A Smörgåsbord of Stories
This year, I’m participating a writing challenge orchestrated by genealogist and author, Amy Johnson Crow. The program is called 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. This week’s writing prompt is: Tell the story of a favorite photo This is a … read more
When my family immigrated to America, they chose to settle down in Cass Lake, Minnesota. Why did they select this small town in the north woods? As with many genealogy questions, the FAN Principle was critical in discovering why my family chose Cass Lake. … read more
Konstantin “Charlie” Nörenberg departed Hamburg on 9 January 1909 and arrived in New York seventeen days later. Yes, he passed through Ellis Island and saw the Statue of Liberty. Leaving his home country, he traveled to Hamburg and embarked on the voyage with three other … read more
Family naming patterns give us a deep-rooted sense of tradition and family bonding. Victoria Prosser (daughter of Joseph Prosser and Brigitta Winkler) was born in 1856. Yes, the baptism record (shown below) spells her name as Viktoria and the German pronunciation would be fick-TOR-iah. See this … read more
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