Go There! Generated by BingImageCreator AI 'April 19, 2024 How times have changed in family history research! Traveling to your family's homeplace or writing letters to genealogy or historical societies, courthouses, local libraries and archives used to be the first step in beginning family history if there were no published books or periodicals we could consult.  Later, we had access to microfilm, which required traveling to where that microfilm was. Now, our first step is often to see what's online at Ancestry.com, other pay sites, and free sites such as FamilySearch.org . But as we know, no matter how fast these services add new databases, only a small percentage of records are or will ever be online.  Why Travel? Beyond records, though, why should we travel to gather our family history? Two reasons: everywhere is different, and only by going there can we experience that. Reading about the history, geology and social forces that shaped the community is one excellent way

Hafslo, Norway By G.Lanting - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org February 2018 we were all watching the Winter Olympics. Norway was collecting lots of gold medals. My husband and I had recently moved back to Washington state and I was homebound and feeling sad that I had no Norwegian relatives.  Logo from Clipartmax ESPN Screenshot I had relatives, but who? My grandma, Anna Otto Johnson, (1884-1972) and her family had moved from Norway when she was a young child. They settled in Minnesota near aunts and uncles who had arrived earlier in America. I knew that one aunt, Berte Ottesdatter Kjerringness, had married in Norway and stayed back in the old country. That contact had been lost years ago. Norway had a tradition of name changes when people moved to a new farm so how would I ever find a living person?  Otto Family, 1895 Bird Island, Minnesota  Photo courtesy Carol Larson Anna Otto is in front row We had an old family tree that showed Aunt Berte’s married name and