Extra historical time travel photos I did of myself, for more variety, twice more doing this actually, and the last one I had to pay for, so maybe I had exceeded the limit of acceptable use.
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Trebha got the time travel pictures treatment. He did look marvellous down through the ages. He was so happy with what I showed him. As with all creativity it is time consuming, finding photos and cropping other people out of them, and when the pictures arrive going through every one, selecting only the ones that bear the best resemblance, as certainly many do not. With Trebha, it's as if he is a time traveller already, as portrayed.
My developing of a goddess inspired psychic ability is for me hopefully a doorway by which to connect to my ancestors. That's my greatest wish in all this. Many things are there to be felt and known. For long my dreams have been a portal to such worlds, even my Caucasus ancestresses visiting me in this way. Jeremy now got my focus for creating historical photos, my gift for him. It was another thrill to see him in all different era's, rugged looking, fromn Vikings to the Wild West; so many good pictures there. A couple of other friends, Nitai and Stephen Marcus, have been experimenting with AI created pictures of themselves. Nitai made mention of their being much disapproval of this new trend. And then I got a comment online from a French woman, an emoji of crying, and an outright statement that this new technology is killing the artists. So it's a thing apparently to dish on this new technology. Likely artists were up in arms about the development of photography too. But what these technologies have done is to open up possibilities for the masses who never before had such priviledge. Only the rich and powerful had their portraits painted, their family memories to retain, until photography reached out to the masses. And could I ever have afforded artists to create such lovely portraits of my daughters - a definite no. There will always be a place for art. Everything changes, evolves. The new can become a tool of creativity, adding to the arts. The door has already opened; it's done. I really don't want to get lured into reactionary debates. There are still many around me who refuse to have televisions in their homes, for regarding them as bad, what to speak of constant issue with the internet and social media. This is the Age of Aquarius and technological innovations are very much a part of that. Rather than judging such inventions I am embracing them in my own creative ways. But so it is, always the will in others to argue and censor every step that is taken in life. It's exhausting, the constant noise of human minds and attitudes.
I got into looking at the genealogy of Guillaume who had come to lodge at my home for a week or so. Guillaumes ancestors were farming folk of Quebec and Ontario. One census, not so easily legible but transcribed maybe or maybe not correctly, claimed an ancestor of his to have been 'black'. Genealogy was something Guillaume had wanted to look at, specifically back to the point of his people first arriving in Canada from France. I did indeed get back to various locations in France, particularly La Rochelle by the sea, one of the families he descended from having been Huguenots there. A couple of his ancestresses had gone to Canada as 'filles de roi', these being young ladies sent by King Louis XIV to boost the population of Canada for which they were given money and free passage and the direction to find themselves a husband there. Some of Guillaume's ancestors came as soldiers; others were in the fur trade, paddling canoes through the wilds to buy furs from indigenous peoples. He came from tough folk; this I could see.
