Hit the Gold Mine!!!

I just got back from my trip to Spokane with my dad. It was wonderful. I came home with more genealogy stuff on the Halverson/Severson line than I ever imagined existed. My great-great grandfather was Serverin Halverson and he had 13 children. And we couldn't seem to find descendants for any of them and we couldn't find information about their spouses. Then I found a 2nd cousin of my dad's online about 3 weeks ago who is really into genealogy and she invited us up to see what she had.

Thursday we flew to Spokane, drove out and saw the Spokane temple, then met Liz and her sister Nancy and spent about 5 hours looking through the pictures and documents and information they had and comparing stories. Liz copied a ton of pictures and documents onto my flash drive and filled in a ton of gaps. I love finding a picture and/or story about one of my ancestors. It makes them so much more real.

Friday we drove out to Richland and did a session at the Columbia River temple-- which was beautiful inside and out, then we drove back up to Eltopia, where my dad's uncle lives. He is in his 80's. We had a wonderful visit with him and his wife, then 4 of their 5 kids came over for dinner. It was fun to meet and put faces to names I've heard stories about for years. We were also able to get a bunch of pictures identified. (My grandpa is one of 3 brothers, and the other 2 have passed away several years ago, so this was our last chance to get some of these labeled.)

Then today, we drove back to Spokane to meet one of my dad's great uncles, Richard, and my third cousin, Charlene, and Liz and Nancy again. I got copies of pictures of some of Severin's children that I didn't know existed. Along with a copy of a 37 page document showing all of the known descendants from Severin's father Halvor along with a great deal of documentation.

There were so many perfect little miracles that worked into this trip and the people we met and the information. It just happened to be spring break for Liz, so she could meet us, plane tickets were cheap, she lived close enough to Earl that we could go see him too. And then Thursday night after we'd spent the day talking to Liz and Nancy, Nancy got a very unexpected phone call from Charlene-- they hadn't talked in over a year or so, but she just felt like she should call and when she found out we had been there wanted to try to meet us before our plane flew out. We had booked the last flight of the day, even though at the time we set that up, we had no plans for Sat. In fact, we didn't have anything for Saturday until Friday.

We will probably be able to do the temple work for at least 30 more people from the information we got on this trip, likely more because now I have starting points. I am so excited and can't wait to go through all the files and pictures that I brought back.