Cleaning day one

 Today the top floor will be cleaned and continuing on Chromosome 8. I spent a little time looking at this set of matches that look like either Pincombe or Blake. Most of them are dating back into the early colonial days in America which does tend to make me think of the Blake/Knight family. Few of them go back into the 1600s but I have results for two individuals that are definitely Blake/Knight. The others triangulate with each other and one set is Pincombe. Having reached that stage I will continue today with a couple that I have not yet found in Ancestry (loaded their results into Gedmatch). A few also transferred to My Heritage giving a little help there with the triangulation. Looking at DNA Painter in this area of Chromosome 8 namely 76 cM to 120 cM this is not a common pile-up area so is specific to this family and given the endogamy in the Knight family not surprising and also in the Routledge family (Routledge married Gray and Gray married Pincombe) a pile-up would not be unexpected particularly if that pile-up is in the American Colonies dating back into the 1600s/1700s with their trees. The Knight family in particular were found in Newfoundland, Canada in these early years with the fishing fleets. Continuing with that type of thinking today but do hope to complete Chromosome 8 today. It didn't really effect anything having this group as Pincombe or Blake until I moved to phasing the great grandparents and now it becomes more interesting to do that. 

Went to Church online yesterday and the choirs are back which is always lovely music. It reminds me of Edward deciding that he would attend my Anglican Church because I had attended his United Church as he had asked whilst our children were young. He did love the music at the Cathedral and choosing the Columbarium for his internment just seemed right although eventually I anticipate that he will be buried at Beechwood or whatever cemetery our children choose. I am very much of the mind that funerals/graveyards are for the living to say goodby to their loved ones. 

We had a lot of snow and it was plowed away by the company. More snow today and into the week but then it is January and we are in the very midst of winter with some of the heaviest snow generally coming in late February or early March. Canadians go south this time of year although some are staying home but I still think quite a few are going as the warm beaches of Florida are very inviting. I certainly enjoyed my three trips to Florida but I also love the winter and would miss it for sure if I lived elsewhere. 

A new query which stems from the Blake Newsletter came in regarding I-M253 which I will take time to think about as it concerns a London line that is unknown beyond a 3x great grandparent. The Blake family itself is huge and has quite a few founding lines even within the British Isles itself as well as Continental - the 1330-1550 Emigration Database for the British Isles shows many Blake lines coming from the Continent into England in this time period but primarily into the London area. By the late 1400s the Blake family at Andover appears in a number of records and my search backwards is to find the documents for this family in the 1300s. Before that I do not think this line that I descend from used a surname and likely elected to use the surname of the wife in an early marriage - proving that will be difficult and perhaps not in my lifetime. But it does make sense rather than assuming that an individual farming at Knights Enham suddenly decided to use the surname Blake which was already being used by a number of families in England (many of whom were not originally common to the British Isles) who likely came from the continent following the Norman Invasion in 1066. Since these families were prosperous probably attracted to the British Isles by the Normans that is the suspicion but proving such things is difficult. Plus I have no intention of dealing with that early family history in any line but my own for the most part  but will include the le Blak family of Rouen, Normandy that appears to be related/have dealings with the Andover Blake family in the 1500s in such a way that one is led to speculate that at an earlier time they were closely related but probably in the female line on the part of the Andover Blake family. That is my hypothesis and I continue looking for information to clarify/prove such an hypothesis. Within the Blake yDNA study at FT DNA there are a number of groups with a leader inside of the group so I tend to just let them correspond with each other and not complicate the situation by getting involved in that. 

This research was made considerably easier to look at following the marriage of the then Prince of Wales (now King Charles III) and Lady Diana Spencer and became the Princess of Wales (although I had absolutely no interest in genealogy but my husband was deeply into that and he is related to Diana, Princess of Wales through the Work family some of whom had moved to the American colonies. Diana's proven line back to the le Blak family of Calne along with the publication of a book of her genealogy which traces her back to the Andover Blake family has proven to be most interesting actually and will likely create research interest in the years to come in that her son William will eventually be King of England with the line descending to George his son eventually and his descendants. That will clearly place the Blake line of Calne as ancestral to the King of England and it appears the Blake line of Andover. The Andover line being the more ancient to the British Isles if I am correct and the yDNA of this line appears to be an ancient Western Hunter-Gatherer arriving in the British Isles following the Last Ice Age and suggested to be between 12,000 to 8,000 years ago and dubbed the "Deer-Hunters" by Ethnoancestry (interestingly my grandfather constantly mentioned that his Blake line was very ancient to the area in which he grew up namely Andover, Hampshire, England). His knowledge of the Blake family was extensive as he could rhyme off all of his male ancestors way back to Nicholas and further but being only just eight and not writing it all down I just remember the names really well that stuck out in the line so to speak. My father also mentioned Nicholas and it stemmed from a discussion I often have within my blog on Nicholas. I was surprised to find 14 matches on Chromo 2 yDNA test when I tested my brother there as ancient lines back into Western Hunter-Gatherer are not common in the databases although going into the British Isles group I did find a number of lines close by this area in Hampshire including one large family group in the Barnstaple area. The le Blak line I hypothesize is from Rouen, Normandy coming to England after receiving a patent to set up a market in 1274 (Calendar of Patent Rolls). This is a large grouping in the yDNA Blake group at FT DNA and one would expect quite a range of matches given the time period this group was in Rouen, Normandy and coming to England in the late 1200s. 

