Celtic Nations Day & St. Piran's Day 2022

 Gool Peran Lowen Onen Hag Oll! (Happy St Piran's Day One and All!)

It's Celtic Nations Day on 5th March, and for those of us in the Cornish Diaspora, it's also St Piran's Day. For us at home here, it's also our third consecutive one cocooning (we've been cocooning 2 years and a day today). Last year we went digital. This year we had hoped to maybe get together in a safe way with some friends, but it was not to be, so it's just us. 

We've had most of the afternoon in the garden. Our rescue hens now have their sandpit spruced up and topped up, as well as their swing re-strung ready for the summer, and one of our two potato planters is ready for us to plant up (we'll do that on St Patrick's Day as per). 

This morning, however, was all about the cooking preps.

My flaky pastry is chilling in the fridge, and my saffron buns have been proving most of the day.

Unfortunately I didn't have quite enough of my own saffron this time around, but I'm hoping that, if they do as well this winter as they did last winter, I'll be able to do them with all home grown saffron next year.

Our family Saffron Buns recipe has two modern branches. One here, and one in the States (carefully collected into the family's mixed Cornish and American Cookbook as collected by cousin Dorothy B). I love looking at the two alongside each other because you can really see which bits stayed the same and which evolved slightly and that kind of lends the voices of our ancestors and makes it feel even more like they're right there, despite having been cooking sometimes hundreds of years ago and opposite sides of the Atlantic.

To my knowledge, we don't have any in-family variants for vegan/coeliacs, but it's such a forgiving recipe (yours truly may have been known to use a little extra butter and make up the liquid in water when the milk went off once), I can't imagine it would be hard to adapt.
If you give it a go, shout me (dglaity1 on Instagram) and let me know

On the off-chance you're peckish and want to try your own, here's the Cornish, 'stayed at home' and the American variant recipes:

SAFFRON BUNS

* 1/2pt (300ml) Milk (Whole Milk)
* About 2tsp (.5g or thereabouts) Saffron strands
* 2oz (50g) butter

* 3¼oz (90g) clotted cream (I can do you a nice line in a clotted cream recipe if you're stuck for one)

* 1lb 4oz (550g) Flour (Bread Flour. We use mainly white if we have it, but wholemeal doesn't hurt it)

* 1 heaped tsp salt

* 2oz/50g sugar (I like brown sugar, but whatever you have to hand is fine)

* 2tsp (or 1 sachet) quick-yeast.

* 3oz (75g) raisins/currants/similar

* 1oz (25g) mixed peel

- I tend to just knock the oven on slightly if it's a really cool day as you'll need a really warm place for it to rise, so a low-lit oven from starting out until you set it to prove usually does the trick.

- Warm your milk through until hot, but not boiling. Stir in the saffron, butter, and cream. Set this aside for 15-20mins until it's hand-hot and properly yellow (should be proper sunshine in a jug)

- Put the dry ingredients (not the fruit) in a bowl. 

TIP: I tend to put the salt in first and the yeast in last. That way the one can't affect the other.

Make a well in the middle and gradually mix the now hand-hot milk mixture into the dry ingredients.

- When it comes together, knead it in the bowl for about 10 mins, adding in the fruit about half way through so that it incorporates.

- Set to rise in a warm place for about an hour (until it doubles).

- Knock back the dough on a floured surface per bread.

- Divide into 8-10 (if you've several children to feed, I sometimes go to 12) pieces and roll into balls.

- Leave to rise again on a baking tray for about half an hour.

- Preheat the oven (I heat it all the way then drop it down) to about 200C (at a guess, high-moderate for gas, but I'm not that experienced with gas).

- Bake for around 20mins until they're golden.

- Make the syrup while the buns bake. For the syrup, I use about 20z (50g) sugar to 3-4 tbsp water. Dissolve the sugar completely, then bring it to a boil for about a minute until it goes glossy

- Set the buns to cool and brush immediately with the syrup.

Serve: Either fresh and still warm (as is, or with clotted cream or butter as desired), or let them go cold and toast and butter them later.

