A Special Request to Any Family Member

I started Time Will Tell as a way to document as much of our family history as I could.  Unfortunately, the history has been somewhat one-sided since most of it has been from my perspective. I am asking for your contributions.

Think about the things we’ve discovered that most of us didn’t know – how special the story of Oscar’s violin and what happened to it has been. Most of us had no idea that Oscar played the violin, or that Oscar and Teckla met when they played instruments at dances. The only thing I remember was when Roger and I were staying with Grandma one summer in Iron Mountain and Grandma got a far-away look in her eyes as she told us that Grandpa’s favorite song was “Jimmy Crack Corn” (which has many interpretations, although it’s basically a slave song – I always thought it was a drinking song about bootleg liquor. It’s possible that he quite simply liked to play it on his violin.)   

I also know that most of you probably have no idea of where or how to even begin.Today I came across an article entitled “Items to consider in writing your Family History.” I also found an outline of what Aunt Nan was going to write (and never did.)

Ron Osterberg has already agreed to write short stories for us about his side of the (Aunt Ida) Osterberg part of the Ekquist family. We’d love to hear more from you too.

I am hoping for as much family history as possible – not from just the Lundwall cousins, but from any and all extended family members. (Do any of you remember when the Lundwalls tried Round-Robin letters -- where somebody started, and each family's news was added to it and sent on to the next in line?) This might include stories about:

Childhood health, accidents, playmates, trips, brothers and sisters, unusual happenings, visitors, memories of other relatives, what influenced your major decisions in life.

Schools attended, teachers, who or what influenced you the most, special activities, achievements, funny things that happened.

What your parents did for a living. What you do/did for a living.

Sports you’ve enjoyed (I remember my dad sitting at the kitchen table listening to boxing on the radio, and we tiptoed around him so he didn’t miss a thing. Luckily, I married a man who didn't enjoy listening to the fights! One of my daughter's at age 11 decided she wanted to be Joe Namath.)

Courtship, where you met, proposal, wedding parties, honeymoon, meeting your inlaws. Married life, settling down, your new home, differences in family cultures, joys and sorrows. Hardships. Humorous incidents. Frightening experiences.

What you enjoy doing for recreation. Hobbies, travels, camping. Special celebrations you remember. How you celebrate holidays, birthdays, etc. What you do for pure enjoyment.

Family members, what you remember of often-told family stories, or how a relative inspired you. (We no longer have Uncle Bill or Uncle Dave to tell us stories; too bad we didn't start this a long time ago!)

This isn't a test or a major project; nobody will be graded. Share whatever is interesting and meaningful to you. Any story that does not embarrass or hurt others is acceptable. Without your input, our family history will not be complete. We are all getting older, please do it now.  

If it helps, think of it as a letter written to your family..... Family letters have always been treasured -- I remember when my parents went to Sweden, they were given letters received in Sweden from my mother's parents here in the United States saved for many years.  Aunt Nancy saved letters from everybody, and many of these survive today.

Sending hugs to all, as well as thank you for being a special part of our family, a part of our history!

Listing of our parent's Ekquist cousins

Ron Osterberg has been going through the postings, and he wrote me that he keeps getting lost about who was who.

In all my assorted collection of papers, I found a listing of the Ekquist cousins and scanned both sides of the page for him. Thought it might be nice for others to have a listing if they too wanted to try to keep the Ekquist families straight.  

Nancy Roberg put these together when she hosted the first Ekquist cousins reunion and then added dates as she knew them. I also went through and added the dates that I know. 

In order to add these pages, I had to save them as photos.

The list starts with Ellen's family (Ellen was the eldest sister) and ends with Teckla's family (Teckla was the youngest.) The list is in order from oldest to the youngest. 

Long Lost Relatives

Meet Ron Osterberg who lives in Connecticut. He is our second cousin and he's quite a writer and he writes from his heart!

      http://www.bhosterberg.com/Ron/

If you want to contact Ron, there is a place to do that as well. Enjoy! Below is how Ron and I connected just a few short days ago.

