer to a downturn was panic and balance the budget no matter what. We do not need to experience that again. The debt level at the end of the 1800s in Canada was huge when we built the railway and we survived and we will again. I prefer careful cautious finance but with opportunity underwriting it I can loosen up those thoughts and this is the time; it is Canada's time to blossom. It is a must; our youth need jobs that uses their skill sets or if they do not have the specific ones then they can retrain and quickly. Their minds are fast and alert. Canada is an extremely wealthy country both in natural products and in the ability of all her people. Yes it will be hard; young families may have to live with their parents for a longer time but that is life and for children exciting and wonderful. They have been doing it in Europe for centuries! My children were welcomed to stay as long as they wanted and we were blessed to have them stay as long as they did including all sorts of wonderful extras that made our life much richer. Edward certainly took advantage of that as we traveled so extensively when our children were living with us long into their adulthood. Life moved very fast in those days when I first retired as there were so many places he wanted to go.  

Worked on Chromosome 4 and probably one third of the way through the matches. Thus far eight crossover points are proven and eleven to go. This chromosome has fewer matches and they tend to be clumped over particular lengths particularly Pincombe (both older and more recent). It always give me pause to think about the breaking up of these lengths into Pincombe, Gray, Rew, Rowcliffe, Charly, Manning, Vicary and Blackmoore. With the Living DNA data I am probably finding lengths that reach much further back into the past to make their connection but only rarely as far back as Blackmoore and Vicary (6x and 7x great grandparents).  Occasionally I do see autosomal back that far but it is rare. They could be especially back to Manning and Charly. When I see Australia and New Zealand in the country of location then I know that Manning and Charly are a possibility for them. In the United States it is more likely Pincombe/Rowcliffe but also Pincombe/Charly. But these small glimpses on occasion of a match that is definitely Pincombe related the possibility of Vicary and Blackmoore is there. Thus far I would say more than 50% of the matches have been Pincombe (I haven't tallied it). 

This morning at just past 5 the sky was clear and the moon now in slipper mode accompanied by Venus shining brightly high in the sky.  What a gorgeous sight and it always reminds me of the early morning when Edward and I were camping years and years ago in the north waking up to the beauty of the morning sky. I was just in my early twenties and Edward in his mid twenties and time was ahead of us and we grabbed hold of it and ran with it all over the northern province of Ontario enjoying the goodness of the land and seeing so much in our cedar strip canoe. 

Time to get some work done. Tea drank and solitaire puzzles to do. First breakfast eaten a while ago now and starting to feel hungry for the second breakfast. One pound up and three to go. For me it is more of a need to eat as I get hungry rather than a fascination with eating.  

The Hostages are free after two years plus

 Praise be to God and thank you to President Trump for his tireless work on helping to free the last living hostages held in Gaza and now the next step of bringing peace to the Middle East. Prime Minister Carney has flown to Egypt to be part of the discussion and thank you to him for that. It is important that so many world leaders are involved in this pathway to peace in the Middle East. 

A wonderful Thanksgiving Service at Church, a beautiful sermon and today is official secular Thanksgiving. When I was a child this was one of the big festivals in my childhood both at Church on Sunday and at home and because my father owned his own business and the odds were he would be working Monday we celebrated on Sunday as well. When I was very young and my great aunts and uncles were still alive along with my grandparents we would be so many people in my house celebrating Thanksgiving. My favourite part was always the sausage that stuffed the small cavity in the turkey. I loved sausage, cranberry sauce, baked potatoes, cabbage salad, squash and peas (I think there may have been corn as well but I am not fond of corn). I loved having all the people around me that I knew; it was very special but that is part of a big family for sure. Life moves on though and styles change and people are busy and families shrink. I made my perfect Chicken Stew yesterday and it was lovely and I enjoyed it very much. I was chatting with my daughter whilst I was preparing it as we do Yoga together using The Fitness Coach of the WII Sunday afternoons and it is all online. I do love online and one feels close to one's kin. My other daughter was working in the ER and that was maybe busy; I do not know. I admire her very much for the work she does especially the ER - it is hard work and very fast moving probably on occasion I am not there but generally it is very busy. People do not have family doctors like they used to and they end up in the ERs needing emergency medical care. 

Continued working on Chromosome 15 and decided to label the lengths of chromosome that were known to me as this is one chromosome that lacks two of the grandparents - Pincombe and Rawlings. I wrote an email to someone I wrote to about ten years ago now on Ancestry when our match first appeared (actually he wrote to me first). I think he matches on the Rew-Siderfin line and he thought perhaps it was that the Rew family were actually Rowe or vice versa but I have traced Rew back several generations and that was not the case but my 2x great grandmother was a twin and her sister had married John Griffith and I noticed the name Thomas Griffith in this person's table (one of their sons was Thomas Griffith). The match taken into Gedmatch was visible but matches with this level tended to be larger perhaps twice the size and he was sure of his Griffith line but I thought I would try one more time to see if he had resolved it as a Rew-Siderfin line would satisfy the Pincombe grandparent and it was not a bad size plus everyone but me matched it (at the moment that is the only match in that particular length - unusual for the thousands of matches that I have). We will see. This is a chromosome where I have at least 50 matches in the Buller line where I am pretty much the only one and they are very large (40 cM or more) - no idea who they are. There are just a few Rawlings matches but Living DNA has given me more and so I will be looking at them when I return to working on Chromosome 15. I suspect the layout is just fine but I want to verify it. Now that I am into the bigger chromosomes this idea of labeling the lengths will be helpful I rather think as I verify new matches. 

Today is basement cleaning day and I will soon start the robot vacuuming the rugs. I also want to do one hour in the garden as I did not do that yesterday. No work on the photo albums and I do plan on doing some of that this afternoon just to get myself back into that routine as well. The day will fly by unfortunately but this downsizing has to occur and needs to occur without a rushed timeline so as to preserve items that meant a great deal to Edward in terms of his children and grandchildren. I remember when our second daughter was a newborn and I looked at her face and thought how much like her Dad's pictures she looked from her very first days. As I look at both of my children they resemble their father's side far more than me; where was I but I was there carrying them within me and at their birth and sometimes I see little things that remind me of my family.  

