I’ve mentioned before that my family isn’t very close. I don’t think my immediate family is very close, and we aren’t close to much of our extended family. It’s limited to the Christmas phone call. After spending the summer with my grandfather, and going to our family reunion for the first time ever. It’s been an experience.

Recently, I decided that I would start looking into my family’s roots. I wanted to know how long my ancestors had been in America. I assumed it would be not very, and that would be the end of that.

I was sorely mistaken.

On my dad’s side, I can pinpoint the day that they came over. His mother, a Dunnigan, was descended from Irish immigrants who came to America in 1890. His father’s family can be traced to a man and his wife, plus 6 kids, who came from Germany to the US in 1839.

On mom’s side, things are a bit more complicated. Her ancestors split two ways. They’ve been here since just before WWI, or they have been in the US for forever. Forever being about 1630.

Already I’m farther back than I had thought I would get and the trail keeps going on and on. This project has been taking up a lot of my free time, and the more I put into it, the more I want to put into it. It isn’t what I expected, and it’s brilliant.

I’ve been without a long term project since my 52 books in 52 weeks ended. I think this might be it.

The mystery of the week, it would seem to be, is that my 3 ^rd great grandfather George, and his wife Anna, moved from Germany in 1839. They went through Ellis Island in New York. The thing I’m anxious to find out is why they came. In 1839, four of their children died, aged 11-7. They had a daughter who would have been less than a year old who didn’t die at that time, but died very young. I think that there must have been some kind of illness or disease that caused them to want to leave, and the project now is to find out what that would have been.

Do you guys have any mysteries hiding in your family?