~

1tsp saffron soaked overnight in 1/2 cup warm water

2 cups lukewarm water

1 yeast cake

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup lard or shortening

smidgen salt

1 cup raisins or currants

1/2 cup candied fruit (or more, as desired)

Flour (enough to make a soft dough)

In a bowl, mix together the lukewarm water and yeast. Add sugar, lard, salt, raisins, and candied fruit. Mix well, and then add enough flour to make a soft dough. Let rise until doubled in size. Knead down and fashion buns and place them into a 9 inch square baking dish or pan. Let rise. Bake at 325 degrees until done.

~

ANCESTORS

Our Celtic Family Lines we're remembering today for Celtic Nations Day (if any surnames match, do get in touch. I'm always up for comparing notes and DNA!):

CORNWALL (mostly South-Siders)

LAITY/LAYTY/LAYTYE

COLENSO

PERKIN/S

HOSKING

KITCHEN

ALLEN/ALLAN

EDDY

WOOLCOCK

COLLICOTT

PHILLIPS

OLDS

RICHARDS

WESTCOTT

THOMAS

WEBSTER

HARRIS

WATERS

CORNISH

SYMONS

MARTIN

WOOD

SENNAT

ROSEMORRAN

BATTON/BATYN
BERRYMAN
VEALE

CHURCH

WALES

de CLARE

de BEAUMONT

le ROGER
GRIFFITH
ap GWILYM

ap GRUFFYDD

Verch LEUAN

Verch MADOG

ap GRONWY

Verch ROBERT

IRELAND

McMURROUGH

Ní TUATHAIL

MAC MÁEL NA mBÓ

MAC DIARMATA

MAC GILLA PÁTRAIC

MAC DONNCHADA

MAC CELLAIG

Ní MORDA

Ní CAELLAIDE
MAC CARRACH CALMA

6 Years Blog Anniversary, Looking back and Forward, Back to Early Medieval Europe & Forward Planning

 

Daffs on our mantlepiece this evening

Well, I'm customarily late in writing this. In fact, our first daffodils of this year are in flower before I got this out. Ah well, I've always loved tradition...

The last while has been a lot, hasn't it?

I confess, 2021 has not been my busiest year for genealogy. I had a couple of commissions in the background, and I'm still pursuing my German descendancy project, which is technically, I think, as finished as it's going to be, but there are just a couple of 'not found' individuals that I'm still pursuing in the hopes I can fill out the set for my lovely client.

At home though, on our side, things have been fairly quiet. Mostly because keeping working, and a family together in body and mind under C-19 while cocooning throughout (this is day 700 cocooning for our family - and we still managed to catch 'Omicron' while we've been here. I became symptomatic on Boxing Day and have been poorly ever since. Spouse felt a bit tired and 'under the weather' for a few days, but is doing much better since) is... well, a lot of things from the relatives who lived 100 years ago is beginning to make more and more sense.

In other 'at-home' and social/family history news, my spouse discovered in April last year that it turns out that he/she (his/her preferred pronoun) is non-binary. This has given us some fairly unique things to think about in the context of our family history and genealogy, not least, we had to work out how to express his/her life in a way that online and computer based genealogy 'understands'.
we also welcomed two new members to the family this year, with the babies of a first cousin, and our nibling (is anyone else always tempted to write 'nibbling' too? ...or is that just me?).

I did also very nearly finish my 4 gen study - twice! First time round, our computer died and took my project with it. When I recreated it, I found that, in my sleepy, late nights approach (when will I learn?!), I did, recreate the project, but completely forgot about the research log, so I'm currently about half way through just re-doing it over again, as guessing on the log feels like cheating, so I'm starting from scratch. I've also changed my focus person from my maternal Great-Grandmother, to my Grandmother (yes, I have been on this assignment so long, that a whole new generation is eligible). With any luck, I will have that finished pretty soon (famous last words) and then it's just that licensing exam to sit. Perhaps this year. If our country ever becomes more realistic and less eugenicist in its outlook, so that it becomes safe to go out.

In recent activity though, we found another genetic cousin through one of the various facebook genealogy & DNA groups. It's looking like he and I are very probably 6th cousins once removed, but that depends on us tying my Catherine (only ever Catherine in her docs so far, and I'm not 100% settled on her parents yet), to his 'Kate', who is similarly always 'Kate' everywhere that he's found. It seems like a sound logical progression, but our DNA holds us closer (around the 4th cousin range), so there is an interesting thing to investigate there, because on our side at least, there's a possible sideways, double-related thing going on in this area of the tree, so that also requires some closer investigation.