Funny that I had no actual interest in genealogy up to 2003 - I loved to hear my grandparents and parents talk about their ancestors but in terms of putting on paper I had no interest and now my days are full of that and nothing else really. Mind you my days were pretty full of such ancestral endeavours from the early days of knowing Edward as he wondered so much about his Kipp family a lot of the time actually when he was not busy studying or working. It consumed him; he was so interested. The next Newsletter is H11 and I will begin to think about the yearly Kipp Newsletter as I just didn't have enough to put into one every quarter. I could have repeated all of his comments but they are in his blog which is on the website that he created. There they are in his own words and I know very little about the Kipp families in the present and even near past. More information further back as I looked up many items for him as we went to the repositories. He loved learning all of that but for him finding his yDNA led him back to Hendrick Hendricksen Kip of New Amsterdam/New York and then back to Amsterdam, The Netherlands was a high point in all of that for sure - it was fitting as a Scientist (PhD Chemistry) that he would be using the knowledge of science to pursue his family! When he decided to give a talk on DNA to the OGS group and he persuaded me to be part of that; I loved the way that he so enjoyed sharing his great find. Edward discovered a renewed great love for teaching with the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society (now Ontario Ancestors) and the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada (Ottawa Branch and St Lawrence Branch) although his Loyalist ancestors ended up being few and his Patriot many along with Planters in what is now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the 1750s I believe would need to look that up. 

Edward (along with others) kept trying to get me to speak and I did sometimes but I really prefer my very quiet life and always have. I did do some volunteer (sometimes volunteered!) work but mostly for my children's groups or I helped at school one day a week for many years while my children were there or just something Edward really wanted me to do like volunteer Secretary for his United Church and  volunteer Treasurer for Camp Bitobi for a few years and such. I was also part of the area World Day of Prayer services which I very much enjoyed - in general the services were somewhere else but you only really hold so many World Day of Prayer services in a big city area. So a quiet life and once my health was sufficiently recovered and it takes a long time to recover from a breakdown (referred to as a Mental Illness by some amazingly who seemed to know more about my health than I did! but I look at it and I never actually thought that until I took the course on setting up Encounter Groups at St Paul University and understood better where I had been, what I had been through and how I recovered). I would say that I did not know very much about Mental Health issues and just didn't think I was that severely ill but it is surprising actually what constitutes a mental health issue. 

I was working at home for about a dozen plus years from the time we moved here starting a couple of years after our arrival (I had asked not long after we first arrived as it was recommended to me by the person who interviewed Edward for the job at NRC; they employed proofreaders who worked at home) whilst  looking after our little one as a proofreader and copyeditor for local printers principally. Although I did not start out with working for private printers, I was working for the Scientific Journals published/managed by the National Research Council but my job was cut by then Prime Minister Mulroney but I quickly found the job with the printers. 

Then I returned to work outside the home first at the Medical School in 1994 where I once again toyed with the idea of doing my Masters for my boss at the time (I had started to proceed with doing my masters when I was proofreading at NRC actually but I became pregnant with our second child (a wonderful surprise but at 36 (I was 28 when my first child was born) it was a challenge and I did not move ahead with doing my Masters as I felt she needed me)). 

I moved then from the Medical School to working at the General Hospital in 1996 which merged with all the hospitals in Ottawa except Montfort as The Ottawa Hospital with several campuses and over time I worked at all of the main campuses (Civic, General and Riverside), then a year plus at Health Canada. Once I left the area in terms of working at home I really disappeared in 1994; I just lived here and kept to myself and helped my children whenever they asked (I actually kept the score for my youngest daughter's baseball team, I  never missed a game rushing home in time for a quick supper)  and helped or went with Edward whenever where ever he asked - that was my life and I much preferred it. We lived a very quiet family life in a house that I am still in 47 years later although Edward did think about moving and he and the girls went looking at singles but the lots were too small for his garden and the bedrooms were so tiny for the girls. Here we remained for most of our life in Ottawa (just a couple of years in the south end before moving here much closer to NRC where Edward worked and the French Immersion schools were much closer to our house eliminating a long bus ride for a five year old with a chronic condition (asthma)). 

Tea is cooling, must drink it and do my solitaire puzzles. I certainly am verbose today; I guess it is the  holiday mood as one remembers past Thanksgivings and past times together as a family. 

 

Cleaning completed and back to the matches

Cleaning easily accomplished yesterday morning and I was back to the matches in the afternoon.  I have completed the 4th page of 50 and the next four pages will be a pick and choose beginning with 1 segment and working up likely not collecting anything beyond 2 segments but will check the 3s as there may be some plus it can be a correction point with the last sibling results worked in where I could not choose one of the four grandparents but had two (and that has proven to be the case as the morning is passing). Then just the last sibling to do completely. I did not work on the phasing charts yet as I am still working out the crossover points and that will take a bit of time - no rush. I already have two sets of crossover points that are pretty much the same (Gedmatch and 23 and Me). Hoping that 23 and Me goes back to providing the DNA details and time will tell when this new company takes it on. I realize that their aim will be research but I have no objection to that - DNA will rule medicine in the years to come. Our lives are already changing because we now know if we need to avoid some things because our genetic complement doesn't allow for trangressions into things like smoking and drinking, excess eating etc. That will control our lives in the future for sure as we become a more disciplined people. Actually that is one of the things I like about Prime Minister Carney - he is a very disciplined person. I actually did vote for the Conservatives as I knew I would but the Conservatives need to re-find their progressive conservative roots and not get lost in social conservatism (it is a losing side of conservatism and needs to be put aside in favour of good management of the government particularly finances and support of the military). Following the words of Jesus in my case and other religions have other beliefs is the important part of our moving forward in time in a productive way that brings humanity forward and gives us peace. 

