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When my uncle passed away, his daughter, my first cousin, was looking for photos and other documents to help her write his obituary and make a presentation for his memorial service. She knew I had some papers that belonged to our grandmother (my uncle's mother) and I offered to look through them to see if there was anything she might want.

I didn't find what she was looking for - it's okay, we found it somewhere else - but I did find something I had overlooked for many years: my great-great-grandfather Ole Olson's 'declaration of intention' to become a U. S. citizen. It was dated July 25, 1887, sworn before the district court clerk in Smith Co., Texas (Tyler area). Here's a transcript of the letter in case you can't read the image:

The State of Texas

County of Smith

Be it remembered that on this the 25th day of July A. D. 1887, before me Clerk of the District Court in and for said State and County, personally appeared O. I. Olsen, Who being duly sworn according to law, did declare and say his is a native of Norway in the Kingdom of Norway and Sweeden. and as a subject of the King of Sweeden & Norway that he is now residing in the County of Smith aforesaid. That he is Fifty Five years of age or thereabouts and that it is bona fide his intention to become a citizen of the United States and to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince potentate state or sovereignty whatever and particularly to the King of Norway & Sweeden of whom he is now a subject.

In Witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the seal of said county this 26th day of July A. D. 1887.

E. S. Cook

Clerk District Court

Smith Co. Tex.

Fascinating stuff! Several nuggets of family tree gold here.

-This document more or less confirms his approximate age, which corresponds with census and headstone info.
-It serves as a reminder that Norway and Sweden were united from 1814-1905. My Norwegian ancestors came to Texas in the 1850s.
-I didn't realize he ever owned property in Smith County. The first Norwegian community in Texas was in Smith County. Originally christened Normandy, the name was later changed to Brownsboro. Normandy turned out to be an unpopular location due to poor soil and water conditions. Many Norse relocated slightly southwest to the Four Mile/Prairieville area straddling the Kaufman and Van Zandt county lines. A final westward migration when Bosque County was created in 1854 proved most successful for the Norwegians, who settled in the Clifton area. But my Olson ancestors and a few others, such as the Waerenskjolds and the Wattners, didn't make that third move. They stayed in Prairieville.

It's usually at about this point that someone says they must have misheard me. Did I say there were Norwegians who immigrated to Texas? Why, yes, indeed. More on that in another blog post here.

Back to the naturalization process:

Further checking turned up a very handy document from the Minnesota Historical Society. It's brief and worth a read if you're a genealogist. The gist of it is that the process of becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States was quite simple in the 19th century. You visited a court of record and declared your intention to become a citizen, then returned in five years with a couple of witness who would confirm that you were a great guy (sorry, ladies - since you couldn't vote until 1920 and rarely owned your own land, citizenship wasn't something to worry your pretty head about) and swore the oath of allegiance and cemented the deal. The document I found confirms Grandpa Olson completed the first step. I don't have any further documentation so far to see if he followed through. He died in 1913, so he more than fulfilled the five year waiting period from 1887-1892. If he did follow through, his new citizenship status extended to his wife and any minor children that may have been born elsewhere.

Today the process of becoming a citizen is more complicated, and in light of current world affairs and security concerns, I suppose this is as it should be. Naturalization has come under the purview of the federal government rather than local. There are ten steps now, rather than two. There are forms and fees and tests. It still could take years. You still could get turned down.

I'm glad I found this document, but I'm sad about how I came to be looking through those papers. Turns out my uncle who passed away was also named Ole (Ole Bob, to be specific - after all, we're talking about Texas here). More than 100 years separates me from my Norwegian ancestors who immigrated to Texas. But reminders still manage to pop up in the most unexpected ways.

Now that you know about my Norwegian heritage, maybe that explains why my latest book features a main character who was born in Texas and is a daughter of Norwegian immigrants. Check out my book, The Dala Horse, now available on Amazon.

A version of this article first appeared on the Unleashing Readers blog in 2015.

It’s human nature to be curious about each other. In our caveman days, the ability to detect whether someone was similar to you or very different from you (friend or foe?) was an important survival skill. These survival instincts remain with us today, but we go about evaluating ourselves a little differently. We still observe and make judgments about our fellow humans based on previous experience. As mankind has evolved, we have added the wonderful gift of language - now we can also ask questions! Among adults we see this in the tried-and-true conversation starter,‘what do you do’? With kids, that question doesn’t work as well because most of them ‘do’ the same thing - they’re students. More (and better!) questions are required. A similar question that works well in this process of discovery is not, ‘what do you do?’, but rather: ‘where are you from?’

