The Chosen

My friend found the following among her papers of her family and sent it to me. The author is unknown and she received it from a member of her family in 2007, and I'd like to share it:

"The Chosen"

"We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before.

We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us." How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.

It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who am I and why do I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us.

It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are.

So as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we have never known before."

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I am willing to post our stories -- but first you have to share your stories with me. The stories you were told, the stories that you remember, the stories that were told over and over again and will be lost forever unless they are documented.

Our family has an amazing story, one that started in Sweden by those who wanted a better life, men who left behind family members, fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, and followed the allure of the "New Country"  where land was available, and workers were needed. There were iron mines starting up, and there were forests full of timber -- and lumber camps -- and both needed experienced workers, and so they came -- first the men, and then their wives and children. They came by boat, across country by railroad, across the Great Lakes to Escanaba, and on to the border towns of Florence. The Lundwall's to Florence, the Ekquist's to homestead in Little Popple which soon became Homestead.

Oscar and his younger sister were born in Commonwealth, Wisconsin, his other siblings were born in Sweden; his father was a carpenter. Teckla was born in Homestead, Wisconsin, the youngest in their family; her father worked in the Commonwealth Mine and the Logging Camps in the winter. It's possible that Andrew Ekquist and his sons boarded during the week at the Lundwall's boarding house.

Our great-grandparents built a life between Homestead and Commonwealth, Wisconsin and then our grandparents, Oscar and Teckla, moved when and where the work moved to -- the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, first in the Caspian and Stambaugh mine; then to Michigamme and Ford's Imperial Mine; and finally to the Empire Mine, belonging to Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company in Palmer. Oscar was a steam shovel operator on the HUGE steam shovels used by the mines.

They never owned a house, lived in rented company-owned houses built by the mining companies to house the miners. They raised 12 children, one who died when she was only 6, the rest lived until adulthood.

As most Swedes, Oscar loved the woods, picking berries, hunting and fishing. He always had a huge garden which kept Teckla busy canning for the winter.

Teckla's mother, Louisa, lived with the family until they moved to Palmer. Louisa then went back to Homestead where she lived with Teckla's sister and family, Ellen and Charlie Krans. Several of her children were still in the Homestead/Aurora/Commonwealth area.