Family History

Do you have a box or several albums of old family pictures that you are not quite sure what to do with? Do you have letters and maybe other documents from your grandparents or great grandparents that are important to you to preserve and share? Are there family stories that need to be written down for your grandchildren? Or perhaps you just want to find out more about your ancestors and are not sure where or how to begin.

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UMRA events.

The UMRA Family History Interest Group started in October 2020. The idea is to learn how others have researched their family history and what they have done with the important pieces of their family history — how they have preserved it, how they have shared it and how they use it.

During 2024-2025 the UMRA Family History Interest Group will continue to meet by Zoom on selected Wednesdays from 10 to 11 a.m. Our sessions will be:

November 6, 2024: Rebecca and Earl Scott: "An African American Family History"

January 8, 2025: Vicky Gaylord: "My Experience Donating Family Belongings" and Craig Swan: You Never Know What You Might Discover"

March 5, 2025: Will Craig on findings from city directories. alumni news, etc. and Laura Ericksen on Roots Tech.

May 7, 2025: Open Discussion, general questions, answers and sharing

Please contact Lynn Anderson <[email protected]> or Craig Swan <[email protected]> to get on the email list for the FHIG.

Links to upcoming events, and resource handouts are below.  See all Family History events and recordings, both upcoming and past.


My Family History

Dale Lange

I have developed a special interest in my seventh great grandfather, Michael Pierce… Putting together the pieces of Michael’s life has been an interesting journey, even if at times complicated and confusing. I have learned to evaluate sources that tell different stories and cannot agree on what one might think are basic facts like when and where someone was born. I have learned to accept and live with these and other ambiguities.

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Craig Swan

How I learned, this summer, that my great aunt, one of my paternal grandfather’s sister, was included in a fresco at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.  As far as I know she is the only relative of mine who is part of a fresco anywhere in the world.

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Will Craig

Starting with a short family story from my Grandmother, I traced and documented the Civil War experiences of my great grandfather, George Swift.

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Lynn Anderson

My paternal grandfather Hildum Anselm Anderson was in France during the WWI and in France, Luxembourg, and Germany after WWI...

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John Anderson

Using information gathered from family members I have put together a document about my paternal grandfather's family consisting of names, spouse names, progeny and birth dates that includes more than a hundred persons.

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Ron Matross

I wanted to share with my descendants my memories of growing up on the edge of Yellowstone Park.

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Jim Lewis

My husband and I helped my mother write her autobiography.

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Karen LaBat

I have letters my father wrote to his parents during World War II. He served in the Cannon Company, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division.

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Gary Engstrand

My parents’ albums, dating from the early 1900s to the 1960s, were falling apart and the pages were yellowing. I put everything on acid-free paper/plastic so I could at least preserve the photos.

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Will Craig

…how I've organized photos for my family.

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