There was also the very cool finding of all 4 of my grandparents (for the first possible time) in the 1921 census, and more information on their families (especially one GGF's extremely cool job!).

As with other years, my enthusiasm is high again. What remains to be seen is how much time there will be for genealogy & family history this year among other work. I still would rather be a slow and steady genealogist for the most part, than rush, because I know where that gets me (and we're not one of those families who can dash something off and it just works. Some of us, me especially, are cursed when it comes to anything administrative).

26th January was my 4 year blogiversary. Since I didn't do my customary look forward and back recently, I figured it's best to look cumulatively across the whole lifetime of the blog and see what's still outstanding, plus I have a couple ideas of directions I want to take the research this year if time allows.

Previous & New Targets (Oldest to Newest):	2022 and beyond...
Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed	Yeah, that's probably a never-never task, though I did at least design a frame I could keep it in, so that we could wall mount it and still have access to make updates, so that might be somewhere in the next couple years' projects.
Sit Licensing Exam	Still working at that. Fingers crossed!
The 'Bad Billy' Book Solve the Spencer-side mystery NEW: I want to aim for at least one post a month this year, but it's a compassionate goal, so I'm totally claiming this one for January (because who's to say we're not part Timelord anyhow?!). Push forward with the DNA side of things. Try and place some more relatives.	That second draft didn't work out either. I did, with the help of a lovely researcher in Australia, and a very helpful gentleman at 'Trove', plug one or two holes in the story, but really, what's needed at this point is: I either need to come up with an Edition 1 and just get it done, or I need to find some (legitimate!) way to access the Windsor Castle Archive and look over a particular document that exists only there. It feels like one of these is more achievable than the other, but in all honesty, I'm not sure which just now. Still no nearer on that one. Hopefully something gives somewhere soon. I've learnt that despite the best of intentions, I'm not great at follow through on the consistent blog challenges (not least because the platform shouts at me and makes threats at me periodically, and I don't have a clue how to placate it), so compassionate goals are going to have to be the order of business. That said, claiming this one, I have 1 out of 12, so that's 8.3% success, right? ...Ever an optimist! I also have a few ideas up my sleeve for future posts, but if anyone has some fabulous inspiration they want to share (with credit of course), I'd love to hear them! I've learnt over the lifetime of the blog so far, that coming up with something that would be interesting to anyone outside of our family (and in all honesty, sometimes only the fellow genealogy-nut relations) is the biggest challenge. I am currently working on a non-traditional version of the Leeds method to try to crack some of spouse's DNA matches, so perhaps there's a post in that, if it won't bore the pants off people? I currently have all 32 3rd-GGPs identified, so locating relatives up to 4th cousins is doable, and in most cases, there's a fair chance at placing a 5th cousin (though of course, our twin factor on certain lines does create some interesting effects). Out of 64 4th-GGPs though, I currently only have a firm handle on 40, plus 2 halves, so that makes the 6th cousin range a little more spotty, which is a shame when most of my matches coming up are smack-dab in that range. If we're talking 'faerie wand' type year, I'd love to firm up and figure out who the other 22 and 2 halves are.

So, that's about the shape of it at the moment.
How about you? How's your new calendar shaping up for this year's genealogy adventures?
x

Tribute to Nancy

 This afternoon, coincidentally around the same time as Sean Connery, our Aunty Nancy died.

Nancy (née Laity), was born at the start of 1935, the youngest child of three born to Lily May Jacobs and William Henry Laity.

By 1940 William had deserted Anna and the children. Eventually he would have a second family with another daughter and three more sons, including my Dad.

Nancy and her sister Stella, were avid lovers of family history, genealogy, and Cornish culture. Nancy was, in fact, my first real life example that genealogy & family history are not only things that it is okay to like, but also that it was the kind of thing that real people could engage with.

Nancy once told me that she early on in her marriage to Jim she had started looking for the half siblings. The search proved fruitful and both Stella and Nancy were writing regularly with my Dad by the mid 90s.