A while ago, I said I was doing some genealogy work on my mother's side of the family. I wasn't having much luck!

My brother, Doug, had seen a tv show about DNA testing few years ago, and he said he would really like to do it -- but it was very expensive. Then somehow I discovered that 23 and Me was doing genetic testing for $99, and that there was more information available for males in a family than for females. I sent Doug the information and told him that if he was still interested, I would pay for half. I was hoping it might lead to relatives of my mother's grandmother on her mother's side as we knew so very little about her parents. All we knew about her was that she had my grandmother, and immigrated from Sweden. Her husband remarried 3 years later -- and my great-grandmother disappeared. My great-grandfather's name was Nels Nelson from Sweden (and that's all we knew -- any idea of how many Nels Nelsons there were in Sweden -- it's like how many Jones families are in America!)

Since then, I've connected with two of my mother's father's relatives in Sweden and they've been sending me information and doing research for me, verifying what I've got right and what I've got wrong.

Then I connected with a granddaughter of my maternal grandmother's half-brother, and she gave me what little information she had and I shared photos of her grandfather that I had in my possession and told her what I knew. And nothing happened for months.

In the middle of last week, somebody copied one of the Nelson photos in that family and I recognized the name as the husband of another member of the Nelson family. I sent a message off and was informed that he would send the information on to his wife by email. To make a long story short, Debbie, who is the daughter of a first cousin once removed, contacted me and we exchanged information -- her dad was a little skeptical because he didn't remember me. This changed when I sent them a photo of his father, my mother, and him; along with everything I knew about my maternal grandmother's family. Her dad and her mother went to the Negaunee cemetery and collected dates off of the stones. So more of the family information came in.

Then another family tree came up with information about Grandma's sister Aunt Ida's family, but our Great-Grandparent's name was spelled Aquist instead of Ekquist. I sent her a message that if she was having problems finding information, that was why.

Doug sent me information last week about relatives that 23 and Me said were second cousins. Turns out one of them was Ron Osterberg, the grandson of Aunt Ida Osterberg; and the other was Dale, the grandson of Roy Krans, and the son of Rita.

The Krans relatives are getting together for lunch tomorrow in Green Bay -- but it's 4-1/2 hours one way and I don't have anyone to ride along with me, so unfortunately I won't be there. I have found more information in a book written about Krans relatives in a book about Aurora, and I will be sharing some of this with you soon.

Information has started to explode from all sides of my large wonderful extended family. Information is coming at me so quickly from all directions. it's difficult keeping it all straight and trying to make sense of it all.

And all this leads up to -- I would like to introduce you to Ron Osterberg who lives in Connecticut. He is our second cousin and he's quite a writer and he writes from his heart!

      http://www.bhosterberg.com/Ron/

If you want to contact Ron, there is a place to do that as well. Enjoy!

Slideshow!

Experiment to see if I can add a slideshow of all the photos on the blog. Enjoy!

More Cousin Reunion Photos

Joan sent me (and a lot of others) the link to Lin Dishaw's photos of the cousin's reunion. I've never seen these particular photos before and thought somebody else out there might want to see them as well.

Lin's photos can be located here:

https://plus.google.com/photos/109144211305198786817/albums/5770455971479797873

After you look at the photos, you will also have a chance to see Paul's photos!!!!!

Eugene and Alice, Norene, Doug and I enjoyed brook trout, wonderful salads, and rhubarb dessert on Sunday, all brought to Norene's by Eugene and Alice. The topic of the reunion came up, and we all agreed what a wonderful time we had -- and we are all hoping somebody decides to plan another one.

Norene is doing wonderfully well after her last surgery and will begin chemo again in the second week of August.

So Many Things I Haven't Thought About Before

This morning I found information in Familysearch.org about other immigrant ships coming into Baltimore, and reading, found the following paragraph:

     "The passenger arrival list was used by legal inspectors to cross-examine each immigrant during a legal inspection prior to the person being allowed to live in America. Only two percent of the prospective immigrants were denied entry. The information was supplied by the immigrant or a traveling companion (usually a family member). Incorrect information was occasionally given, or mistakes may have been made when the clerk guessed at the spelling of foreign names."

