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Introduction . . .Who are we and where did we come from? We can only go back a fraction of the time that the human race has existed to try to document our ancestors. Written records have existed for the common man for about three hundred fifty years and any records that may have been made earlier, are lost in antiquity. But in those few hundreds of years we have a great deal of material to sort through. In ten generations, a span of about 250 years, we have 1024 direct ancestors to locate and record. If we could go back 20 generations, which would be a span of about 500 years, our task would produce one million, forty eight thousand, five hundred and seventy six direct ancestors. We began working on this record of our family in 1991 with a desire to find out who are ancestors were and as much about their lives as we can. We have gathered many documents showing births, marriages and deaths and these dry statistics are fine for making charts showing how we are related but they do not reveal the adventure of the lives of these persons. As we can only go back a generation for the actual memory of these people, we can only relate here what we remember or can read in the letters and postcards they left behind and as for ourselves, we will try to leave an interesting story. Our research has taken us to many libraries and archives, notably the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the St. Paul, Minnesota Public Library and the Pacific Southwest branch of the National Archives. The most of our research time has been spent in the Family History
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . Many have sent us information about their part of the family and we are grateful. We especially thank the following: Our son Victor who started it all by sorting out some old postcards and listing names of relatives. His questions started us in our quest. He also checks our efforts and gently calls our attention to the errors that creep in. Our eldest son Robert always has the answers when it comes to problems with the computer. To Marge Hebrew in Omaha, Nebraska for the use of the Slipke Family photo album where we found many clues on that branch of that family. And to Loretta (Carl) Brand of Colwich. Kansas has found very valuable records on the Slipke, Magette and Meurisse families. Without her help, much of the information on these families would not have been found. |
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