Tea all drank and Solitaire Puzzles to do. The day moves quickly and it will soon be breakfast time and then cleaning.  

 

 

 

 

The variety of DNA that exists in populations

 Both my husband and I have done a lot of DNA testing but we have never found a common ancestor primarily because Edward is 30% German/30% Dutch/10% French/10% Polish/10% Scandinavian/5% English and other smaller European portions and I am virtually 100% British Isles (with known Huguenot in the late 1400s coming to Somerset). So we do not find one common ancestor although there is one possibility (in a somewhat circular case) but still being researched. Edward shares common ancestry with the American Work family, Eleanor Work (seventh cousin twice removed) married James Burke Roche in 1880 and their great great grandaughter was Diana, Princess of Wales (Edward's ninth cousin once removed) and the possibility that Diana, Princess of Wales is descendant of the Andover Blake family would amazingly see us both related to Diana (I would be 12th cousin once removed to Diana (the published book of the ancestry of Diana, Princess of Wales refers to the Andover Blake family (Richard K. Evans, NEHGS, 2007))  which was sort of amazing when we discovered that in our trip back through time. It struck me as I write this that when I attended a weekend activity at NEHGS where one could work with Gary Boyd Roberts and others Edward really benefited greatly from his time and when Gary asked me what I would like to discuss as my time had come up I said that I was from the Andover Blake family but I was not really into genealogy which surprised him since I had paid to come but I suggested that he continue working with Edward as they were making really great progress into his ancestry and they did that although he did speak to me once again but I really didn't want to discuss my ancestry since my knowledge of it was pretty ancient and I was not into Blake genealogy at that time although I was writing this Pincombe Profile but did not want to discuss that either really. I had a handle on it already but I am like that. I also didn't want to get into a discussion on the Pinkham family as I was about to take on the Pincombe study at the Guild of one-name Studies and did know that the two names were often found together (I was certainly still that person with no actual interest in genealogy beyond getting this profile written at that point in time (after all I couldn't find my paternal grandmother in the records back in 1988 when I was trying to do that for my parent's 60th wedding anniversary book!)). But DNA was about to radically change my thoughts and it was coming for sure in 2005 and I was taking my courses at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies but still in the beginnings really of that work! Edward purchased the book on Diana perhaps in 2008 or so but I didn't really look at it until I took on the Blake one-name study at the Guild in 2011. And it was sort of an absent minded look in actual fact and may have been prompted by Edward commenting on Blake being in the index. That particular time Edward was ill and my concentration was poor so my memory of some items perhaps not quite as good as usual! By then I knew that my Blake line had an ancient haplogroup which was dubbed Deer-Hunters by Ethnoancestry so their surname had been acquired at the time of surname useage beginning in England after the Norman Conquest. Although it did sort of make me think because why would anyone choose a surname that was already in use by several known Blake lines. Interesting letting the mind roll back sometimes. 

Since we look at different record sets it was difficult for us to work together once I got inspired to do genealogy in 2003 and DNA certainly became a strong part of that draw. He was looking at records that I did not look at although over time eventually he did get back into his English Ancestry when we traveled to the British Isles. But all of that was a very long way back for him in the 1600s except for one 3x great grandmother who came with her family to Canada in the 1830s from the Norfolk area (Mary Ann Abbs) and he learned a great deal about her and  his line in Norfolk at Kew. So it can be very difficult to work on your lines in repositories when you are so divergent for sure. 