In Montpellier, staying with my friend Francois, I got stuck into his genealogy, into his maternal lineage, he having had a Russian Bessarabian Jewish grandmother Anna Roitman, originally Shperberg. Her husband Felix alias Ephim Roitman was gassed in Auschwitz by the Nazi's. He was a lovely man, an artist, and Francois had some decorative paintings of his, flowers upon trays and on a lampstand. Felix's wife, Anna, and daughter Lucile escaped but 15 minutes before the Nazi's would have taken them away, warned by the concierge of their building, for which they took flight to free France, far from Paris. They took refuge in a monastery and there converted to Christianity. Anna's conversion was simply for survival, she and Felix having been athiests, whereas Lucile (Francois's mother) took the Christian experience deeply into her heart. In Bessarabia, modern Moldova, the family came from Kishinev where they were petit bourgeois. It took a while of detective work and some stamina, to then discover much upon the Shperberg line. Annas's parents had run a paint shop. Her father Bentsion appears to also have been a victim of the holocaust. His own father, Shimon, son of Avram, died in his 50's of a lung infection. A couple of days later I worked even more on Francois's genealogy. Up till now I'd looked only at his Bessarabian side, which did fascinate. Now I got to look at his French side, for which we visited his elderly father Pierre Joly who produced a whole grand tree of his ancestry which was from Burgundy, German Switzerland and the Jura. Besides I was able to inspire Pierre to talk of family stories. As a boy, Pierre had been so close to his Swiss granny Julia Joly née Kuhn, who eventually would die from asthma. She had previously worked as head chef for the nobility and one day there had arrived a handsome hussar, who on delivering a package of money to the countess was rewarded by being sent to the kitchen for a meal. It was on setting eyes upon this good looking man, Charles Felix Joly, that Julia fell in love. As she would later say 'The devil tempted me into loving this man'. Having taken her to her room and become pregnant they would marry and this she would regret, for she was from a good Swiss family and he was a poor 'good for nothing'. There was no work for him at his home in Burgundy, so Julia brought him to Switzerland so her family could find him work, only for his mother, Marie Claudine, to get furious and make such a fuss that they returned to France. He was her only son. His father had died when he was but 11 years of age. Even Pierre would say of his Hussar grandfather Charles Felix Joly, he was 'not a pleasant man and wasn't often at home.' Whereas Pierre loved his Swiss granny and even lived with her for some years when he was a small boy. Pierre's father Arthur Jean Auguste Joly was a miller, mechanic and mender of bikes. He was hard working and wasn't at home much either. He died from a heart attack, while in recovery from an appendicitis operation. Pierre's mother Aimée née Lamy was a discreet woman, always exhausted with her six children who she announced would bring her to her death for all their noise and naughtiness, and yet she would live a long life, as would Hussar Charles Felix Joly. Aimée's maiden name, Lamy, was as common a surname in the Jura as Smith was in England. Aimée's mother Leonie, Pierre would never know as she died before he was born, aged 55, from breast cancer. Louis 'Old man' Lamy, Aimée's father, was stately and pompous, with a little moustache. He had a machine factory, where Arthur Joly worked from the age of 12, and on there meeting Louis's daughter, Aimée, he'd fallen in love. When they wanted to marry, Louis said he would never accept his daughter marrying a worker, so they had to wait till they were of age, marrying against his will, for which Old Man Lamy was forbidden to come to their house (though he would when his son in law was at work and besides, Pierre often met him when returning from school and would sit on his knees chatting with him and liked him a lot). So there was the tale of a French Swiss family. Pierre himself was good looking and a ladies man. He met Lucile Roitman when they were both students at the Sorbonne. He was a village boy and she was a sophisticated Parisian and an adept organiser, for which he admired her. They were both religiously active in converting people to catholicism, both devout, although in later life Pierre became an athiest. Despite her Jewish origins, from a young age Lucille had loved Christianity, which she always remained true to. I'd heard the story from Francois and now heard of this from Pierre, that the parish vicar who had been hiding Lucille and her mother Anna from the Nazi's, whom Anna had worked for as his servant, converted Lucile when she was aged 11. I emotionally connect with the ancestors I research, and felt it deeply, the loss of their beloved kind Felix to the Nazi holocaust. When the concierge had warned Anna that Jews in the area were being rounded up, thus enabling their escape, Felix was in hospital getting a check up for a minor ailment and he was taken prisoner from there. All these French Jews were put in a camp near Paris called Drancy, whole families with their children being crowded in there and some famous Jews. Anna would send parcels of provisions for him. Even she'd recieve his dirty laundry, wash it and send it back clean. Felix occupied himself while there in doing portraits. There was ever hope in those days, illustrated in their letters to one another, which Francois showed me later; a hope that the war situation would reverse and they would be reunited. Their photographs I got to see, visions of a lovely family. But under SS Nazi dominion, they suddenely having taken over command of Drancy, wagons of inmates began to be sent far away to Auchwitz, most of the occupants to be gassed immediately on arrival. It breaks ones heart to read of this and that Felix was one of those sent to Auchwitz himself. He was part of convoy number 32, journeying in a convoy of 1,000 Jews to Auschwitz on September 14th 1942, 893 of them who were gassed at the end of their journey, dear Felix being one of them. Anna was a single mother now, considered to be a Christian. She would be quite well off ultimately, being compensated by the Germans for them having killed her husband. It was Francois who cleared Anna's Montpellier apartment when she died, selling her furniture and paintings. He never found any documents of hers or Felix's Bessarabian origins. As a genealogist this to me is tragic, the loss of such papers. Like, in regard to Felix, I can find nothing of his own Roitman ancestry, there being no birth record, or of his marriage to Anna, nothing; a complete standstill.
