I think of all those that moved west to find a piece of ground to own. To ride for miles and miles in a wagon with your children and all you own in the world, to an unknown frontier.
Bernina, where did your family come from in this world?
[video=youtu;IbPPnCb3XJE]http://youtu.be/IbPPnCb3XJE[/video]
Mostly Sweden, right before the Civil war and the end of WW2. Came over as new LDS converts.
I had genealogy crammed down my throat since I was a wee kid (grew up Mormon), so it's pretty boring for me as far as my family, I don't ride on my ancestor's coat tails like so many others in my family do. Threw all the genealogy stuff away when I became a Born Again when I was 20, the old "don't waste time on endless genealogies" from the New Testament.
Then I left that "religion".............
Grandparents on both sides were bi-lingual. Swedish, English, and then there was some German/Russian thrown in there because you never knew who might invade your little slice of heaven, better to know if the invading army had plans on executing you so you could escape.
So, my ethnicity and culture is kind of important to me, none of my ancestors were involved in the Civil War or slavery, they didn't have issues with racism like Scandinavia seems to have now, many took in Jews, Gypsies, and whoever else was being persecuted in Europe....and the older ancesters raped and pillaged in some pretty cool sea vessels, but weren't too interested in conquering the world like so many other groups. They weren't hung up on death, hell, and all that stuff.
Somewhere is a wife or mistress to Henry the 8th, Erik the Red is somewhere in the mess, some of them were in the Mormon hand cart deal (related by marriage). Then there's the yahoo my mom married (2nd marriage) that's all puffed up about his grandfather being part of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, yeah, dude, that's something to REALLY be proud of, NOT.
That explains why I can be pretty chill about stuff, but get kind of heated when it comes to human rights, religion, because I like the "neutral" attitude that was once Scandinavian, live and let live......and we may just invade you to get something we want, but we'll leave when we've got it, lol!
Crazy Vikings!!!!
Any history that the family recorded was basically about their conversion and life as Mormons, some wild ones about helping Mormons who escaped the Holocaust. Just not into it. My mom wasted thousands of hours putting all the stuff together because the Church said to do it, they do baptism for the dead, etc. (baptism and temple marriage by proxy). Have to make sure all your ancestors get baptized as Mormons or they're going to hell. :facepalm:
So there's that LDS connection with genealogy that turns me off big time. I am "deprogrammed", lol!
