We found Edward's DVD collection of family history tools and items. One is a Heritage Book Archive CD for The Link Family. Using Linux we were able to extract the file so will send that on to Edward's cousin. Technology really has moved along in the last twenty years. These twenty years saw Edward's tree grown from a few thousand to over eighty thousand. I will see if I can extract the *.pdf file and publish it to this blog later today.
Unless I find more items, the Link Family artifacts have found a new researcher to expand and manage that Family line for Edward. His parent's surnames were Kipp and Link and then one generation back Kipp, Schultz and Link, Allen.
There is an active Allen family research group and I may ask if they would like the Allen material that Edward accumulated. They were a United Empire Loyalist family arriving in the Maritimes at the end of the American Revolution and settling in New Brunswick. They arrived in Ontario later in the 1800s.
I have a lot of Kipp material that pertains to the Kipp Family book that Edward published. I have asked Library and Archives Canada if they wish to have the picture collection and I need to prepare that submission. The Kipp family were settlers from Dutchess County arriving in Ontario in 1800 from there some members went west and were early settlers in Chilliwack BC.
A lot of work to do and there are still about 30 boxes of Ed's research for me to work on. I will not do any new research as it is over ten years since I helped him so I am not in touch with his last decade of work. I am a custodian and will pass it on to other researchers in his family lines via this blog.
The Schultz material I will pass to his Schultz cousins as time passes.
I will maintain his DNA work as I did that mostly for him. Eventually I will pass that on as well but for the moment I will keep analyzing new matches and adding them to his records.
Edward's great grandparents and this charcoal drawing is a good picture of them according to Edward's mother who remembered this couple from her childhood. When her family returned to Ontario when she was six weeks old they lived at their home for a short time. Again Edward had this picture restored. The scanner did a fair job only as the backing is very stiff and it is a large picture.
Better with the camera for sure.
Edward's maternal grandparents homesteaded in what became Saskatchewan early in the 1900s. His mother was born at Carievale where they homesteaded.
Edward had these pictures (there are four more) restored and the difference was quite remarkable actually.
The first was scanned and this second image is photographed.
The first project is to extract all the Link material (artifacts) and give them to Edward's half cousin. We begin that process today now that we have found the Rathbun Bible. I still need the inserts that I believe were in that Bible but I can always mail them later so will not worry about finding them. There are homesteading pictures which Edward had mended and a number of other items which can be put together into this trunk that we have to get to his cousin except the archival box is too large for the trunk. The trunk was too big for everything anyway and probably better not to have used it for the Link material.
That trunk is going to Salvation Army filled with CDs that I am eliminating from the collection. Along with a couple of bags of household items as I move forward with downsizing the trunk will be full and enjoyed by someone else eventually I suspect.
I completed the newest Research Blog and posted it to my husband's website:
http://www.kipp-blake-families.ca/edwardmain.htm
Working on his second Research Blog - Kip/Kipp Family in America - and it commenced in 2008 just after our Research Trip to Salt Lake City. What a fabulous week that was. We wandered all over the downtown area in our breaks. We mostly worked eight hours a day in the library but did take three good walking breaks every day.
I have now become an author on my husband's blog and will gradually put his research material up on this blog. I have about 15 or 20 banker boxes full of his research which may or may not have already been published by him. I will attempt to ascertain that and publish anything that he has not published thus far.
This is a much better way than I had originally thought to fulfill his desires to publish all his material or at least hand it to another researcher. Blogging it gives a much wider audience.
Regretfully I inform my husband's readers that Edward succumbed to his long illness on the 10th of April 2021. It has taken me nearly two months to write this blog post as I work through the process of losing him. He was the center of our lives and still very much missed and always will be. Every occasion we will think of that missing chair and how much he would have loved to be there with us.
Others have written about his contributions to the world of genealogy and other fields that interested him (and there were many) and I thank them all for their wonderful tributes to him. When Edward was taken severely ill in 2011, I very much feared for his life then and set about collecting material for the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal. OGS took over the material that I collected and submitted his name and he was awarded the medal in June 2012. I much appreciated their doing so as I had intended to submit it on my own but their doing so brought more attention to his wonderful contributions to Canadian Society and I thank them for that. After a good deal of medical care and assistance, Edward had a pacemaker inserted in February 2012 which then enabled him to pick up the reins of his life and go forward and he did do that living life to the full for the next nine years.
His lifelong interest in his Kipp family genealogy has taken him so many places we probably would never have gone and in his seventeen years of retirement he spent most of his time working on genealogy either for himself or for the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society and the United Empire Loyalist Branches with research trips into New York State. He was rewarded by finding a family history that would excite even the least interested person in genealogy. His family tree included so many New Englanders and New Yorkers. The family names resound back through the ages to those brave colonists coming from Europe/British Isles in the 1600s to find a new life in the American Colonies. The names in his tree resound through early Colonial History much to his shock as all of that was lost over time. Each new discovery was amazing and thank you to Gary Boyd Roberts who helped him in his quest on one of the Getaways at the NEHGS in 2005. Up to then Edward had found his Canadian lines and traced them back into New England but wanted to be sure he was accurate. Hence the Getaway and we spent many many more days and hours at the NEHGS over the years following.
Scarcely was the pacemaker in his chest a month though and we discovered that he had a shadow on his lungs which was eventually diagnosed as sarcoidosis. He was treated for that but eventually it did spread to his liver where he suffered cirrhosis secondary to sarcoidosis. Again he was treated but eventually succumbed to this disease. I see him also as a victim of COVID-19 lockdown as he loved to get out and about shopping and walking and shopping and the lockdown kept us at home. During the summer before he was out gardening and walking about in the yard and it is a good sized yard but the winter snows shut him in sadly.
Most of Edward's books will be donated to the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch, they have kindly accepted. We are preparing the boxes and lists now (more than 40 boxes). Another set of his books (the last of his National Geographic Books) will be donated as well (he had already given them most of his collection). His research was pretty much American and Canadian and I do not use any of his books with my research being all British Isles (mostly England) and I can always go and use the books there anyway. He would want them to be used by other researchers.
I will use this blog over time to publish any of his material that he has not yet published in memory of the work that he has done. I retain about 20 boxes of his research for that purpose. Very luckily he found a Link cousin who will take the material of that family (he is a half cousin so I will retain the Allen family history which was Edward's grandmother).
