2010 Discoveries

     2010 has not been an easy year for my family. I have made 5 trips to NY due to health problems with my mother and aunt. Mom is in a nursing home, has great care and is failing fast with Alzheimer's. Aunt Clara died September 3rd.  The last trip in November was to be with Mom for her 92nd birthday.
     For many years, my mother and aunt never really shared any information with us about our Bjerknes & Horgen  families. Between trips, I lived on Ancestry and with the help of Gerd, I now have information for the Bjerknes family going back to 1475. Caroline, a distant Bjerknes cousin in Australia, had a copy of the Bjerknes book, printed in 1953. Caroline copied the pages for my line and mailed the pages to me. Of course, it is in Norwegian! I then  made 3 copies to mail one copy to Gerd and take one to Aunt Clara. Clara was delighted to see her copy. Gerd translated to English the information for me and I now have created a mini book, with pictures and the history for the family members and plan to add information for the generations the generations I can write about!
     Clara finally decided I was to be the family historian in May. So, when returning home after the visits with Clara, I had a large box to bring home with a lot of wonderful Bjerknes & Horgen information. I had no idea she had so many pictures, family documents and letters written in 1910! How I wish she had shared with us! I have scanned many pictures, letters and documents to share with my brothers and to merge in to FTM.
     2011...there is still a lot to scan. Then I have to decide how to organize all of the family history and where to store of it.