Updating T2 study

With ten new members and the paper to be published in the spring, my co-admin on the T2 project is really keen to get started breaking our large group up into subclades. I have held back because the existing structure for T2 is based on singleton entries at GenBank (and in papers). Although overall I think that The Netherlands Forensic Group is doing a great service to the mtDNA world there is the problem of conflicting results that are always in revision. The debate was whether to go with the existing chart and update our groupings or to wait for the paper that I am co-author on and then revise. I opted for waiting and that is probably the best state for me however starting to work on the individual groupings for my co-admin is not a problem and I have decided on a hands off approach for the moment. Once the paper is published then I shall also be in there setting up a new way to look at our groupings and then we can do genetic distance and have some meaning. For some the separation into country groupings has been quite interesting but others would prefer to see something different and that is soon to come. Hopefully everyone will eventually be happy as we could look at country groupings within the subclade groupings.

Still working on the Andover Parish Registers and no new Blake entries other than the two children of John and Elizabeth Blake - Ann and Richard died as small children. No Thomas Blake burial yet which still leaves me with two Thomas Blakes alive in 1708 when one of them marries Mary Spring. Mary is young, her father's heir as all of her siblings have now died (along with her mother). Her father has not remarried and he too will be buried not long after the marriage. The Spring family is not well to do but her father was a draper as far as I can tell thus far so that the two families share this particular occupation. The father of the older Thomas (b 1671) was according to his older brother a tradesman which seems peculiar as the last time we learn anything about John was that his mother left him money to attend Oxford. Perhaps he preferred to be a Tanner! Certainly my brothers preferred to be tradesmen so can quite understand that actually.

Up to 6282 burials as of end of 1708 and this parish register 4 ends in 1714 although the next burial register also has 1714 so will see if there is duplication. I begin parish register 5 which is the christenings and marriages from 1685 to 1701 with parish register 6 being the christenings and marriages from 1699 to 1714. I like the overlap and still have hopes on finding the missing burials and marriages. Interesting that the records appear to be mostly intact in the Commonwealth period. Likely because the parish priest continued to record the births in his capacity as Town Clerk. Very enterprising of him to take on the task since he could do the best job having already done it for a number of years.

I need to answer some enquiry emails as well. They entail some digging and right now I just feel like transcribing quietly but I will soon get them caught up. I love to travel but do find it exhausting mentally and physically. We will not go anywhere now that winter has come. I rather enjoy the long cold months of winter with the short days letting one put in enormous hours on the microfiche and other documents. Ancestry and Find My Past will be very busy these next few months as I have a lot of searches that I want to do.

DNA Case Studies - Presentation

I decided to work on my Presentation yesterday and today. I have 58 slides prepared. I will need to update them just prior to the presentation with any changes but they are basically ready to go in terms of format. I need to write an Abstract and Bio for the Conference Booklet.

Initially I wondered what cases I would use but when I finally settled into it my cover page just appeared suddenly to me and then I decided to introduce my case studies briefly as part of the introduction. That flowed very well and then I started into the five case studies that I will present. They are all my own family lines except I will discuss the T haplogroup/T2 haplogroup studies and end with Mary Polly Case. Mary Polly has always appealed to me out of all of Ed's ancestors - she is his 3x great grandmother and was orphaned. She was born in Dublin but sent to Halifax to live where she married at the age of 18 years. Although her father is likely John Casey very very little is known about her family life in Ireland.

Other than that my day passed quickly as most of it was spent on the presentation.

Tomorrow I shall work on the transcription plus I will have Jackson over to babysit.