This is my Dad and Mom, Dexter and Louise Halldin in 1941, 12 years before I was born.
Why searching for my family? Because I am, have been, always will be. It’s not that I don’t have a family – I do – a mixed bag of nuts for sure and I love them! I am searching for ancestral family, those who came before us and all that. I also am looking for family that I never knew existed – I have found cousins – have met some – and learned more about our family as a result. I guess this current urge to put the search for family in a blog is due to my DNA test I recently took. I have always known that my father’s family was from Sweden, his parents emigrated in the late 1800’s and so when I did my DNA test I was certain I would turn up 50% Swedish and the other 50% a mixed bag of English and French from what my mom told me her heritage was. I couldn’t have been more surprised when my ethnicity came up very different!
52% Great Britain – ok, that made sense from Mom’s side, 17% Irish (What?? no Irish that I have found, but could happen I guess) 16% Western European (Makes more sense with French included there), 10% Italy/Greece and 1% Scandinavian. Whoa! what the heck??? First thought in my mind is that my Dad Dexter was not my biological father…what else could I think??? My mom was a strange lady and she sure liked the men, so anything is possible. So I have been trying to figure out what is causing this ethnicity quandary! I mean, maybe my Swedish grandparents parents came from Ireland or Western Europe? or ??? I will not profess to be even remotely able to understand DNA and it’s variables – which are many – but still.! so one of my male cousins on my dad’s side – he would be my first cousin once removed – his dad was my dad’s nephew, said he would test his DNA, then his sister did it and her daughter did it. I am not coming up as a match to my male cousin or my female cousins daughter – female cousin’s results are in yet. This is all on Ancestry.com where they match you up to other test takers and give you lots of cousins for sure. I DO show up as cousin to people in Alabama, or family ties to Alabama and I have NO CLUE how that happened…we have no family in Alabama but I am still studying that one – maybe someone on my mom’s side ended up there – but I am not finding it yet! Anyhow – all of that has started me going through old pictures, researching my family tree as far back as I can go. I have made some interesting discoveries that I will be sharing. I am hoping that my family will read this and learn and that any other readers will just be interested in the weirdness of it all!!!
My mother was into our family history. We found a long lost family member who had Fugue syndrome and later connected to his family again.
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