A Keeper of Family Secrets

My family history begins with immigration. I started to say 'Ellis Island,' except that my mother's parents met on the boat from Sweden.

I am half Swedish, a granddaughter of two immigrants who as a young married couple made their first home in Swede Hollow on St. Paul's East Side, just off Payne Avenue. (Although if you are from that area, 'East Side' is sufficient; everyone knows what you mean without saying 'St. Paul.') And until very recently I never questioned my genealogy.

That is until my son took one of those DNA tests.

Our conversation about his results planted the seeds that have grown into this blog. His test results paint a very different picture of ethnicity than I believed to be the case from what I thought I knew about my grandparents.

It appears that I am not half Swedish after all.

My latent curiosity about family history, along with my writer's mind, was awakened. So many who would know the stories of what happened are long since dead, and as I face the prospect of having to register for Medicare next year, it occurs to me that what little I do know could be lost with me.

Hence this blog.

I am the eldest child of five. My mother was the youngest of six, her parents having separately immigrated to the United States from Sweden when they were teenagers. (But as fate would have it, they took the same boat.) My father was the second oldest in a family of five; his grandparents were immigrants who came to this country from various locations in Europe, some settling first in Canada. His mother was supposedly fully Scottish, but the DNA test my son took says otherwise. In fact, it seems the Scottish blood is merely a trace. English, Irish and German make up most of his genetics. And then there are mysterious traces of French, Italian, and even Siberian.

Another mystery. More family secrets?

Unfortunately I am not privy to the family secrets regarding their origins, and the path to uncovering them seems to be a literal dead end. Dad has been gone for more than two years, and my mother died only a few months after him. I was only 21 when my Grandma Dewall died; I was pregnant with my son Andy in 1989 when we lost Grandma Kate. All my mothers siblings are deceased as well, so it seems there is no one left to ask.

My mother's family came straight to Minnesota, a state that resembled their Swedish homeland. My father's family took a more circuitous route, wandering through Ohio and Iowa. Both my paternal grandparents were born in this country. My Grandma Kate was first generation American; my grandfather's ancestors had been here a little longer than that. My dad gave my son a set of books on Ray family history, and apparently there were some Rays on the Mayflower. Whether they were my relatives or not is unclear.

All the further back I can go is my great-grandpa who was called 'Doc'; Grandpa Doc was a circuit preacher and possibly a medical doctor as well. The only thing I know about his father is that he was a 'lazy Irishman and a horse thief' (or a horse trader in Ohio, depending on who was recounting the stories. I don't even know his full name. Supposedly he had one son, John, who took off for Alaska to seek his fortune and was never heard from again. Oddly enough, 'Ray' is a common name in some parts of Alaska, so maybe great-great Uncle John reached his destination.

My dad's ancestors were for the most part farmers, but my grandparents set their sights on another lifestyle. From Kimball and points north of the Twin Cities, they made their way to the East Side, where they bought the only home they ever lived in, a brand-new, just constructed house on Wheelock Parkway, an area just being developed. My Grandpa Harvard died in that house at the kitchen table; my Grandma Kate spent less than two weeks in hospice care before she died. My father was almost born in that house; a freak blizzard on the 2nd of May, 1935, nearly prevented a trip to the hospital. I lived in that house with them all through college, my grandparents having had compassion on a disgraced teenager who was booted out of her home.

So now you know the basics of my back story. I have spent about half my life in Minnesota and the other half in various places in the U.S. I have been told I physically resemble my dad's side of the family more than my mom's. Perhaps with my soul it's the same. I find it somewhat ironic that I lived for five years in Ohio, very close to the old Ray family farm, without even knowing it. The last I was aware, a shirt-tail relative whom I know only as 'Aunt Fan' inherited it, being the only child of any only child. I learned this only after my husband and I had moved back to Minnesota; sadly the notes I took on Ray family history recounted by Grandma Kate were lost to a basement flood in the early 1990s when the sewer system around Payne Avenue and Ivy failed.

But I am still very proud to be a child of the East Side, born and raised in Minnesota. And I treasure what memories I still have, including the secrets. I must admit, I am more than a little curious about the Siberian part.