I am thinking about the Blake Newsletter and not a lot to write but will note that there are not as many Blake tested in the Living DNA as I anticipated (my 2x great grandparents John Blake and Ann Farmer had 54 grandchildren and hundreds of great grandchildren and a great many remained in England (but perhaps not but I am not seeing them particularly in the United States or in other parts of the Commonwealth)). However, the losses in the Blake family during both World Wars was large - they did live in London and Hampshire (both areas bombed heavily during the war). On the other hand the number of Pincombe descendants in England is very large but George Pincombe's children did stay in the London/Surrey area, Philip's children also stayed in the United Kingdom and Richard does not appear to have had children. That covers the three sets of descendants of the children of Robert Pincombe and Elizabeth Rowcliffe who remained in England. Robert (third son of William Pincombe and Mary Charly) had five siblings and Thomas (4th son) remained in England and the preponderance of Pincombe testers does probably indicate some of his descendants (Thomas Pincombe married Philippia Williams 8 Aug 1803 at Winsford Somerset and they baptized 12 children of whom all but one appeared to have survived to adulthood). My Pincombe family here tended to correspond with the Rew side of the family (John Pincombe married Elizabeth Rew (my 2x great grandparents)) for the most part although they did go back to Devon at least once to bring Devon Reds to Canada. In general (except for my matches) my siblings had twice as many Pincombe matches as any other (mine were about equal for the four lines (Blake, Rawlings, Pincombe, Buller)) which did surprise me. I haven't made any attempt to link them back to their ancestral line and will not. The book will only come up to the census for the most part (likely the 1851 since it had more information). So it has been interesting doing the matches finally with the Living DNA results. Excellent setup for doing the work that I am doing extracting the matches for five siblings. I just never took it on before because I knew I had endogamy in three lines overall with the time period for the close cousin marriages being two hundred years ago now but you can see the effect into this generation where there appears to be very long lengths of Knight passed but they actually represent (bits of Knight, Butt, Arnold and Ellis). In the case of the Routledge this cousin marriage goes back to the 3x great grandparents so looking at the marriage of Thomas Routledge and Elizabeth Routledge 1785 in Bewcastle Cumberland. The Routledge family appears to have been in this area back into the 1400s having quickly departed the Highlands of Scotland about this time period (long story and have written about it before). My Routledge were of the Oakshaw family and there was a tendency in this family to marry cousins (to keep the properties intact generation after generation). The Blake endogamy goes back into the 1500s and 1600s so is less apparent but the matches for Blake in the United States are likely part of that endogamy as one doesn't generally see a match that is likely 8th generation difference (these matches tend to look like early colonial on their part in the Ancestry database) but the passage of particular chunks of chromosome does appear to indicate this Blake endogamy (looking at 23 and Me (where the results are (were!) visible) for Americans and especially when they had a tree to accompany their results)). 

So another busy day in genealogy land where I appear to have decamped for the remainder of my time and will choose to remain there as I attempt to accomplish what my Blake grandfather wanted and what my mother wanted for her Pincombe family. It is a slow process but a rather fascinating one actually. Time is a gift and one must use it wisely to carry on the thoughts of a family into the future (my parents had seven children, nine grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren thus far and none of them carry the Blake or the Pincombe surname). This material would be lost and I know it meant a lot to my mother for the Pincombe material not to be lost that she had in her possession and the same for my grandfather as he felt the loss of England for us most deeply and I realize now that as that young child he kept telling me all that information in different ways every day that I spent with him (days that I treasured all of my life as I loved him very dearly as a child) so that at some point in my life it would come to the forefront (as it has). It is wonderful to put to paper some of these memories that he had. 

Breakfast is next, honey lemon tea drank and the solitaire puzzles completed.  

Minus 10 degrees celsius, the polar vortex is descending once again

 Another cold crisp morning at minus 10 degrees celsius but feels like minus 20 degrees apparently. The skies are clear; great telescope weather if you do not mind the cold! Dawn is breaking now though. 

Yesterday I actually managed to get in a couple of hours of work. I continued with my Ancestry DNA matches getting them ordered and into my database for them. I use these matches differently from the other testing companies since I do not have any data other than the number of lengths and the total knowing that TIMBER has been used on the results to remove any parts of the length that are purely because of ethnicity in a particular group (in my case British Isles). It can have a huge impact for some - one of my known to me fourth cousins is reduced by 50% in total actual match and I have a number of other matches that show that to me as well. But the time tested trees in ancestry are so very handy to have along with the matching data that I am able to easily group many of these matches into specific grandparent/great-grandparent lines and even further back as I have a good sized Siderfin group and that was my 3x great grandmother Elizabeth Siderfin marrying John Rew and their daughter Elizabeth marrying John Pincombe, then their son William Robert Pincombe marrying Grace Gray and their son John Routledge Pincombe marrying Ellen Rosina Buller and the parents of my mother Helen Louise Pincombe. For all of these lines I do have a distinct matching group within Ancestry and they do make this easier with the Thru Lines now although I still maintain my own database because I have four siblings tested at Ancestry. 

No work on the books but I am thinking about them once again as the dogs fit into my schedule rather than my fitting into their schedule. They are content though but still look at the front door wondering when their family will come through it. Soon enough for sure. But it is a long time for the baby; she is starting to transfer to me just a little. Her thick curly hair means that I have to spend a lot of extra time drying her so that I do not have water all over my house. The closeness is bringing her closer to me than the older dog which doesn't get as wet with her straight coat and long legs keeping her up out of the snow more. But she is also a very loving dog and misses her family. They are very compliant now and bedtime is really easy and I only heard from the little one once at 4:00 a.m.

So today a few chores, it is collection day and it is paper this week so must get that out to the street. I only have two packages of recycled material from the food preparation so will wait until next week to put that out. I freeze it to make that easy to handle. 

