Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Edward's Research

 

Although Edward put in a lot of time on genealogy it was never one of our go to items in the first fourteen years of our marriage. He worked with one of the people (Ed Phelps) in the library at Western gathering up old documents from our visits to farm auctions whilst we lived in that area (first nine years of our marriage) and it became a project for him to think about through the future. Our move here though was, I think, hardest on Edward in retrospect. He left behind everyone that he knew and he is far more of a people person than I am. I came from a large family and generally preferred my quiet lifestyle without people although loved visiting with my own family when we did that. 

In our first eight years of marriage before children Edward and I collected up a lot of different types of material. We were both keen on astronomy and a large section of our not working life went into that in those first eight years. Edward loved photography and we camped most every weekend in the summers before children visiting parks hither and yon whilst he photographed all of the flowers that he had never seen as a child. Sometimes he put on his researcher hat and prepared sets of data on various plants that we found. 

I have decided that in memory of my husband's strongest interests in my opinion I will begin the task of scanning his thesis first of all. It is still cited along with his articles (joint with his researcher under whom he studied) in journals around the world. I will also scan his papers and put them up on his website. I think he always meant to do that but just was too busy with the Ottawa Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society. When he went off to the first meeting, for him, at the Ottawa Branch I was surprised actually. But Gordon Riddle had invited him in the early 1980s and he always felt a little sorry for him because of his uncle who was also a Family Physician and died younger than one might have anticipated as the hours were long for him and he was in a rural practice. So when Gordon approached him to go to the Genealogical Society he responded yes although I will admit he thought about it a lot at first. He knew I would never go (I am not really much of a people person) although eventually I did when my cousin wanted me to write a profile for my Pincombe Family in the history book he was editing for Westminster and Delaware Townships in 2004 which was a surprise to Edward. But he did enjoy the genealogical association along with his part in developing Orleans United Church where he sang in the Choir for about fifteen to twenty years and was treasurer for ten years (that was what his father had done and I think it brought Edward closer to the memory of his father as he was only two when he died). Although a lot of Edward's time went into genealogy (he was a great support person in the library) his greatest love was research in science.

Then there are his photographs and I think I will put them into an *.pdf along with his notes and publish that under a Creative Commons Licence for anyone to look at. Some of the pictures are really quite fabulous if you happen to be into wild flowers. 

He has some other collections that I will work at putting together and publish them as well. 

When I asked him about publishing his family material he said he already did and had put it up on World Connect. That entirely satisfied him so I have broken up his collection slowly giving it to the various cousins that he introduced me to in the last fifteen years of our marriage. That I think was what he was alluding to in the last year of his life. I was distracted by the amount of care that my daughter and I had to give to him through that last year as before that time he was still walking about and enjoying his life. He tended to recover quickly and return to his level of activity but I must admit that after the pacemaker he tired a lot easier than he ever had (that was in 2012). 

It is good to have thought this through with his daughters and they agree with me that that was really his intent to put all of this material where people could find it. I continue maintaining the yDNA of the Kipp family from which he descended and will continue the newsletter for this family. But actually getting into tracing lines I will not do. I have no experience with American research. At 78.5 my time is going to go to the books I want to write about my grandfather Blake's family and my mother's Pincombe family and after that work on my grandmother's Buller family and a few other lines that interested both of my parents. It always sounds like I am not doing anything for myself but really I never anticipated living on into my 70s at all and so I am just picking up the traces of conversations that I had as a child with the people around me. It does seem like a nice idea and I continue with it. 

Back to cleaning; amazing how much thinking you do when you are cleaning!