Just before COVID isolation time Edward was corresponding back and forth with Dutch and German investigators and we had a trip planned to both countries but COVID 19 interrupted that and those trips did not happen but he recorded everything he learned in his blog and in his tree. The gene pool  in Europe is enormous perhaps because of the constant movement of populations. Europeans are very healthy people. They follow regimens that contribute to their great life style and they were clever to come together and argue in the EU parliament instead of the battle field (and they do fight on occasion having to be separated but they have made God's words a reality - love your neighbour as yourself and they will enforce that as time progresses). They become stronger and stronger as the days pass. Edward was very proud of his European/British Isles lineage and of his lengthy Colonial American ancestry (he had 9th and 10th great grandparents in his tree with a large number from The Netherlands as well as from the British Isles). His being Canadian was more of a fluke than anything else as people moved west or in his case north into Ontario (siblings of his 2x great grandmother Hannah (Mead) Kipp went west to Wisconsin and further). Canada in 1800 was lightly settled by colonials and there were then as now many many First Nations all over Canada or Turtle Island as its original name accidentally changed to Canada by the first Explorers from Europe to the St Lawrence River (as far as we know they were the first to come along the St Lawrence but there is still much to know of the early history perhaps embedded in the stories of the many First Nations that we haven't heard yet). I look forward to learning many things from our First Nations brothers and sisters now that I am retired and just working away on my books. 

I still have not yet produced the two  missing Newsletters and yesterday I worked away in my available time on phasing the great grandparents working on Chromsome 22 which is mostly finished and I have achieved good lengths for the Knight family. This Chromosome is 51 cM long and primarily the Knight line is verified from 17 to 51 cM with several known cousins. There is an interesting Cottrell match from 37 cM to 47 cM. I do not anticipate that this will be easy. Some of the matches I have looked at do point to a particular great grandparent but I want to have more substance to that with proof in the census since all of these great grandparents appear in the census of England during the needed time period and there are many many trees on the various databases. There are 15 matches still to review and a couple of them are known to me as cousins. Finding the Cottrell was interesting and I will pay attention to these matches and also see if I can trace that particular line back in the British Isles (remembering that I do have cousins who are surnamed or descendant of Cottrell/Cotterill/Cotterell (the spelling still variable in those early census). 

A little more work to do around the house today but it is primarily a research type of day. Perhaps those Newsletters will happen over this time period. I do not have anything to write really in the H11 as there isn't any new news on that subsclade. For the Pincombe again I have not really spent very much time with Pincombe over the past couple of months as I have concentrated on all the lines working on the rephasing of my grandparents now completed although I still need to annotate the charts sufficiently into journal ready items without actually even considering that sort of activity but rather that I put into these items everything that I have found to pass on to the next individual who wants to have an interesting retirement project (namely one of my relatives!). 

Tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles to keep the brain sharp. Yesterdays puzzles were amazingly straight forward or my mind was just totally concentrated. We will see today's puzzles. I see Microsoft has announced a 19B plan for AI and data centers in Canada which has been welcomed by the Prime Minister.  Patience is what is always needed and if a western pipeline is to happen there must be a lot of that. The MOU simply sets into motion a methodology to explore but there is a lot of work to do to convince British Columbia that there is a win-win for everybody in this particular item and the Premier of Alberta is prepared to go to the parties affected and discuss. Canada is the best compromising country in the world which I discovered when my eldest daughter and I went to Italy (Rome actually for an invited event; I was invited and she was accompanying me as I had never flown before nor had I ever traveled to Europe). Staying at the organized retreat sort of in a monastery in Rome I discovered that we were the only ones who learned Italian to come (we spent four months learning Italian - mine somewhat spotty as I interjected French when I couldn't remember the Italian word - but my daughter on our first taxi ride (as the metro was on strike) revealed just how well she was doing although she did ask him to go a little slower which he did; she amazed me when on a tour by ourselves she spoke easily with a couple of people from Spain who were speaking Spanish - children are amazing really). That is what Canadians do we compromise until it works for everybody. I prefer an eastern pipeline that is for sure so that we stop paying 3x what we sell the oil for to the United States where it is refined and sold back to especially Ontario - the biggest gas guzzler in Canada and Quebec also uses a lot of gas but it can be shipped there alternatively; no one has to have a pipeline. But the jobs are needed in order to make us more tariff proof. It is by and large the safest way to transport across land compared to water routes but with caution those routes can also be safe. We just have to demand that shippers use transport that is safe and cautious at all times paying strict attention to the weather. 

I do think though listening to comments that we, Canada, must be very circumspect reporting on the content in items sold (any foreign material right down to the smallest screw needs to be identified). But our preference is for all Made in Canada. We should not be using short cuts or cheaper material if it says Made in Canada. Nowadays it is becoming easier and easier to make those sort of identifications as trade becomes much more scrutinized by everyone. This attention primarily to profits is a problem and one that must be looked at as the biggest attention should be on how well the job or the product is when completed. There should still be a sense of a job well done not just that it made so much money. Money gathering and this desire for more and more is a curse very often which was pointed out through the history of mankind many times. But Tariff proof we must become as quickly as possible. I have become distracted and must get to my solitaire puzzles.