This explains how Anders Anderson became Andrew Lundwall, and how Anders Ekekvist became Andrew Ekquist. If you are looking for other ancestors, don't forget to use as many different spellings of names as you can imagine.

Have you ever wondered what our ancestors needed to come to America? Did they need a green card? What did they need to come to America?

I looked for the history of immigration and found this at:
        http://news.yahoo.com/immigration-green-cards-citizenship-121159749.html

                                          HISTORY: DOING THE WAVE

The U.S. is in its fourth and largest immigration wave.

First came the Colonial era, then an 1820-1870 influx of newcomers mostly from Northern and Western Europe. Most were Germans and Irish, but the gold rush and jobs on the transcontinental railroad also attracted Chinese immigrants.

In the 1870s, immigration declined due to economic problems and restrictive legislation.

The third wave, between 1881 and 1920, brought more than 23 million people to the U.S., mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, aided by cheaper trans-Atlantic travel and lured by employers seeking workers.

Then came the Great Depression and more restrictive immigration laws, and immigration went into decline for decades.

The fourth wave, still underway, began in 1965 with the end of immigration limits based on nationality. Foreign-born people made up 1 in 20 residents of the U.S. in 1960; today, the figure is about 1 in 8.

___

HISTORY: HERE A LAW, THERE A LAW

Until the late 1800s, immigration was largely a free-for-all. Then came country-by-country limits. Since then, big changes in U.S. immigration law have helped produce big shifts in migration patterns.

Among the more notable laws:

—1965 Immigration and Nationality Act: Abolished country-by-country limits, established a new system that determined immigration preference based on family relationships and needed skills, and expanded the categories of family members who could enter without numerical limits.

—1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act: Legalized about 2.7 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, 84 percent of them from Mexico and Central America.

—1990 Immigration Act: Increased worldwide immigration limit to a "flexible cap" of 675,000 a year. The number can go higher in some years if there are unused visas available from the previous year.

—1996 Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Expanded possible reasons for deporting people or ruling them ineligible to enter the U.S., expedited removal procedures, gave state and local police power to enforce immigration laws.

—Post-2001: In 2001, talk percolated about a new immigration plan to deal with unauthorized immigrants, guest workers and violence along the Mexican border. But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of 2001 put an end to that, amid growing unease over illegal immigration."

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All our ancestors needed to legally immigrate was the decision to come, save enough money for the boat, and the courage to board the boat to find a new life in "Amerika."  

Ward Elwood

Baby Ward

The scowl on his face was the same his entire life!

Baby Ward?

The above is a photo that I thought of Grandpa and Marlin, and I found a duplicate of it in another pile of photos with Ward's name on it. Looking at Grandpa, he does look younger on this photo than he would have been when Marlin was born. ??? Although Ward was the oldest boy, and Marlin was the youngest, their features had a lot of similarities..... but it still looks like Marlin to me.

Not sure if this was taken in Commonwealth or Caspian!

Another one of those AP photos of the Negaunee Snow Storm of 1937!
This one with Margaret's handwriting on it.

Nancy after move to St. Paul the first time.

Nancy, Margaret holding Norene, Ward
on Norene's Baptismal day in Hibbing
taken when we lived in the apartment in back of Ward's Grocery Store.

Ward, Lloyd, Teckla, Marlin with Nancy standing on steps

Doug, Nancy and Norene

Nancy's Graduation Photo

Nancy and Norene

Nancy

Margaret and Ward when they were Swedish Dancers at the American Swedish Institute

Norene's Graduation Photo?

Doug

Ward, Bob, Nancy in back, Margaret Seated,
with Suzanne and Germaine Reis in front

Cheryl Reis Malluege Senior Picture

Bob with Randy behind him. Funny, I can't see Randy's face in this photo.

Christine, our youngest at Graduation time

Germaine, my oldest grandchild, and her sister Suzanne

Ward -- I think this cemetery may have been in Sweden.

I was going to add more photos, but this post has been waiting a long time -- so I will post it now.