Many of you are reading this after being directed to this blog from my other blog that is filled with mundane details about my life, my cat, and stuff my husband, Justin, and I do around the house interspersed with my attempts to be funny. This blog is going to have an actual focus.
I became intriqued with geneology and history when I was in middle school. My grandmother, Dorothy Skjoiten, has a well documented family history published in a book that has been updated a few times throughout the years. This book is known as "The Bjerke Book" in family vernacular and it traces her family history back to the 1870's when the family came to America. This book introduced me to Berthe Maria Hagen Bjerke, my great great great grandmother who came to the prairie of Minnesota and then North Dakota in 1878, 11 years before N.D. was a state. The tales of claim shanties and sod houses in the Bjerke Book seemed like my family's own version of Little House on the Prairie and I was fascinated. I started reading about geneology in books and on the Internet and came across the following starting point for a family tree...
"Each human has eight biological great grandparents...and most Americans cannot name them all."
So I decided that I would be able to name all of mine. Of course, there were the easy ones...Grandma Mina, Grandpa Lund, Grandpa Skjoiten...these were the three that lived to pose with me in photos. The others were more challenging but my parents knew the answers. However, they could not name most of their great grandparents. I asked my Grandma Dorothy if she could name her great grandparents and she burst out laughing and said "Ahh! I don't think any of them even spoke English!" So...here I go...
Melvin Bjerke and Whilelmina Meldahl
Gustav Skjoiten and Myrtle Bjertness
Norris Lund and Margaret Kalin
Carl Borg and Gida Aarstad
This fascination still continues and I got a wonderful surprise for my birthday this year! It was my dad's idea...my parents gave me a membership to the website Ancestry.com! Oh my...that website can suck me in and an hour can pass in the evening without me even knowing what has happened. Some of the ancestors have been traced by other users back to the 1500's and 1600's! It truly makes my head spin and I thought this blog would help me organize the information
Artemark, Alvsborgs Lan, Vastra Gotaland, Hallingdal, Sykkleven, Romsdal, Tromso, Hallingdal...These are some of the places that my ancestors came from. Both Justin and I are about as Skandinavian as a modern day American can be. My dad's side of the family is, as far as I have discovered, of 100% Norwegian ancestry and my mom's side has ancestors from Norway and Sweden as well (Diversity)!
So...my eyes hurt from getting this blog organized and typing this entry so I am going to end there for today. Check back because I do intend to share ancestry information on here and either share screen shots of Ancestry.com records or post links to Ancestry.com pages. I am not crazy about the layout and appearance right now...I don't know why the background I added doesn't reach to the top of the page and I feel like I have tried everything to change it and nothing works. But enjoy what I have so far!
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