I settled into trying to understand more these genetic tools on Gedmatch, specifically the Eurogenes K13 and the Dodecad 3, one of my aims being to discern what is from my mothers side and what is of my fathers. Not that I really work out so much, but there are some things I do see. One marker which I have, but my mum doesn't, and which therefore is from my father, is of the Red Sea. And there I had been previously, holidaying for a month right by the Red Sea in Egypt. Both the Eurogenes and the Dodecad reveal a lot of West Asian, which is considerably higher in me than in my mother. Thus it does look to be that my huge Caucasus heritage, and quite likely the Anatolian/Armenian too, is from my father, or at least a greater portion of the Caucasus is. And isn't that a surprise, considering that mine and my mothers matriarchal DNA is from there, and yet my more recent connections to that land come through my father. Naturally western-northern European is our highest genetics, after which comes a high Mediterranean, which includes some Greek from my father and East European shores of the Black Sea from my mother. South Asian is in my mother and father, and south west Asian is only through my dad. North East Asian is from both my parents, which does get me thinking of Mongol invasions. No paleo-Pygmy African presence shows up after all on the Dodecad. There is, though, north west African from my mum (Moroccan) and north east African (Egyptian) from my dad. Among the Gedmatch tools are oracles for predicting likely origins of the four grandparents, and looking firstly at my mums, her Shetland grandparents are no doubt responsible for the Orcadian, West Scottish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. All is not so straightforward for grandparents Mary Ann Seagrove and D'Auvergne Bane. There is a considerable amount of south west English, pinpointed to Cornwall, that I'm not sure how to account for. This could be tagged onto either of grandparent I suppose. Like I don't yet know the place Mary Ann's ancestors dwelt in as yet before they came to London. The Irish is accounted for by Mary Ann's 'Sugrue' fathers side from County Kerry, and the Spanish with considerable Basque may or may not have come through the Irish connection. The Dodecad reveals that there is French other than just the Basque, and with a name like D'Auvergne naturally I wonder if that grandfather did have some secret French connection. As far as his Norfolk Banes and Beans are concerned, this would be covered by both south east English and Dutch, the Norfolk cloth merchants (a trade to which my people were linked) being from there, and this could also account for traces of German and Austrian. Although not to forget that the Hanseatic merchants also traded with Shetland. The conclusion of my mothers oracle is a quite present Cornish, Scottish and Danish, and a French Basque which is potentially through the Irish. In my own oracle Irish is the strongest, enormously so. Although my mum's Irish would appear to have a strong Basque and Spanish influence, my dads (which is from Westmeath) would be very grass roots Irish. So for my own grandparents in this: Shetland grandfather Lyall Inkster accounts for West Scottish and Orcadian; Granny Isabelle accounts for Irish, Cornwall, French and Spanish. Then, for my other two grandparents, pop and nanny Eileen, would come so much Irish. For pop surely Welsh would show, but maybe Welsh hasn't been sampled as yet and so has been lumped in with the Irish. Unless, that is, my Welsh Harrisons and Forest of Dean Hawkins were of Irish traveller derivation. So much Irish, it being the closest of all ethnic types to me inclines me to think my nanny Eileen's mystery father to be Irish as well. Somewhere on my dads side also comes in some distant Hungarian, according to Eurogenes, so it may be that the Maxteds came from a gypsy heritage after all, but I have to drop gypsyness for now as a consideration due to a lack of proof. Interestingly, beyond the strong French Basque, the most potent influence of all the Spanish areas is Catalan. And where I live now in the south of France was once part of the Spanish Catalan territories, before being snatched away by France. My coming to this land suddenly holds a significance I'd not before been aware of. The Dodecad points not only to Cornwall and Hungary, but