Settled back into this routine of tariff. It is fraying tempers just a little but we will always be friends with the United States. You cannot have such a huge border and not be friends. Plus we are the same kind of people both the First Peoples who live on both sides of the border and the colonials. Although a lot of people other than Northern European/British Isles have come to this continent over the last four centuries the grouping of Northern European/British Isles continues to dominate that portion. In Canada the descendants of the early French Canadians continue to be the largest ethnic group (I think) mostly because they have moved west and east in Canada where some no longer speak French but I would still call them French Canadians and many of them have refound their French heritage because of bilingualism here. Although not official in other than a few provinces, there are French Canadian areas in many many of the provinces. For me with my English heritage we have very much disappeared into the Caucasian group where few know which aspects of life in Canada are actually British Isles English hence when BIFHSGO (British Isles Family History Society of  Greater Ottawa) was established as a genealogy/friendship group back in the mid 1990s I became a member (as did Edward but it was my initiative although at that time the idea that I would spend eight hours a day on genealogical endeavours was certainly not in my wavelength and I definitely continued to avoid it as much as possible until I didn't in 2003 when my cousin George DeKay dragged me into the business of all of that with his request for a Profile for my Pincombe family). I joined because it contained that element of England that I still clung to with memories of particularly my Grandfather who loved his home country but was also a proud Canadian (my grandmother also a proud Canadian had a different perspective look at her home country (probably because her parents died when she was young)). 

I feel privileged to live in Canada at this time as the First Peoples continue to be more a part of the governance of this great land that they have roamed for many thousands of years (13,000 at the latest sort of discussion in this area) but any earlier signs of their presence were obliterated by the Ice Age and the Younger Dryas periods of history on this part of the continent with the ice sheets extending down into the United States. Our Governor General belongs to the Inuit Peoples - I am really happy that she was willing to take that position in our governance and she has done an excellent job. That a group of First Nations ancestors crossed the Bering Strait 13,000+ years ago though seems to be a solid historical item. But the latest discoveries in South America show the presence of First Nations ancestors likely over 100,000 years ago from the South Pacific making that long journey across the Pacific which is amazing and it is their descendants who moved north into Central America and Mexico and the Southern United States but it is only limited by the inability to find information prior to the Ice Age and the Younger Dryas periods which obliterated anything that might have told us differently. Definitely the peoples of the First Nations have the knowledge of the past that we do not. Living with my grandfather certainly told me that as he talked about the various structures from his childhood living in Upper Clatford just across the London Road from Andover the much larger city near him. Stonehenge was known to him as a child and also he spent time in the New Forest area where his older sister lived with his Knight grandparents first at Turnworth (near Blandford Forum) Dorset and later in the New Forest Area. He loved the smell of the Sea he used to say as he spent some time near the English Channel (interestingly it is called the English Channel in England but in France it is called The Channel). Bodies of water can have different names for different peoples. Although, for sure, it is easier on the maps to have a standard naming perhaps but this is the modern age and as everything becomes more and more electronic we can just tap the name and see what other names have belonged to that spot in time. Turtle Island for one - the great continent on which we all live here in North America. 

So today I will complete my task on the Ancestry matches into my database. I hope to look at all the new matches and get them ordered into their database and then I can spend some time on the task of Phasing my grandparents and great-grandparents. The full task was last completed in 2019 for my grandparents as I never finished my project started in 2022 - life just became too busy with the Siderfin Books. I was doing it every year until then having first started that in 2014. 

I may take a peak at the Blake book and the work on the le Blak family of Rouen Normandy and the documents which I have now read but need to actually finish their transcription. We will see how the day goes.

 

 

And how to avoid the doorbell ringing

Learned something new today; with my car in the garage people do not come up and ring the doorbell so often. I did answer it once in the last couple of months when the students were collecting cans of food for the poor (they left a note to say when they would be coming). But mostly I do ignore it but with the car in the garage I do not think it has rung even once since I put it in there. However once the snow comes and the company is clearing it with each snowfall then the doorbell rings once again as then you can tell that someone is there.

Yesterday cleaning all accomplished and about six or seven pages done on the Siderfin book. I also worked on my file for the autosomal DNA chapter. I was right there are a number of good matches - third cousin matches with the descendants of my 2x greatgrandmother's sister as they were twins and fourth cousin matches with the descendants of my 3x great grandmother Elizabeth Siderfin's siblings. There are a number of them less than 20 cM but greater than 12 cM l but I want to have a good look at them so have built this excel file using the 23 and Me results as there are actually 115 Pincombe matches in total and about 80% of them are over 20 cM. I have pulled out the Pincombe-Gray-Routledge as that is my maternal grandfather's mother's line so what is left is his father's line and his mother was a Rew and her mother a Siderfin. There are 100 that are unknown or Rew so must look at all of them and have done that for one sibling so now I can go in and put the other three siblings in (only four of us tested at 23 and Me) and eliminate the ones that are too small (generally I choose 20 cM or greater but if I actually know the person then I might leave them in the Chart. Moving forward with that. I could also start working on the Appendices for a little variety and will think about that but there are about 25 pages left in the 12th Generation to work on for footnoting and making sure I have all of my cousin's material in on Thomas (brother to my Elizabeth Siderfin (3x great grandmother)),. With a bit of luck I will finish that on Wednesday or Thursday and then can start the proofreading and indexing. I still have to decide if I will index the places and I actually think not but will stick with just a name index at the moment and decide later. 

Up early today, had a nightmare which I haven't had for quite a while. But it is very restful to think about being in God's world and the day begins. My large cleaning day today and will have an early start unless I fall asleep for a nap after breakfast which will be soon as I am definitely hungry. Always wake up hungry but that is because I eat a light dinner, my meals grow progressively smaller as the day passes. I do enjoy a good sized breakfast for sure. 

Good progress on the book yesterday for sure. Hopefully the end of the 12th generation by Wednesday or Thursday. The DNA chapter is forming and it will be relatively short. The footnoting of the Appendices can happen in tandem with the DNA chapter. Then onto proofreading and indexing. The end is in sight for sure. 