You may think this is a simplistic question, yielding little in the way of learning opportunities. Everyone knows where they are from, you might be thinking. What’s so special about that? I would argue this one simple question can be more enlightening than it seems, for at least two reasons. One: not everyone is aware of where they are ‘from’. Secondly, when I ask ‘where are you from?’, I hope to encourage you to dig into your family tree and tell me where you are really FROM. 

The cool thing about this seemingly nosy inquiry is that it works equally well when turned upon one’s self.  One of the main sources of inspiration for my latest book, The Dala Horse, was discovering one branch of my family tree was Norwegian. As a Native Texan growing up in a big city, it was something of a surprise to discover I had Scandinavian roots. The closest I had ever come to anything Norwegian was when the Cowboys played the Vikings, and that wasn’t very often.

Occasionally my younger school-age cousins will reach out to me with questions about our family tree for a class project. I am so thrilled that family tree projects are becoming commonplace in the classroom. It’s the perfect learning opportunity. It combines history, math, sociology, geography, and the golden ingredient: it’s all about the student!

The beauty of a family tree project is that it easily incorporated Into existing classroom reading plans. There’s no need to add or adjust the reading schedule unless you just want to. Once you start looking at your current assigned reading projects through family tree glasses, opportunities for tying into a family tree project abound.

The connection is pretty obvious with social studies, history, or historical fiction books. But if you dig a little deeper, it can also be made with more mainstream books. Most have characters with a variety of ethnic backgrounds. If not, they may take place in locales that vary from yours. Either is a great jumping off point with this simple and adaptable question: ‘[character] in [book] is from [location]. Where are you from?’ And if your current assigned reading is somewhat homogenous, ask the students to write their own version of the story, putting it in a different locale or time period that has some connection to their own family tree.

Some additional ideas for incorporating a family tree project into your lesson plans:

• Have students work up a family tree project going as far back as they can. It’s okay if it’s only two or three generations. Question marks in the family tree are okay. That happens to professional genealogists all the time!
• Pre-select a 20 year time period (1900-1920; 1960-1980). Have the students create a fictional biography about one of the family members who was born within that time period. Extra credit if the story correlates with the age that person would have been within that era. For example, if teacher has selected  the era 1940-1960, and Uncle Kenneth was born in 1941, his bio should focus on what he would have been doing from age 0-19. Hint: best to keep this within the last 100 years to make family tree research a little easier.
• Create some tickets, each with different eras written on them. Number of tickets should equal or exceed number of students in class. For example if you have 30 students, create 35 or so tickets. Divide total number of tickets into 3-4 different eras. Write the eras on the tickets and have students draw out of a jar for what era they will be writing about, again featuring a member of their family tree who lived within that era. This helps spread the research around so that everyone is not looking for the same handful of books on a narrow slice of shelving in your library. You can have them work together in groups, or as individuals. The groups can be organized so that each group is working on the same era so that you have a horizontal storyline. Or, group composition can be completely random so that you might end up with a more vertical storyline for the project within that group: one from 1920-1940; 1940-1960; 1960-1980; and so forth.
• Students select a person from their family tree. Match something about this person with a similar topic from your school library and write a review of this book. Be sure to include the connection with your family/why you chose it. For example, perhaps Granny Louise grew up on a dairy farm. Select a book about farms, or cows, or the state or city where she lived.
• Occasionally some students will have some difficulty tracing their family tree back very far. To avoid this issue, make the entire project about fictional or non-fictional characters that THEY get to choose. Create an imaginary family tree for that person going back three generations (self, parents, grandparents). Although the characters will be fictional, their significant life events (birth, marriage, school, death), geography, occupation, etc. must line up  more or less correctly with the fictional character. So for example a fictional family tree based on Hermione Granger would have a very different set of facts than, say, a fictional family tree of LeBron James.
• I did mention math, up there, didn’t I? So I better include a few math suggestions. Compile a list of the various ethnic identities in your class based on what the students have uncovered going back to their grandparents’ generation. Which group is the largest? Smallest? How would you calculate these two numbers into percentages? Extra points for determining how your class’s stats line up with similar statistics locally and/or nationwide. Extra points for discovering what other parts of the country have similar groups. In other words, if the smallest percentage represented in your class is of Italian ancestry, where are the largest concentrations of Italian immigrants in the US?
• Place all ethnic groups represented by your students in a jar. Draw three. Have students research whether there are any businesses such as shops or restaurants in your area that share a common heritage with these three.
• Reverse that project. Have the class compile a list of several shops and restaurants in your town. Have them research the ethnic groups they represent.
• Family tree programs and software are very popular now. If your students are old enough, you may lead them in researching family tree records online. In order to avoid any privacy concerns you can easily keep it very general and just look at for example census records for your town going back however far. A fun activity with census records is looking at people’s professions. If accessing these programs is not possible, allow family interviews instead.
• One of the activities I suggest in the book is a good example of demonstrating how cultural traditions persist through time. Cultural traditions of Norwegians in Texas might seem an obscure subset, until you start brainstorming how many of our traditions we follow and enjoy share today had their roots in other ethnic groups. Challenge students to list the various ethnicities represented in the classroom. Pair these with traditions familiar to many. For example, St. Patrick’s Day is an Irish tradition. Mardi Gras = French. Kwanzaa = African American. I mentioned the Minnesota Vikings earlier. Sports teams often have ethnic cultural connections and are very familiar with many students.
• Popular songs, artists, even instruments are a great resource for cultural variety. What are the origins of the guitar? Drums? What type of music is traditional in Poland, or India?
• I’ve saved my favorite activity for last. After completing their family tree research, each student must find something in their research that connects them with at least one other student. For example, perhaps student 1 had a grandfather who was in the Navy during World War II, and student 2 had an ancestor who emigrated to the United States after World War II. Be lenient with the connections. This is a great activity for class-wide brainstorming. A spider diagram on a white board or any display that could be left up for a few days would be ideal for this. The project is complete when each student’s name is represented and linked to someone else’s in the spider diagram.