also to Slovenia. And Sardinia is there through my mother, as well as north Italian. As Les Batt had pointed out, this appears to point out a route taken to Spain, being via Sardinia, a route of old sea traders, such as the Phoenicians. Certainly the Phoenicians come to mind with such locations, from the Levant to the islands of the Mediterranean to Spain. The Dodecad embroiders yet again on my mothers strong Iberian secondary ancestry, along with Sardinian and Italian. Whereas my own, presumably enriched by my fathers DNA, is increasingly exotic. The Eurogenes has pointed out for me strong Caucasus and central Asian ancestry, along with Anatolian. The Dodecad finds me markers in a more European and Mediterranean context and these are richly ethnic in variety. Primarily there are Greek, Romanian and Hungarian. So would that then relate to my maybe gypsy Kent-London ancestors? But, oh, they are a right melting pot of cultures, just as one may imagine Londoners to be. And I never thought there was any Jewish ancestry in me at all, for nothing else had shown this, but the Dodecad has made of me links to them. Beyond the stronger Greek-Romanian-Hungarian there comes Slovenian, Ashkenazi Jew, Cyprus, Sephardic Jew, the Balkans, Sicily, Lebanon, Moroccan Jew, south Italy, Cornwall (lol, so exotic), and Egypt. What to say of this, well, ones ancestry is not linear, nor easily determined. In these hundreds of years so many families are joined by the marriages and affairs of the ancestors. The Dodecad grandparent predictor oracle for my mother still emphasises a French Basque probability, with Slovenian coming up too, and naturally Irish. Mine brings in, from my father then, an addition of Romanian and the Balkans. At which point I take a break. Because my friend Omani comes to visit. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I still puzzle over my new autosomal update, for as far as logic will concede, the Spanish and French parts of my ethnic make-up suggest alternative fathers to otherwise husbands, somewhere along the line, and quite recently too. If Lyall Inkster, my Scottish grandfather, accounted for the Scandanavian, ie. Viking DNA, that leaves only 55% of British DNA to share amongst the three remaining grandparents. I have long anyway doubted my nanny Eileen Spencer's paternity, her mother Florence Maxted having been 9 months pregnant when she married her Percy in a registry office. And so the French part may account for this, she having been a barmaid in a port, so it may be that she was romanced by a French amour, visiting on the ships, who then returned home, never to be seen again. Or could that be the Spanish mixed with European, and what, African? Oh, how can I know? Anyway, it does look like Percy Spencer had accepted to play daddy to someone else's child. If only I could test other family members to understand this more! And other than this, somewhere, there has to have been another hidden paternity, to account for the rest of the foreign blood. And I do think this must have been on my granny Isabelle Bane's line, somehow, as both my pop George Harrison's parents looks are in our family. Could it be that Irish Thomas Seagrove also was not the father of Mary Ann? She was he firstborn of her mother Maria Harrison, she of the exotic looks, who similarly may have been the result of a foreign romancer. It could be that Maria herself may have been Spanish, mixed with Armenian and whatever else. How do I logically even try to resolve all this. Although her genetic contribution would be equivalent, in average terms, to 6% of my DNA, she could have contributed a larger chunk, as any amount of DNA can be passed on, it does not have to be uniform at all, so all really is complex in such matters. I can discount, actually, that my Eastern European is potentially Jewish. I'd not seen before that there was a separate results part relating to Jewish DNA, two categories, one for Ashkenazi and one for Sephardic, both being 0%. 