A Smörgåsbord of Stories
In October 2013, I took my mother on a 3300-mile road trip from her home in northern Minnesota through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. One of the highlights of our trip was going to the Garnett Farm in Adair County, Kentucky and meeting … read more
The only photo I have of Victoria Blees shows a strong, confident, mother of five posing in a St. Paul, Minnesota studio, circa 1900. But who were her parents? Where was she born? When I wrote about the Blees lineage in 2007, Victoria’s early … read more
In February of 2020, I took an online class during RootsTech (an international genealogical conference sponsored by the people at FamilySearch). During this class, students were encouraged to share their genealogical findings through the medium of short videos. We were taught how to mash up … read more
Family surnames connect us to our ancestors. In our modern thinking, we want our surname to be unique and to be consistently spelled the same way. In genealogical research, names are often written by a government clerk or a member of the clergy; they spelled … read more
My journey into genealogy began before my children were born; I was twenty-six. At that time, I worked as a Music Therapist in the Activity Department of a St. Paul nursing home where one of my daily duties was to read aloud from the Pioneer … read more