Biographical Bullet Points

Marta was featured in a Meet Our Members Post on the G2G Forum!

• 1982: Born in Seattle, Washington, USA. Two younger brothers.
• 2000 - 2004: Attended liberal arts college. Studied Chinese, Theater, and Opera Production.
• Nov 2005: Met future-spouse at the university in Stuttgart, Germany.
• Apr 2008: Birth of son in hospital.
• Jul 2009: Married spouse in a civil ceremony by Frau Jürges at the Standesamt am Kloster in Ribnitz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.
• Oct 2009: Birth of daughter in hospital.
• Feb 2012: Birth of son at home.
• Apr 2015: Birth of son at home.

The Genealogy Thing

Marta gifted some WikiTree kindness during the 2022 Secret Santa!

The maternal grandfather's genealogy is well researched and well documented by my cousin Tom. He has shared his research here on WikiTree and over at Geneanet but the really good reading is over at his site Family History Notes. My research on this branch is built off of his. Together, we have been chipping away at our brickwall ancestor James Rogers Robinson (b. 1814; d. 1898 in Staten Island, New York) who has uncertain origins, but seems to have connections to Nova Scotia.

I've been collaborating with my mother on my maternal grandmother's line. Her family tree centers on New Jersey and New York, but eventually leads to Winterbach (Pfalz), Bebra (Kurhessen), Barbados, Holland, England and Scotland. Her g-g-grandfather had a particularly interesting life as a kind of social worker running orphan trains out of New York City. Memorably, our work on this line has included a wonderful visit in early Mar 2020 to the Department of Archives in Black Rock, Barbados -- just as the world was shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

My paternal grandmother comes from several large southern families whose genealogies seem to be pretty well documented. I put some work into her grandfather Ellis, who was a Confederate veteran in the U.S. Civil War. I visited his company line at Vicksburg in May 2022.

I enjoy helping friends and family puzzle out their roots and break brick walls. I'm a hobbiest who tries to stick to established genealogical standards. I practice conventional paper-trail genealogy as well as basic genetic genealogy.

I have a Certificate in Genealogical Research from Boston University.

The Swedish Connection

A big pursuit of mine has been to research and document my paternal grandfather's side, an extended family of Swedish-Americans and their descendants:

In Dec 2005 and Aug 2014, I made visits to the towns of Vänga and Örsås, the home parishes of my great-grandparents. The current owners of an ancestral home in Vänga welcomed me and my family and let us camp on the property for a couple of nights. I've shared photos and maps from that visit on Enebacken's page.

Enebacken Torp in Vänga, Västra Götaland, Sweden

In Nov 2015, I visited the Swenson Center in Rock Island, Illinois and viewed their microfilm records of Bethel Lutheran Church in Braddock, PA. The church was an important cultural center for the local Swedish community in the first half of the 20th century. The Swenson Center also houses the microfilm archives of the Svenska Veckobladet, which was a Swedish language weekly newspaper published out of McKeesport, PA, and the go-to publication for sharing important news in the Swedish-speaking community around Pittsburgh. It's chock full of social mentions related to the Swedish-Americans in my family.

My great-grandmother Hilda kept a collection of old family photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, postcards, books, and other sentimental personal items. This, along with some items from Hilda's niece Esther Holmquist, was inherited by her daughter Hildur. Hildur assembled cherished mementos into scrapbooks. When Hildur died in 1994, Hildur's beloved niece Sarajane Johnson became the caretaker for much of the collection.

On a visit in Nov 2015, Sarajane gave me generous access to this collection. I scanned a large percentage of the items. Many letters and postcards are yet untranslated from their original Swedish. Sarajane later sent me two photo albums from circa 1890-1910. Processing, translating, and properly sharing this collection digitally has one of my ongoing projects. This includes hunting down and reaching out to (cold-messaging) distant cousins who may have an interest.

On WikiTree

I manage a couple of Space pages that relate to my family:

• Bethel Lutheran Church, in Braddock, Pennsylvania
• Enebacken, an ancestral home of my family in Vänga, Sweden
• Holmgren Family History, written by my great-aunt and her cousins

Related Sites

Outside of WikiTree, you can find me a these other related sites:

Ancestry.com

FindAGrave

Genealogi.se

FamilySearch

Subscriptions

I have access to a number of online databases and I'm glad to assist you by looking things up in these sources:

Ancestry.com

Sweden's ArkivDigital.se

Germany's Archion.de

Newspapers.com

GenealogyBank

NewspaperArchive

I am a supporting member of the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, the Genealogical Forum of Oregon, the Seattle Genealogical Society & Library, and the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College. I am also a transcription volunteer for the Washington State Digital Archives.

DNA

DNA tests on 23andMe and Ancestry.com have confirmed both my paternal and maternal relationships.

Conventional genealogies of my (and my parents') DNA matches appear to agree with my documented paper-trail genealogical lines back to my:

• great-grandparents Claus Johansson & Hilda Holmgren
• great-grandparents E. Collins Humble & Myrtle Boaz
• great-grandparents John Scheig Miller & Grace Robinson
• great-grandparents Russell Rock & Beth Watson

• 2x great-grandparents Andreas Tobiasson & Magdalena Holmgren
• 2x great-grandparents J. August Olausson & Klara Johansdotter
• 2x great-grandparents Ellis Boaz & Sue Thompson
• 2x great-grandparents Samuel Watson & Ella Naylor

• 3x great-grandparents Zedkijah Boaz & Nancy Fancher
• 3x great-grandparents John Naylor & Eliza Higby

• 4x great-grandparents Johannes Adam Müller & Catharina Margaretha Siegel
• 4x great-grandparents Johan Magnusson & Kerstin Olsdotter

• 5x great-grandparents Johann Adam Roschy & Maria Magdalena Seibert
• 5x great-grandparents Anders Bengtsson & Martha Andersdotter

Sources

• First-hand information provided by Marta Johnson.