My wish for students is that they experience the eye-opening discovery that even though some of us may look very much alike on the outside, we may be very different on the inside. And of course, the opposite is true! Sometimes the people who look the most different from us on the outside are the ones with whom we find we have the most in common. There may not be many of you reading this now who have Norwegian ancestors who settled in Texas, like I do. But I bet there are plenty of you whose ancestors came here from somewhere else - also like me!

Tree photo by the author; map photo from Unsplash

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Folks, if you haven't discovered the New York Public Library's Digital Collection yet, what're you waiting for? It's great for history buffs, writers, and knowledge-seekers of any stripe. If you're looking for an informative, entertaining rabbit hole that easily qualifies as productive procrastination, NYPL is the place to be.

I discovered this little gem tucked away in one of their cigarette card collections (apparently cigarette cards were the early 20th century version of Pokemon, with nerdier topics and better art). It introduced me to the term 'Cock of the Fleet', indicating which ship is considered the best within its group (or 'fleet' in naval terms).

Before anyone gets their feathers ruffled by this fowl terminology, let me assure you, spending only a little amount of time in South Carolina will dull your delicate sensitivities to this term being so freely bandied about. I admit I was a little shocked the first time I was grocery shopping at Harris Teeter after we moved to SC and saw a young man wearing a shirt that read COCKS. All in caps. Just like that, right across his chest. I had to go home, fan myself, release my grip on the pearls I was clutching, and Google. Turns out it's an homage to the state university's mascot (the Gamecocks), not an analog version of Tinder.

Oh and hey BTW one more little nugget I stumbled across: South Carolina's mascot is unique among the major athletic programs in the country. When you say you cheer for the Gamecocks, nobody says 'which ones?'. Take that, Tigers!

But I digress. Cock of the Fleet, or COTF as it's sometimes known, is a proud Royal Navy tradition.

Ships' crews compete in navy-related athletic activities, primarily rowing races. Betting is allowed, further enhancing the competitive spirit. The winners are awarded with a trophy or plaque, which they proudly display on board.

As the informative little cigarette card tells us, this tradition got its name because of a bizarre incident during the Battle of the Saintes in 1782 during the American Revolution.  As part of the larger goal to assist the Americans in their defeat of the hated British, the French navy hatched a plan to take over Jamaica while they were at it.

During the battle, the British ship HMS Formidable was struck by fire from a French ship, making a big fat mess of things on board. One of the crates carrying poultry became, unsecured, shall we say, and a rooster escaped. He spent the rest of the battle perched on the rail of the poop deck (and maybe that's why they call it that now), crowing his little heart out, cheering on his crew. Can you imagine? Death and destruction all about, your life flashing before your eyes as you imagine a forthcoming trip to Davy Jones' locker, and suddenly out of nowhere this rooster

appears and starts crowing to beat the band. If I had been there that day, dodging cannon fire and wishing I had paid more attention during swim lessons, I think I would have had to laugh that crazy hysterical laugh you can't control when something hilarious happens in the middle of something awful.

