I don’t recall how I stumbled upon the information that led me to Anna, but her married surname rang a bell. I’d seen it on a passenger list, connected to a man who was coming to America to see his sister. The passenger (Johan Gustaf ~ line 8 below), and the sister he was joining…
My dad’s paternal grandparents married young. Very young actually, Gustav Robert Mangels was 18 when he and 16 year old Esther Ingeborg Clarin tied the knot. They were married in a Lutheran church which may explain the embellishment of their ages on their marriage certificate. Both Gustav and Esther had unhappy childhood homes. Gustav’s father…
When I started researching my family history in the 1980s, I knew very little about any of my ancestors, even less about their countries of origin, and next to nothing of our shared heredity. Neither of my parents were very interested in genealogy. I didn’t hold out much hope of discovering vintage family photos or…
A genealogy filing project kept bringing me back to the cousin quest I began years ago. Add to that a recurring daydream about a future trip to Scandinavia, inspired by the Thompson sisters in my family tree. Gradually my 2022 genealogy goal changed from working my way through a 67-page list of birth dates, to…
Interviewing the people in our family trees can connect them (and us) with historical events in ways that may surprise us. Years ago I asked my mother-in-law about about the day she became a citizen of the United States. “It took two trips to the courthouse.” she said. “The first ceremony was postponed because the President…
A couple of my favorite trick-or-treaters:
where2look4ancestors 