But already I am thinking about the Pincombe and Blake books and I will do them simultaneously. That is actually a good idea and will make my conversations with my daughters less boring perhaps as I will have two different items to discuss. Although I do not think they are very interested in genealogy although time will tell. My oldest daughter did ask me to keep all of her Dad's material and she will work on it (it is mostly scanned to make it much easier to search and all that) when she retires which is amazingly not that far away although she would like to still do some work when she comes back but would have retired from her present position although it is still quite a while before then. My youngest daughter will be working for quite a while yet I am sure. She is very very busy in her practice and her work in the hospital. Life for a country doctor can be really busy as there are not enough of them and thousands of people without doctors as well who come to emergency at the hospital. So a very busy time for sure. 

I think Camomile Tea first and then breakfast.

Accomplishment on the Siderfin book

Gradually after a busy period I am back to the Siderfin book. Working on the Rew family and it is my own and I have records that were purely part of the family records and not online but trying to fit them into online records was not successful totally so I am doing a combo of what I have with what I can find. That does slow me down a little but the extra details are helpful I think. This story of what is basically a fairly old British family (can be traced back to Somerset in the 1200s although the period between 1200s and 1500s is not fully known but that is the case for many families). This time of the Black Death Plagues the 1300s/1400s leaves many families without adequate notation of the generations that flowed through the time period. England is said to have lost as much as three quarters of its population during the Black Death Plagues and their population did not fully recover until the early 1800s. It was a sad time with entire villages disappearing from the map with all inhabitants lost to the plague. Usually I am not looking quite so far back but now working on family books the records that do exist also exist in this time frame. 

Today is the DNA group meeting and I shall certainly try to attend. I am remembering to use Alexa to remind me of these activities after missing the Conference. They are quite interesting although my presence may scarcely be noted and I do not mind; I enjoy being on the sidelines looking in. I have not attended meetings to any degree in the last five years and it is hard to believe that 2018 is so long ago now. As we come out of the watershed moment that COVID-19 created we have lived through a period that only some of our ancestors experienced in their lifetimes. A period when the world seemed to come to a halt; regroup and restart itself. Looking at historical watersheds these are often turbulent periods in history or periods of great migration when one emerges from a watershed event and only time will tell as it is in the recording of the history of the time that we learn about the effects even if we do live them. They are sometimes so slow we do not notice or so heinous we get swallowed up in the events that follow. Having the United Nations should be a grounding organization and they are certainly trying to be that. They are now stepping back and letting the events flow and trying to assist where they can. I think that is perhaps their role because we do not know the ending. But one does pray that good sense and protection for the weak will prevail and not barbarism. 

The reality exists though that just as Ukraine can not stop fighting or they will disappear we have Israel engaged in the same sort of survival - one notes that Israel continues to be bombed both from the North and the South by two barbaric enemies who have sworn to annihilate them. Both countries must rely on their sources of information to aid them. We, as a result, in the west as the barbarians refer to us have judged the cause of both Ukraine and Israel worthy. Those who oppose Ukraine and Israel will have to either back down or suffer the consequences of their barbaric attacks which both Ukraine and Israel have suffered all because of the psychopathic Nazi element of destruction within the barbarians who oppose their very existence. Memories are long enough to recall the brutality that Ukraine has suffered as well as Israel. One ignores such memories to their peril. The land belongs to Ukraine on the one hand and to Israel on the other hand; their ancient heritages on their lands are proven. The world is tired of ignorant barbaric wars. Release the hostages. Hostage taking is barbaric.

The day is moving onward and I have much to do before the DNA meeting. 

Missed the BIFHSGO Conference!

I kept meaning to write the Conference on the Calendar because I have been so very busy writing this last year but did manage to miss it after all; it was last weekend. However I did make great progress on the book which I hope to publish towards the end of the year. Went in and renewed my membership at BIFHSGO early this morning as I had also forgotten to do that. I have been a member since this Society was created and long before I had any interest in one-name studies; my mother was still alive and very much interested in pursuing her Pincombe family. But somehow the idea of a British Society appealed to me way back then although Edward was really keen on being there as he had begun to find his Dissenters by that time and they did turn out to be a fascinating lot. Pretty much every British  ancestor that he had that came to the colonies in the 1620s-1630s was a Dissenter! The membership renewal is usually on the Conference registration but did not see it;  not surprising my attention is riveted to the Siderfin book at the moment. I will be happy to complete the Siderfin book and move on to the Pincombe book for sure. I never contemplated revising James Sanders book nor having it morph into a freestanding book on its own although also revising James Sander's book. But there it is; life is always a surprise for sure. It is nice to support the Conference though even if I didn't actually attend!

Today cleaning the other two floors and I consider that a must so that I do not have to do a whole lot of cleaning all at once at my age of 78 years. It is working well and the cleaning progresses in the same fashion week after week. The days are very organized but that is my nature to have organization if one can. It does keep the mind fit I think. Then there is all the exercise and that hopefully keeps me walking a good straight line. 

Yesterday I worked through the Bunt family (Joanna Rew married Petherick Bunt and their five children were difficult to locate and very little information but recorded none the less). Moving on to her siblings today and for this work I have done most of the lines because that is my line - Elizabeth Siderfin married John Rew and are my 3x great grandparents with Elizabeth Rew marrying John Pincombe. So today continuing with Elizabeth Siderfin's oldest and only surviving brother Thomas. Elizabeth must have been the second born of a set of twins as her father mentioned her last in his will.  It is a fascinating family actually with most of them remaining in England still and I have corresponded with every line in that family. They did keep in touch - Elizabeth here and her siblings in England until my great grandfather William Robert Pincombe passed away in 1918 (70 years after Elizabeth came to Canada with her husband and family). But amazingly even with the paperwork that still existed I never did find the surname Siderfin in any of that. 

Prayers for Israel and all the Jewish people under threat around the world, Prayers for Ukraine, Prayers for the Palestinian people and that they may soon have their own state.

Ian White's Psalms playing early this  morning. What a lovely day; snow on the ground once again. Winter is finally starting to show itself.

