Grains of Sand

Pixabay A few years ago I joined Ancestry.ca in order to track down and document my family's genealogical history. My mother's side wasn't hard, but Dad's was another story. My great-grandfather had worn out three wives on the farm and no one seemed to know what their names were, or anything about the children of the first two. Records were obscure—immigration authorities seemed to have a hard time with spelling many of the names of those coming from Europe back in the day. But in the course of searching out more recent family history I discovered some cousins that I had had never known, and about whom no one had ever spoken—two young boys in one family who had died young. Genealogies are interesting, revealing, and sometimes even important. So they were in the time of Christ. Matthew begins his gospel, a message particularly directed to the Jews, by reciting the genealogy of Christ in order to prove a direct line back to Abraham, the father of the nation (Matth...

Reading: Luke 3, 4 I recently got the urge to track down as many members of my family tree as I could. Somewhere buried underneath piles of papers in my brother’s apartment is an envelope containing my mother’s family tree, painstakingly put together by my mother’s cousin, Charlie. As far as I know dad’s side of the family has never been done. And, as it happens, I’m having a harder time tracking down my father’s family members than I have finding my mother’s side. One of the items left over when my brother and I sold the family home was a suitcase full of pictures. Some of these have helped me in my search, but others are a complete mystery. I have no idea who they are, how (or if) they are related, There is one that is particularly intriguing. His name is Ferdinand Bloedow and he was a minister. Apparently he moved out west, and died in the 30s in Winnipeg, Manitoba. But I don’t know how he’s connected to my mother’s family. “Bloedow” turns out to be a fairly common name. I s...