“Finding My Father’s Family”
Doris Ferguson, SGSC Member
All four of my grandparents and my father were born in Sweden and emigrated in the late 1800s to Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin. I knew very little about my father’s family and have found cousins even here in Colorado and visited some of our cousins near Kalmar, Sweden. My farmor’s line goes back to the Walloon iron workers from Belgium in 1627.
Doris Ferguson
Doris grew up in northeastern Minnesota and has lived in Colorado since 1954 when she came to work in the VA Hospital in Grand Junction. She is now a retired R.N., a widow, mother of three and grandmother of three.
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“Baron Malte: True Tales of an Eccentric Genius?”
Karen Rademacher, SGSC Member
My father’s paternal grandparents were both connected to the Nobynäs manor house in Lommaryd parish, Jönköping. We visited Nobynäs in 2013 and the owner told us some rather outlandish stories about the manor’s most notorious occupant, Malte Stierngranat. She said he had spent much of his life in America but in his later years he returned to Sweden and his beloved Nobynäs estate. She encouraged us to take a short walk through the nearby woods to see his burial site with our own eyes, a grave unlike any we’d ever seen.
Back home from our trip, I looked into the stories and not only confirmed them but found out even more about this eccentric Swede. I used ArkivDigital, old newspaper accounts and Google searches to weave together a true tale of crime, deceit, and betrayal at the hands of an eccentric genius. He died over 50 years ago but this lovable rascal still manages to keep his name in the headlines to this day.
Karen Rademacher
Karen has been interested in genealogy since the late 1970’s, when an aunt on her mom’s side of the family self-published a book about her Swedish and Scottish/English ancestry. Karen took this as a challenge to research her dad’s side of the family, which is all Swedish. In 2013, she traveled with her husband and parents to Sweden and visited all of their ancestral villages and churches. Karen joined SGSC in 2014 and is currently the SGSC webmaster.
Karen grew up in Arvada and graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in Civil Engineering. Karen and her husband Dale have four grown children and live in rural Weld County. She works at Northern Water in Berthoud as a water resources engineer.