New Year, New Challenge

Generations Cafe, a genealogy group, issued a 52 week OR a 12 month challenge for the New Year. I will be doing the 12 month challenge using the word prompt for the month to stimulate ideas for ancestry research and writing. The prompt word for January is FOUNDATIONS. I thought a lot about this topic and then discovered this graphic on Family Search website.

Looking at the color code scale I can see that my predominant heritage for 4 generations is in the United States. When I was growing up I always thought that all my grandparents came from foreign countries….NOT SO! I also thought that the Swedish culture had the greatest influence on me. Nope! Several generations of Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil war, who migrated across the country, who worked in coal mines and farmed fields…they influenced me.

However, my first generation German Grandma, Louise, had a lot of influence on me as I spent a considerable time with her and Pa Numsen before the age of 6…formative years. I’m thinking that I’ll read up on Swedish, German and American culture in the years before I was born. I’d like to know if the values and mores of the time influenced who I am….what are my FOUNDATIONS?