NOWOTNY

I'm Stacey Birk, and my mom is Donna Snider. She's the one who taught me to know and to love my ancestors. Growing up, their pictures covered the walls of our home, and their life experiences were our bedtime stories.

 

Back before the miracle of the internet made genealogy convenient for the rest of us, Mom labored away at her endless binders, digging through files, rolling through microfilm, and compiling everything with her trusty typewriter. 

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Today, she and I share five acres on a little island in the Puget Sound with our husbands, my two kids, a dog, a horse, two goats, some fruit trees, and a very rocky garden where we spend our sunny days. The rest of our days--most of our days!--are filled with family history.

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Mom is retired and now runs a twice-weekly genealogy workshop at our local church. I'm a freelance writer, which leaves me plenty of time for family history research, this blog, and even a bit of travel. Back in summer of 2017, my husband and I spent three weeks in Norway with his family visiting their ancestral farms and churches.

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My prime motivation for this effort, however, are these two little people.

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They love their grandparents and their aunts, uncles, and cousins; and I want them to have that same love for their great-great-grandparents, their cousins twice removed, and everyone who lived and sacrificed to make their blessed lives possible.

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(To read about the very real benefits of genealogy for kids, check out this New York Times article.)

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For the same reason, we love collecting new family members. If you are a descendant of Agnes and Wenceslaus Nowotny, or are related to them in any other way, we'd love to count you as family! Please get in touch, and let's build this family legacy!