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| Are you my mother? |
When I first thought of starting a blog, I wondered what I would call it. The title I came up with was inspired by one of my favorite children's book —a charming and silly tale called “Are You My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman. It's the story of a young bird who unfortunately has fallen from its nest and is on a quest to find its mother. Being a just-hatched bird, it doesn't have much experience of the world and so it indiscriminately asks everyone it encounters—from a cow to a bulldozer—the question, “Are you my mother?”
Beginning my
family research, I was similarly wide-eyed about the possibilities of
who my great-grandmother might be. Of course, having somewhat more
background knowledge than a newly hatched bird, I knew who not to
ask, where not to look. I did not go looking in Somalia or Poland or
Venezuela for the woman who was my ancestor. I knew enough to look
for Norwegians. Even so, I looked through a lot of records before I
found the 1925 Iowa state census for my grandmother Hannah which, in
turn, gave me the name of her mother: Bergit Leerberg. (Although
that's not how the census taker wrote it down—he or she spelled it
Bergette Bueerberg! Really??)
