Bucket List Item: Complete Family History

Since I promised to work on or knock off some bucket list items on the trip, it was about time to start doing that. Since one of my bucket list items is to finish my mother's family's genealogy.

Cousin Jean inherited a treasure trove of photos of this family from her mother Clara. After a great breakfast that included tangerines she picked off her backyard tree this morning, we started looking thru boxes of genealogy stuff, old photo albums, and old scrapbooks. The women in this family loved to collect newspaper articles about family and paste them in scrapbooks - and as a family historian, I could just kiss them for doing that.

This family is just one reason that I wanted to stop and see Jean - aside from the fact that she and her husband Bud are really great conversationalists and have wide ranging interests. The first photo below is of my great-grandmother Hvill (also spelled Viel) on the far left with her mother (and my great-great-grandmother Barbro the only adult in the photo).



But the real find of the day was this photo of my great-grandmother Hvill (or Viel) Lesteberg as a young woman. I had no

photos of her until her children were grown before this. She was always a handsome woman, but she is really beautiful in this photo. I can see now why the newspaper commented "Success!" when she accepted by great-grandfather's marriage proposal.

Jean and I cleaned up the mess we left on her dining room table, and Bud took all three of us out to eat at Black Angus. It was a really comfortable and cozy space and the food was excellent. I had prime rib with mashed potatoes and broccoli.