Background

This Network was created after years of doing genealogy about the ancestors and decendants of Carl Magnus Lindfors and his wife Niccolina Josephina Christina Grönbeck's family. It is really a fascinating story about a whole family that emigrated from Sweden during the 1880's and 90's.

In 2008 the list of new family members had grown so much that I needed a way to keep in contact with lots of people without being unpersonal. I wanted to be able to keep in contact regulary. A big plus was that this network also provided me with a new way of sharing/exchanging photos and stories.

Why I started doing genealogy!

It actually started in the summer of 2001. My grandmother on my mother's side got an illness in her eyes which caused her to almost loose her sight. She has had a lot of old papers that I have been interested in for years. But she has always wanted to keep them for herself because she wanted to learn more and do it herself. Well, due to her illness she realized that she couldn't do it herself anymore, so one evening she came into our house and had these old documents and photos with her. I started to go through them and immediately became caught up in it. I started doing the family research on my mom's side. Later in the autumn I became interested in my father's side of the family.

Since I was little we have had some papers from the 1970's -family research. It was a woman who was married to my grandfather's, Karl Magnus, brother who did this research. In the autumn, two years ago I took a closer look at those facts and saw that a few people had emigrated. By this time The CD - "The emigrant" had been released so I started searching there. I found some more facts. But it took me several months to really learn how to search for relatives abroad. It had become 2002. One day I was sitting at home on the computer doing some searches on the internet. I came across a page called the Social Security Death Index. I looked at the Lindfors children I had in my list, and did some searches. Bingo! I suddenly found Matilda Lindfors, born 1880 on December 24th. I saw that she had been living in Fosston, Minnesota. I finally had an emigration destination. I wrote and asked a friend of mine for help to search the American Phone book. She found a internet site and I searched in Fosston. I only found two names. Vernon and Irene Lindfors.

I worked up the courage and wrote them a letter. I didn't have their full address. But I went with it to the post office and asked if there were any use to try sending it. They said, sure! They said since it was an address in Minnesota and probably a smaller place the post offices are usually very helpful, since they know many are trying to find emigrant families. So I sent the letter. It took only about 4-5 days and then Vernon had written me an e-mail confirming that he was a relative to all those Lindfors people I had mentioned in my letter. I received Vernon's mail on the 20th of March 2002, and since then we have been corresponding and exchanging information about our families.

When corresponding to Vernon and Irene they have put me in contact with a lot of other family members. We are still working on putting our family tree together and I just love corresponding with my new extended family!

BIG HUG AND THANKS TO YOU ALL!

Victoria