Cleaning accomplished for the first day; second day of cleaning today

 Cleaning days at the beginning of the week works well for me. I have a break from the computer which is always good for the eyes and gives me time to think about the work that I have been doing. It has always been a problem for me that I could not find the abstract/will of Thomasin Siderfin. Was it something that his mother had; one wonders. As we move back in time in James Sanders family his mother was Elizabeth (Siderfin) Sanders and like my Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe both were born in the West Somerset area - Elizabeth (Siderfin) Sanders was born in Watchet which is down the coast from Minehead and cross country to the east of Timberscombe (about 5 miles to the east of Dunster). My Siderfin ancestor (mother of Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe) was born at Selworthy (1759)  but that was fifty eight years earlier than Elizabeth at Watchet (1817). But the big issue both were born long after Thomasin's will was probated in 1709. There is another will which James Sanders introduces that was probated in 1784 - the will of Grace (Trill) Escott of Dunster. 

I have a fuller transcript of this will than what appears in James Sanders will (not done by me however) but have not yet located from whence I obtained it because it was at the beginning of my research days and I did not record the source on the document although suspect it was our trip to the Allen County Public Library or our trip to Salt Lake City; I will continue searching out my source but the full will reads (as I have it):

TRANSCRIPT OF THE WILL OF GRACE ESCOTT - 1784

In the Name of God Amen  I Grace Escott of Dunster in the County of Somerset, Widow, being of sound and perfect Mind memory and Intellects ………to Almighty God for the same do make ordain and appoint this to be my last and legal Will and Testement, as followeth (that is to say) first and principally I recommend my Soul into the Hands of the Almighty God who gave it me and my Body to decent and Christian burial.  And for such Worldly Goods as it hath pleased Almighty God to give me  I give and Bequeath the same as followeth (to wit)  Whereas in and by virtue of a certain Deed of Settlement made on my intermarriage with my late husband Thomas Escott of Withycombe in the County of Somerset ……. Deceased  twas therein and thereby authorized and impressed by any Deed or Deeds Writing or Writings or by my last Will and Testement to direct limit give or devise all that messuages and Garden with the Appurtenances called the Middle House and the pieces and parcels of lands meadows and pasture ground hereafter particularly mentioned and expressed (that is to say) Great Langland Meadows, one piece called Hurtstone, two rights in the New Marsh, one acre in the Upper Langford and one piece called the Drang all which said  …….. with the appurtunances were late parts ad parcels or reputed so to be part of the Manor of Alcombe in the said County of Somerset.   And also all that cottage or dwellinghouse, garden and orchard with the appurtunances containing by estimation one yard or thereabouts to the same more or less situate lying in Alcombe aforesaid and late was part and parcel of the said Manor and heretofore were in the possession of Elizabeth Crookford her Assigns or Assigner and now are in the possession of William Edmund and William Clarke as Tenants thereof together with all and singular, the house (part of which has been burnt down), outhouses, edifices, buildings, barns, stables, stalls, gardens, orchards, commons and common of pasture, ways, paths, passages, water, water courses, eavements, profits, commodities, hereditaments, advantages and appurtunances whatsoever to the said premises or any part or parcel thereof belonging or appertaining on therewith used or enjoyed or accepted reputed taken or known as part parcel or (member?) thereof.  Now the said Grace Escott do in ……. and full execution of the power arising either from the letter or construction of the said Deed of Settlement or by implication of Law and of all other Powers whatsoever either expressed or implied wherewith ……… either in Law or Equity invested by this my last Will and Testement in writing duly executed and credibly attested direct limit give and devise the said messuage and garden with the appurtenances called The Middle House and the said pieces and parcels of land, meadow and pasture ground herein before and herein after particularly mentioned (that is to say) Great Langland Meadows, one piece called Hurtstone, two rights in New Marsh, one acre in the Upper Langford and one piece called the Drang and also the said cottage or dwellinghouse (…….) garden with the appurtenances containing by estimation one yard or thereabouts (be the same more or less) situated lying and being in Alcombe aforesaid and all other land and premises herein before mentioned …… and every part and parcel thereof respectively with their respective rights ……….  hereditaments  ………. appurtenances unto John Siderfin, son of Robert Siderfin of the Parish of Selworthy in the said County of Somerset, Yeoman and the Heirs of his body lawfully to be gotten subject to the provisos and conditions hereinafter mentioned, that is to say, provided always and it is my true Intent and Meaning and I do hereby declare my Will to be that in case the John Siderfin shall happen to die without heirs of his body lawfully begotten then and in such case I do hereby direct limit give and devise the said messuages and garden called the Middle House and the lands and premises herein before part mentioned and also the said cottage or dwellinghouse (on the soile thereof) garden and orchard and all other hands an premises herein before mentioned and (visited?) and every part and parcel thereof respectively with their respective rights members hereditaments and appurtunances unto Mary Siderfin, Betty Siderfin, Grace Long and Joanna Siderfin (sisters of the said John Siderfin) their heirs and assigns for ever to hold to them the said Mary Siderfin, Betty Siderfin, Grace Long and Joanna Siderfin their heirs and assigns for ever as Tenants in Common and not as Joint Tenants.  Also I give and bequeath unto my cousin Jane Clarke the Dwellinghouse at Tivington wherein Francis Edwards now lives with garden and orchard thereunto belonging during the form of her natural life free and clear of all Rates Taxes and Repairs for or in respect of the same which said Rates and Taxes thereby direct my Executor hereinafter named to pay and discharge and also to keep the said House and Orchard in good and sufficient repair during the said form out of the Residum of my Estate and Effects, it being my Will that the said Jane Clark should hold and enjoy the same during her life free and clear of all outgoings whatsoever and from and after the decease of the said Jane Clark, I give and devise the said House Garden and Orchard unto the herein before mentioned John Siderfin his Executor Administration and Assigner for and during all the then Residue and remainder of my Term Estate and Interest therein.  Also I give unto the said Jane Clarke a feather bed and bolster which I lent her and which she has now in her keeping and also four ponds yearly and every year of lawful Money of England during her natural life by my Executor herein after named.  