We all attended the 'Great Laity Gathering' family reunion in Marazion in the summer of '97, arriving a day or so early in order to meet Stella, Noah, Nancy, Jim & Alison first.

Nancy & Stella the first day we met
Taken outside Stella's house in St. Blazey.

'Great Laity Gathering 1997'
Trip to St. Michael's Mount to see the
portrait of Dolly Pentreath
RH edge: Dad (in black), Sis (in white), Mum (in orange)
I took the photo. Walking between Stella & Nancy.

That trip was the one that consolidated that there would always be a family history & genealogy journey at some point during my life. Stella made a proper Cornish tea that first afternoon and from then, throughout the rest of her life until she entered nursing care, Nancy gave me first potted genealogy basics lessons, what 'vitals' are, how to record and read trees, primary documents, secondary sources and photographs. She even taught me about the fine art of graveyard hunting for dead relatives. Later she would go on to share more research tips & first her discoveries, then later, she shared mine with equal excitement. She was so encouraging from day one. I remember she said to me that first day, if I got good, perhaps I could join the 'family genealogy team', co-ordinated by cousin Russell in the states. I said I'd love to join in and research with her & she joked that maybe after she passed, a slot might come up for me. I've lived half in terror of that happening ever since. Nevertheless, it was a really motivating joke. She was an exceptionally clever woman.

We stayed in touch and another proud day, was when my eldest son was tiny and we were able to get down to Newquay, she made him his first taste of Cornish pasty and on the same day, taught me the family pasty recipe. 

We stayed in touch across the years, mostly sharing family & genealogy news. 
The weekend before my Dad died we spoke on the 'phone and she was so warm, loving and supportive. 

Mum and I saw her last in June 2015, not long before she moved into nursing care. Shortly after, with the help of cousin Russell, we made a discovery about the family tree that allowed us to push back one generation by using the Land Grants of Henry VIII in Cornwall. This also allowed us to unify some of the branches higher up and tidy off some loose ends. I wrote to her about it, but I'm not sure she was able for that kind of information by that time. Still, it felt the right thing to do to keep her included. I never did write to her about the DNA side of things. Mainly because I think by that time, it would have been a bit beyond her. In a parallel world though, it would have been so cool to look together over our shared DNA & chase down the people and the stories.

I will most remember her as a massive source of love and support. She didn't care about the circumstances of how we came to be related, but that we were family.
Tonight I am strolling again through the Laity side of the family tree. Retracing her steps and seeing what there could be out there that's new.

Sleep tight Aunty Nancy. You are so loved. xxx

Product Review: 'The Beautiful Life of...' book by Four Bears Books (Not Sponsored)

NOTE: So that you know, I'm not being given anything to review this product, nor was I asked to review it. I'm just very impressed with it.

_____

Back along a couple of months I backed a project on Kickstarter because it looked pretty cool.

The concept was brilliant. Writer Juliette Eames and a small team at Four Bears Books had come up with a hard-back book that could be customised to make anyone's life into an heirloom accessible to anyone from the littlest family members upwards.

For my donation, we got to be one of the first families to receive a book. We chose to feature my Maternal Grandfather (who was my March Relative focus back in 2016) as of all the near relatives we could think of, he was the one relative who every living adult member of the immediate family was alive to know and we felt that was an important place to start. Over time I'd like to think that we could possibly collect a few more of these books focusing on other relatives too.


As is my traditional curse, some of the administrative side of it went wrong (if ever anything will have teething troubles, gremlins, or computer refusal, it's ALWAYS going to happen with me), so I ended up trading quite a few emails with Juliette herself and even, in the end, we even got to speak on the 'phone. I have to say, she's one of the most on-fire genealogy/family history people I've ever encountered and it's clear that her whole heart and soul is tied up in this product.

Our book arrived ever-so speedily today (I think about 3 weeks from standing once we got everything sorted out) and we are so impressed with it. It's a great quality book and beautifully presented.

Would you like to see a few pictures of what they created for us?

The Front Cover

Pages they made from family photos we contributed

The opening of the story

The part about his marriage to Grandma:

Should you happen to be on the lookout for a genealogy/family history based gift or even a baby welcome present, this would be a lovely option. We're really pleased with ours.