Firstly — Welcome to our growing genealogy community here in Substack!
Secondly — what a thoughtful question about newly discovered families and what that even means.
I grew up knowing who my family was, but only to my own grandparents, so my lived experience is far different from yours, yet, when I started doing family history I also discovered dozens of strangers I was suddenly connected to.
I’ve gotten to know many of the third cousins (we have a common set of 3x great grandparents) and we’ve shared stories and histories, and it is crazy how much we have in common. We even have old German words we all use, and which have been carried thru the generations from those shared grandparents.
In some ways the connections are contrived, and we are strangers, but in other ways, we have become members of a newly discovered family, as well.
I hope you come to find those same kinds of connections and common ground in your own new family.
Thanks for the response. At the beginning it’s a bit like sending things into a black hole. But I haven’t tried to do any “marketing” yet, and I’m sure my old “blog friends” from some 15 years ago, and people in different countries I have worked with will sign up when I send them something. I just felt it was more important to get started writing first.
Funny about the German words! Although my father didn’t say he spoke German, later we understood why. But by then we had absorbed quite a few French and German words for household stuff. And when we started German at school, we realised he was always counting under his breath in German. Must be an obvious sign of a native German speaker.
I only ever knew my Maternal Grandmother. My Maternal Grandfather passed away the day I was conceived.
My paternal grandparents lived abroad, and sadly, I never knew them. I do know that I am a bit of a dolly mixture (as my Irish wife describes me)
One-quarter Swedish, One-quarter German. In the other quarters, I am still working on this and hopefully will soon have some definitive information on my father's side of the Family.
For now, I am writing my real-life stories about growing up in California. Ollie
Firstly — Welcome to our growing genealogy community here in Substack!
Secondly — what a thoughtful question about newly discovered families and what that even means.
I grew up knowing who my family was, but only to my own grandparents, so my lived experience is far different from yours, yet, when I started doing family history I also discovered dozens of strangers I was suddenly connected to.
I’ve gotten to know many of the third cousins (we have a common set of 3x great grandparents) and we’ve shared stories and histories, and it is crazy how much we have in common. We even have old German words we all use, and which have been carried thru the generations from those shared grandparents.
In some ways the connections are contrived, and we are strangers, but in other ways, we have become members of a newly discovered family, as well.
I hope you come to find those same kinds of connections and common ground in your own new family.
Thanks for the response. At the beginning it’s a bit like sending things into a black hole. But I haven’t tried to do any “marketing” yet, and I’m sure my old “blog friends” from some 15 years ago, and people in different countries I have worked with will sign up when I send them something. I just felt it was more important to get started writing first.
Funny about the German words! Although my father didn’t say he spoke German, later we understood why. But by then we had absorbed quite a few French and German words for household stuff. And when we started German at school, we realised he was always counting under his breath in German. Must be an obvious sign of a native German speaker.
Nice to meet you here in Substack Helene!
I only ever knew my Maternal Grandmother. My Maternal Grandfather passed away the day I was conceived.
My paternal grandparents lived abroad, and sadly, I never knew them. I do know that I am a bit of a dolly mixture (as my Irish wife describes me)
One-quarter Swedish, One-quarter German. In the other quarters, I am still working on this and hopefully will soon have some definitive information on my father's side of the Family.
For now, I am writing my real-life stories about growing up in California. Ollie