0%'s, as such, are indicated for all the America's, all of Central and Eastern Asia, all the rest of Africa (but for the Central South African part), all Jewish types, the eastern part of the Middle East, nothing of Finland, not Siberia, nothing of South East Europe, and not Oceania. There isn't a separate category for Ireland, which is included in the British Isles. The great known archaeological site within the South-Central African area, of which I have 2%, was prior to European colonialism the 'Great Zimbabwe'. The vaster area is that which had led to Swahili culture. Arab traders had early on come to this region, since the 8th century, before which these lands were isolated, with some farming and iron working and many hunter-gatherer tribes. The earliest peoples here created rock art of which there are numerous examples. Another new section deals with ancient European origins, as revealed by the autosomal testing, something I'd not seen before, which shows I have more hunter-gatherer DNA than farming or metal workers: Hunter-gatherer 46% Farmer 41% Metal Age Invader 13% AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Familytree has perfected and updated its ethnic autosomal interpretations. And how crazy it is that, yes, before I was told I had some small Central Asian component, which is east of the Caspian Sea, which had got me all excited for its exotic appeal, but this has now been whacked back west and south of the Caspian to Armenia and Turkey. With a new ability to consider trace percentages I have been told I have Middle Eastern, that is the Levant, and Eastern European, both which I had not known of before. And whats more, to blow my mind all over again, I have some 2% Central South African! I almost feel, on being told this one day and that another day, that this science is too new even to be relied upon. Everything I have felt to believe is really fragile in this regard. And my matriarchal origin, is it really of the Caucasus, when it does seem that an Armenian link is arising, which is to the south of there. Anatolian Armenian Christian, this does appear quite possible. It could be this that has blended with the Levantine, and even the African, which has me confused of what to make of it all. The Africans could have been slaves in the Arab world, or from some past colonial interbreeding with locals. So many potentially fascinating stories are there which I will never know. And even this is not such a vast number of generations back. How exotic could it get, to know discover this ancestral connection to Africa, in the dark jungly south, where is Botswana, Angola, Zambia, and South Africa. And how watered down this is in me already, so pale and freckly, so very English looking. That black haired, ivory skinned ancestress in Greenwich, Maria Harrison; such a mystery resides within her. Was she a combination of Armenian, Levantine and African; is this why her distinct looks? My friend Deepak had once suggested she may be Armenian, with her un-British looks, and maybe he was indeed tuning into something. I need to locate the previous percentages that were given to me, to compare. I recall there had been Mediterranean, which has now been pinpointed to the Spanish peninsula. Other than which there is a whole connection to France, and/or its neighbouring lands, which I'd also not known of. British is naturally my main ethnic make-up with its Viking addition and of European there is in total 97%, though all then adds up to 105% and not 100%. The is the up to date percentages, then, which make up my autosomal ethnic mix: British Isles 55% Scandanavia 21% West & Central Europe 13% Spanish Peninsula 8% Turkey/Armenia 2% Eastern Europe 2% Levant (Asia Minor) 2% African (Central-South) 2% The Eastern European, which is from Poland to the Ukraine, is also a surprise. This is where the Ashkenazi Jews were located, so a link would be there, at least of having lived among them. This would concur with dreams I've had of being pursued by Nazi types and having to escape, and why I so feel to defend Jewish people who have known centuries of persecution even into modern times. Again, there could be an admixture into rarer types of peoples, via Ukraine, where indeed an ancient type of my matriarchal DNA has been found, as my friend Satshanti had recently pointed out to me. So, maybe my Eastern European type is indeed Ukrainian. With such a subject, all can only be guessed or assumed. These are but whispers of a past otherwise lost to us. But Africa, oh, Africa, how could I have know this was not just anciently the mother land, but something so much closer, still in my being. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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