Memories

I did watch Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's State Funeral yesterday. It was perfect I think; so very meaningful and perhaps the most beautiful his granddaughter's song of love for her beloved grandfather. It is the hardest thing in the world I think for children to give up a parent and for grandchildren to let go of a grandparent. It wrenches the soul and tears it apart just for a little while until the healing starts. I must admit as I watched the funeral I remember that my husband would have preferred having all of his friends about him for a funeral but he did die during COVID but we actually did not have a funeral until over a year later. But I just couldn't budge myself from that very private place I had moved to and as it turned out we all wanted it to be a very private goodbye with all of us there - the priest, organist, children (including our son in law), grandchildren and myself. The organist was simply wonderful picking everything himself except I did ask for the 23rd Psalm which we all sang. The memory did come back to me as I watched and I have said to my children that when we finally pick a burial spot at Beechwood where he wanted to be buried they can do whatever they want when I pass away. A joint service if that is something they want as it was what he wanted for sure. But if they decide private is what they want then they have my blessing for that as well. Whatever suits them; to me funerals are for the living to commemorate those who died but in a way that reflects the living family. The State Funeral was perfect for Brian Mulroney; when the history books are written (and already he is in the history books) he will be one of Canada's best Prime Ministers. Could he have done more for his country; I am sure he would have said yes but he did so very much to bring us right out of being mentally attached to the British Isles (although I am very much in favour of our King and Royal Family and hope that that is also a forever part of Canada) to standing up on our own two feet as he negotiated NAFTA and tied us economically forever to our great neighbour to the south. As Canada grows and at 40 Million plus we are growing we may one day be a much much larger neighbour than we are now and I am sure that linking ourselves together will prove to be the best forward plan there could have been. Thank you Brian Mulroney. I also feel the same way about the GST; it has done Canada a lot of good; taken the strain out of running government as no need for supply bills constantly getting debated at the last minute. The government has money to fund it. Thank you Brian Mulroney for that and for Nunavut and fighting acid rain and so much more.

A lovely walk again yesterday, two days in a row. I do enjoy a good walk around the block. I did not accomplish very much on Pencombe yesterday. My mind didn't seem to settle to it. I am still perplexed about Philip Pynkeham. Who is he? Is he a Tynkeham? Why is he at Tawstock? I likely do need to do a little more searching to see if I can discover anything more. Of course he was born before the Parish Registers were kept by the Parish Priests for all the inhabitants of the parish so no help there.  I may though, check the 1524-27 Lay Subsidy for the parishes where the Tynkeham/Tinkham family lived. Perhaps then I will feel satisfied leaving him out. It does seem like I should do that. 

We were meant to have snow but the snow fell on Montreal complicating the travel from St Patrick to Notre Dame for the funeral but as usual our honour guards did a perfect job in spite of the weather. The 19 gun salute rang through the cold air and Canada said goodbye to Brian Mulroney while his family took him for a private time and burial. Brian Mulroney was proud, I am sure, of his family standing through all those hours welcoming all the people who came to say goodbye. They did it so very well.

Minus eight degrees celsius, clear and will be sunny. Another crisp winter day with no snow. We are in drought for sure and will be a rough summer perhaps of forest fires. Time will tell. Hopefully everyone will be especially careful to keep them to a minimum. 

Sunday, Palm Sunday, and Church on You Tube. I am looking forward to being at the Cathedral once again. It has been a thoughtful Lent and the Lenten Readings have been most thought provoking particularly as they have very much brought my thoughts to Israel and Gaza. A solution is there but Hamas destroys any solution because they are evil thinking only of themselves and their greed and their hatred for the Jewish people. They desire to commit genocide against the Jewish people and it really must end; they must be sent somewhere where they cannot hurt the Palestinians or the Jews. 

Prayers for the people of Russia, those killed in the attack by ISIS and those injured and fighting for their lives in the hospitals. May God be merciful and help them through this tragic time. 

God bless the world. 

Teatime and Latin. It is a day of rest for my eyes.

More data coming forth for the Siderfin book

 When I first had the idea of a slight revision to James Sanders book "The Siderfin Family of West Somerset" I had no idea that it would result in a complete rewrite and accumulation of new data that has since been scanned and available on line. I now have 44 pages with the original book having 60 pages including the Pedigree Chart and I am  just into the Fourth Generation. There are some gaps that I can not fill easily but I can check at the Family Search Library on some of the material in the spring. I do not see myself driving there during the winter. 

The next two weeks will hopefully see me through the Fourth Generation and let me move on to the Fifth Generation after publishing the next issue of the Pincombe-Pinkham Newsletter. I did hear back from my Pinkham match and not surprising he is from the Barnstaple Pincombe family. During the 1700s some of the members of this family at Barnstaple starting using the Pinkham surname. I do not really know when the Pinkham surname first arose although I do not find it before the Pincombe surname. When you say Pincombe - it sounds like that to me but I know that my great uncle said it somewhat differently and one could end up spelling it as Pinkham. I wonder at what point the pronunciation changed since the original surname was Pencombe and I do rather think it would have been closer to the way that I have been saying Pincombe.

 Although we did see Pincombe cousins when I was a child - mostly at the large funerals - I did not spend a lot of time with any of them so do not know them that well plus I have now lived away from my "growing up" place for more than 45 years. Although when we went back to meet with all of our Pincombe cousins to plan the Pincombe Profile - that was my one request that before I published it I would meet with everyone so that they could look at it and add changes. My own line daughtered out - my mother was a Pincombe and my Pincombe uncle did not have any children. Plus they had left the Pincombe farm (and there were a lot of them) in 1925 years before I wrote the profile so I wanted their input plus I wanted to highlight them in the profile because they were still on the various farms in the area. 

Looking at autosomal DNA results can be very interesting. I tend to not really do much with results that are less than 20 centimorgans. However, ancestry can be an exception on occasion as they run all of the results against a piece of software known as Timber which removes "ethnic" lengths from the final result. It can result in a smaller match and I have several good examples in my lines including Pincombe. When I discovered the Pinkham matches who traced back to the New Hampshire/Maine Pinkham family (emigration was in the 1600s) I was pretty shocked actually. I had not expected to find any such matches. I need to look at the trees to see what I can see and that is one of the steps. I also need to look at the matches in common. 

The original Pincombe project was created by Dr Richard Pinkham and Galen Pinkham and they did an excellent set of research charts (16 of them in total) and the alternate surname in the project was Pinkham. The thoughts were that it was a singleton surname but the yDNA results of my two cousins (one in Australia and one in the United States)  do not match any of the Pinkham yDNA results. One of the cousins who tested is a third cousin once removed and the other is a fifth cousin with our Most Recent Common Ancestor being John Pincomb and Mary Charly who married 8 Nov 1767 at Bishops Nympton, Devon, England and the Australian cousin is descended from their second eldest son William and the American cousin is descended from their third son Robert (also my ancestor). For a while I did try to persuade other cousins to test but with two matching results it did not seem to be necessary but any new testers are always welcomed. 

At some point in the past and it was the mid 1700s for the Barnstaple Pincombe family Pincombe members did start using the surname Pinkham. There was some thought that it could have originated as Tinkham but pulling out the available data on the Tinkham family does look like a free standing surname resulting from a placename. It should be an interesting article to write although I again am very leery of matches that are small lengths of autosomal DNA. 

I have always felt that my management of the project did not do enough for the Pinkham spelling so hope that can be rectified at some point in the future.