Maybe it was due to the crowing; maybe due to the British Navy's top secret new battle strategy known as 'breaking the line'. For whatever reason, the Royal Navy prevailed. Their victory had little effect on the American Revolution, but it did keep Jamaica out of French hands.

When the British Admiral heard about this cock tale, he granted a permanent stay of execution for the plucky rooster who cheered his crew to victory.  A happy ending for our fine feathered friend, and who knows, perhaps the ancestor of an equally fine fowl found on a football field most fall Saturdays in Columbia, SC.

A version of this post originally appeared in the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge.

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As a certified History Nerd, I'm beside myself with glee that a former number one Broadway hit is about one of our nation's founding fathers. But here's the thing: it's not anyone most people remember from grade school history class. Not Washington. Not Jefferson. Not Lincoln (and how many of you would have stopped me there, because you know Lincoln was great but doesn't qualify as a Founding Father?). Let's face it: between teaching-to-the-test public education policy and fading Baby Boomer memory, who of us can be expected to remember that stuff anyway (if in fact we ever knew it to begin with)? So this is why I'm so amazed at this phenomenon: A show about someone hardly anyone remembers is killing it on Broadway. Alexander Hamilton never made it to the top job (President). Sure, he's on the money, but I think they just threw him that bone for being the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury.

Let's digress for a moment: Hamilton is currently on the $10 bill, which is nicknamed a 'sawbuck'. I say currently, because he's also been on the $2 (yes, we still have one and they're so fun - go get some next time you're at the bank), the $5, the $20, the $50, and the $1000. It tells you something about me that I love the cute little $2 bill, but I didn't even know we had a $1000. That's what I get for not going into the drug dealing biz. Hamilton's time on the $10 may also be numbered - there's talk of kicking him off it in favor of a woman. Back to the sawbuck: It's called that for a somewhat convoluted reason, but interesting nonetheless. Sawbuck is from the Dutch word for the common construction tool often called a sawhorse. The early models were more X shaped. That way, they could easily be used for sawing up logs. And of course X being the Roman numeral for 10, if 'sawbuck' = X and X = 10, therefore 'sawbuck' = 10. And there's the extent of my high school algebra (and Latin!) knowledge.

Hamilton is not the only pop culture history juggernaut. Turn is a recent television series featuring George Washington's Revolutionary War spy network. Mercy Street is about volunteer nurses during the Civil War. Texas Rising, about a few pivotal days during the Texas Revolution, aired with success. Underground, Vikings, Spartacus, The Last Kingdom, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, even Drunk History are earning millions of views from across a very broad demographic. So let this be a (history) lesson for all of us writers: there's plenty of material out there, and we don't even have to make anything up. As someone once said, this stuff writes itself.

This post originally appeared during the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge. 

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You may have discovered a darling little television program called Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. There's much to enjoy here. It's a whodunit, which I adore (we'll talk about my Sherlock addiction in a future post). The lead character and much of the cast is female, which is refreshing. But what really drew me in was the setting: 1920s-era Melbourne, Australia. Fortuitously, Miss Fisher has loads of cash and is a real clothes horse, so they go nuts dressing her in the most amazing outfits from that era.

The clothes are great, the hair is great, but one of my favorite aspects of the 1920s is the Art Deco style. According to our friends at Wiki, Art Deco peaked in the 1920s. Like many things beyond ultra cool and fashionable, this art style originated in France. It features bold colors and uncluttered geometric shapes. Its emphasis on the glory of the man-made often renders something of an homage to the mechanical and industrial boom taking place in society after World War I.

The 1920s were a pivotal era, ushering in a phenomenal amount of societal change in a relatively short time. It's often said the invention of the mobile phone and the Internet have impacted society in an unprecedented way. But consider the contributions of the Roaring Twenties: the impact of electricity, and the automobile. And with the coming of electricity, the domino effect of mass media in the form of radio and later, television and movies, both silent and talkie. Factor in the perfect media storm of electricity, media, and entertainment that spawned the cult of celebrity worship that dominates our current news cycle. They're all still going strong more than one hundred years after their debut. It's only fitting that such a magnificent age is represented by such a magnificent artistic style.

This post originally appeared during my participation in the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge. 

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