Also I give and devise all that my reversionary term Estate and Interest to commence on the Death of Joseph Kent and in all that my leasehold messuages or tenement with its appurtenances commonly called or known by the name of Kents situate lying and being in Selworthy of ……. and being part of the Manor of Blackford and now in the possession of Robert Sage, Yeoman and Thomas Giles of Selworthy aforesaid Yeoman his Executors and Administration upon Trust and to and for the  Ends intents and Purposes hereinafter mentioned and declared concerning the same (that is to say) upon trust that he the said Thomas Giles his Executor or Administration do and shall yearly and every year from and after the commencement of the said term and during the natural life of Ann Sage Wife of the said Robert Sage (my term and interest therein so long continuing) may apply and dispose of all the clear ……… rents House and Profits of the said messuages or tenement and premises unto such person or persons and in such parts proportions manner and form as she the said Ann Sage shall from time to time (notwithstanding her …….) by any memorandum in writing under her hand alone direct and appoint or otherwise do and shall permit and suffer her the said Ann Sage to receive and take such Rents House and Profits of the said premises to her own sole and separate ……. Benefit and disposal whose receipt alone shall be a sufficient discharge for the same to his intent the same may not be in the power or disposal or subject or liable to the House debts or engagements of the said Robert Sage her husband or any future husband if she should happen to have any, but entirely at her own vote and separate ….. and disposal and from and after the death of the said Ann Sage then upon Trust to permit and suffer the said Robert Sage his Executors, Administration and Assigner peaceably and quietly to have hold occupy possess and enjoy and to receive take and apply all the Rents House and Profits of the said messuage or tenement called ……… for and during all the then residue and remainder of my Term Estate and Interest therein he she or they keeping the said premises in good and sufficient repair and discharging all Rates Tax and Imposition in respect hereof and observing doing and performing all the covenants in the leave of said premises.  Also I give and bequeath unto Mary the daughter of the said Robert and Ann Sage six silver team spoons marked with letters GE, my silver tea tongs, best set of china, my china milk jug, my stand tea table and one of my Hand Waiters made of Oak.  Also I give and bequeath unto Ann the wife of Giles Bryant of Dunster aforesaid Butcher the sum of fifty pounds of lawful Money of England also my silver butter dish marked with TT and 1753 also one elbow mahogany chair and two single mahogany chairs with Horsehair bottoms.  Also I give and bequeath unto my cousin Grace Bishop (widow) of the Parish of (Stogurney?) ten pounds of lawful Money of England.  Also I give unto my cousin Mary Harris wife of John Harris of Lyddard Ten Pounds of lawful Money of England.  Also I give unto my cousin John Trill Servant to Alexander Fowles Luttrell, Clerk Ten Pounds of lawful Money of England.  Also I give unto Ann the daughter of Robert Siderfin herein before mentioned or unto Samuel Lovelace of the Parish of Minehead in the said County of Somerset, Yeoman, in Trust to and for the only proper use benefit and behalf of her the said Ann Siderfin her Executors, Administration and Assigns during her natural life all that Meadows situate called or known by the name of Witch Meadows situate lying and being in the Parish of Selworthy aforesaid and the part or parcel of the said Manor of Blackford.  That he the said Samuel Lovelace his Executor Administration and Assigns shall permit and suffer the said Ann Siderfin her Executor Administration and Assigns to receive and take all the rents and the profits of the said Meadows called Witch Meadows during her and their natural lives if my Estate and Interest therein shall so long continue and her and their receipts shall be proper and lawful discharged for the same she and they paying and discharging all Rates Taxes and Impositions which shall or may be laid charged or imposed on the said Meadows or Premises during all the said term of the lease belonging to the (tear in paper) or Premises.  Also I give and bequeath unto the said Ann Siderfin my blue bed with the curtains and valence and pillow thereun belonging one quilt, a pair of sheets, a pair of blankets and damask tablecloth marked with the letter T, six blue and white china plates, my large common prayer book and one other book entitled the Christian Defence by Charles Drelincourt, one little bible with a gilt ……., one small trunk covered with flowered silk, and one green bed rug and two silver tablespoons, one marked with the letter T and the other with the letter TT and GT and 1724 and one silver hilt case knife and fork.  Also I give and bequeath unto Mary the daughter of the aforesaid Robert Siderfin all those my several leasehold messuages or tenements with their apportunances commonly called or known by the names of Ham Mead, Pound Meadows and Oxenlears situate and being in Selworthy aforesaid and part and parcel of the Manor of Blackford aforesaid for and during her natural life her Executor Administration and Assigns if my Estate and Interest shall therein so long continue she and they paying and discharging all high rents rates taxes and impositions which shall be laid or charged on the said premises during the Term provided always and my true Intent and Meaning is and I do hereby declare my Will to be that in case the said Mary Siderfin shall happen to die having no child or children of her body lawfully begotten living at her death that then and in such case immediately from and after the death of the said Mary Siderfin I give and devise the said several messuages and tenements with their appurtenances called Pound Meadows, Oxenlears and Ham Mead unto Thomas Siderfin the youngest son of Robert Siderfin aforesaid (or unto the said Robert Siderfin in Trust to and for the only use benefit and ……… of his said son Thomas his Executive Administration and Assigns during all the then residue and remainder of several Term Estates and Interests therein respectively).  Also I give unto the said Mary Siderfin my silver pint cup marked with TT and 1753 and all the rest of my silver spoons not herein before given and all the rest of my books not herein before given.  Also I give Ann the wife of Giles Bryant of Dunster aforesaid Butcher my flowered silk damask pint coloured gown and one yellow with quilted petticoat.  Also I give unto Mary the wife of John Staddon of Dunster aforesaid Yeoman my most fashionable green silk gown which has been tuned and one black with quilted petticoat.  Also I give unto Ann the wife of Robert Sage of Selworthy aforesaid Yeoman my grey second mourning silk gown and one blue with quilted petticoat and also two pairs of stays.  Also I give unto the above Mary Siderfin my other green silk gown and one shaded silk quilted petticoat.  Also I give unto Elizabeth the daughter of Giles Bryant aforesaid one silver brooch marked with TTG 1684 and one spruce chest and my light coloured silk gown and two silver hilt case knives and forks and my striped silk quilted petticoat and my silver buckles.  Also I give unto Izoll Wybourn and Joan Wybourn of the Parish of Selworthy, Spinsters, the sum of Twenty Shillings each.  Also I give unto the said Mary Siderfin fifty pounds of lawful money of England and all the rest of my household goods and furniture and clothing now in Dunster not herein before given (except one silver tankard marked with the letters TTT and 1746 and one long tablecloth marked with the letters GT which I hereby give and bequeath unto my said Brother John Siderfin).  All the rest and residue of my Goods Chattels Lands and temporal Estate and Effects ready money and securities for money Rights and Credits whatsoever and wheresoever my Debts legacies and funeral expenses being first duly paid and discharged and wherewith those charges and ……… the same accordingly.  I give and bequeath unto the aforesaid John Siderfin his Executor Administration and Assigner and I do hereby make constitute and appoint the said John Siderfin to be the whole and sole and residuary legatee and Executor of this my last and legal Will and Testement and I do revoke all other and former Wills by me made and make and appoint this only to be my last Will and Testement and I do hereby order and direct all the legacies herein mentioned to be paid on one year next after my decease.  In witness thereof I the said Grace Escott to this my last Will and Testement contained in four sheets of paper to the first four sheets only subscribing my name and to the last sheet subscribing my name and affixing my seal on the sixth day of August in the Twenty Fourth year of the reign of King George the Third and in the year of our Lord Christ One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Four.

