tested
S X
Profile last modified
| Created 24 Aug 2011
This page has been accessed 690 times.
Biography
Welcome to my profile!
I had two very early formative introductions to genealogy. The first was in the mid-1970s when my family attended an extended family reunion in New York state for my dad's side of the family. Wow, there were a lot of people there -- and most of them were related to me! My dad gathered up information (I still have the original pages) and brought it back home with us in the "family truckster" across the country to Seattle.
I was reintroduced to genealogy when my mom found my maternal grandmother's birthday book in the mid-1980s. I couldn't believe all the interesting Norwegian names in there! Fjermestad, Haaland, Svendsen, Mekkelsen, Anstensen, Spidbakken, and Hagen, to name just a few. Some I knew, and some I didn't -- what fun we had researching them!
Yeah, I was hooked. That led me on a quest to discover not just when and how each of my grandparent's families emigrated to the United States, but to try to find stories about each of them. Their four last names are distinctly separate: English (Eaton), German (Schrader), Scottish (Ross), and Norwegian (Fjermestad aka "Swanson"); although the histories, as such things usually go, are much more complicated.
Carefully recording all my research and sources on paper for a long time, I eventually "went electronic" with an early version of Brother's Keeper, and later Family Tree Maker and Ancestry -- and now wikitree! I know my paper records still have some undiscovered gems!
What's changed? Well, now I need glasses to read my tiny writing from those days! What hasn't? There are still puzzles to solve even after all this time!
I have fond memories of digging around indexes stored in libraries, genealogical societies, and the national archives -- carefully make notes from the microfilmed (or if lucky, paper!) originals. I also give a lot of credit to my long-suffering parents who I dragged along with me (mostly willingly) to traipse through cemeteries and graveyards, guided on one memorable trip by a printed copy of "Historical Collections of Harrison County" by Charles Hanna, written at the turn of the 20th century (nope, not a typo!)
As to education and careers...I have a background in mathematics and computer science, my first career was in an academic library, and now I work for a software company.
Happy Searching!
Sources
- Personal Recollection of S X. Written 22 August 2018.
Only the Trusted List can access the following:
- S's formal name
- e-mail address
- images (1)
- family tree
- father's name
- mother's name
- autosomal DNA test connections
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Laura ~ WikiTree Greeter
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