02/27/2026
welcome to my latest new page followers! I appreciate you being here so very much, as I build my genealogy & storyteller business!
(Btw, I noticed that one of my new followers shares a certain hometown as some of my own ancestors!)
For those who joined a while ago, let me tell why I haven't posted in recent weeks: it's because I've been busy digging into Midwestern ancestry soil, and growing a new tree based mostly in Wisconsin and surrounding areas, for a new client.
It's always fun for me to dig up records in the upper Midwest region, as my own US paternal roots also sprouted in this region of the country. It was my father's maternal lineage who settled in this area (and yes, accepted usurped Indigenous lands):
One branch traversed Canada from NS & PEI in the 1840's, shuffling south to settle in Wausau, Marathon Co, WI. They were themselves descendants of the original Clan MacNeill of Barra Isle, Scotland.
My Hahn lineage, however, came before them in the 1846 -my Germanic ancestors from the Alsace/Rhineland-Palatinate region. They settled in Watertown, of Jefferson/Dodge Co.
It took many years of research before I was able to "hop the pond," from this continent to the European continent, to find their original homelands. Records required decoding....years of deciphering and translating Old French and Scottish Gàidhlig, and esp Latin terminologies used in Catholic church records ... And oh! don't get me started on deciphering the fading handwritten scripts of the various eras!
I did struggle with these particular issues when i first began my genealogy journey, but fortunately there are technologies now thatserve very useful purpose, esp for translating, and history lessons when needed to help me understand certain things about our ancestors ...
Like WHY did these people choose to take such life threatening journeys to a distant foreign land? What was happening in their part of the world? What made them want to leave all that they'd ever known, including family members...sometimes even a few of their own children!
Was it a particular war? Famine? Oppressive leaders? Religious persecution? Some of these? Or all of the above? What was their story? Did they come alone? If they came as a family, did they all survive the journey? Was anyone born on their family's journey? Did any of them write home after?
Just as I discovered in my own journey, you, too, are made up of so many heroic & tragic stories. The tears of joy and of sorrow watered your ancestors' journey, and nourished the growth of your family tree ... all of which live within you now.
Let's discover & retell those stories anew, so that they might nourish the leafy branches that sprout after us.