Signed, sealed, published and declared by the said Grace Escott the
Testatrix to be her last and legal Will and Testement in the presence of
us and by us subscribed as Witness as thereto in her presence and at
her request and in the presence of each other all the interlinings and erasures
therein being first made.

Thos Escott
Hugh Matthews
Thos Markham

This is before the marriage of my Elizabeth Siderfin to John Rew (1792). Today I shall spend my not cleaning time looking for the source of this will copy. 

The Trill family lived close to Augustine Siderfin in Tivington near Selworthy. The families were well known to each other as the will of Thomas Trill was witnessed by John Siderfin. 

The day begins; tea is next.

I did find an item on the Somerset Archives. It refers to "Deeds and associated paper relating to land on Bircham Road, Alcombe, upon which the property of Briar Rose was built. 1701-1994. A/ECA/1" and under that set of documents there is a set referred to as "Also includes: 

Covenant between Grace Escott of Dunster, widow, and Thomas Escott of Sandhill, Withycombe, gent, concerning the leasing of two marshes (Pound Marsh and Lower Marsh) comprising 24a. in the parish of Dunster by Grace Escott to Thomas Escott for a term of 14 years, 21 Apr 1768

Release of a legacy left by the late Grace Escott of Dunster, widow, between John Siderfin, sole executor of Grace Escott, and Giles Bryant of Dunster, butcher, and Ann Bryant his wife, 24 Feb 1786.

Certified copy of a certificate of a contract for the redemption of Land Tax issued to John Siderfin of Selworthy, gent., in connection with Alcombe Overland (comprising 8a. and occupied by John Siderfin and Richard Parkin) in Dunster. Issued by John Francis Luttrell and John Lyddon, Esqs, two of the Commissioners of Land Tax for the hundred of Carhampton, 11 Dec 1798. Certified copy made 29 May 1925. With Land Tax Register Office certificate, 25 May 1799.

Declaration by William Stadden of Alcombe, Dunster, yeoman (age 74), regarding Robert Siderfin's estate called Turner's at Alcombe, 4 Jul 1845. Provides a history of the ownership of lands forming part of the estate, including reference to Great Langford Meadow, Hurstone, Upper Langford, the Drang and the New Marsh and reference to Grace Escott, a tenement once known as Turner's.

Legacy receipts and letters concerning two sums of £285 left by the will of the late Robert Siderfin of South Molton, Devon, (died 2 Oct 1859) to his daughters, Mary Frean and Amelia Hawks, 29 Dec 1859-5 Oct 1860. Refers also to Elizabeth Sanders, wife of James Hooper Sanders of South Molton, executor."

Elizabeth Sanders was executor of her father's will and likely had all of his papers of which it would appear the Will of Grace Escott was in his possession. These items form part of the Fonds for James Sanders Research held at the North West Devon Record Office. But at some point some one has sent me their transcription of Grace Escott's will (or I copied it when I was at Salt Lake City or the Allen County Public Library) as it is much more detailed than the will that James Sanders has placed into his published book on the Siderfin Family. I have searched all of my emails from 1995 to the present and have not located this text otherwise. Interesting really but I prefer to give credit to whomever sent me or actually did the fuller transcription. I could purchase the two wills from the Somerset Record Office but do not really have that great an interest in these two wills. What James Sanders put in his book is adequate for my uses. Since it does not give me more details on Knowle I will likely pass on this information but as James Sanders says "A curious will" and definitely it is. Why did a family that does not appear to be related to the Siderfin family pass their property onto this family. No ideas on that although they did not receive all of it; just a limited amount of the original property of Grace (Trill) Escott. Perhaps in the future someone might determine the relationship if any between the Trill family and the Siderfin family. For a short period of time I thought perhaps the Escott family was the connection as the sister of William 2 (John 1) Christian 2 Siderfin married George Escott 14 Jun 1542 at Luxborough. 

On to the cleaning with that sort of semi resolved. I will do a little more sleuthing but searching my emails is really the best that I can do to determine how I am now in possession of the fuller transcription other than copying it back in 2008/2009 when I was still too new to surname research or any research of that type and slipped up on noting the source..