Genealogy & Family Stories

[cbloom]

My dad's side is Pennsylvania Dutch that goes back to the first Americans. We're certified Mayflower Descendants. My grandpa is the genealogist and goes to their conventions and such. That side has people who fought in the revolutionary war, the civil war (at Gettysburg), and of course WW2.

My mom's side comes primarily from Irish potato famine immigrants. They came over to the east coast and couldn't find work and were treated like scum so kept moving west and wound up in Oregon where they were farmers. My great grandpa became the only western distributor of this new invention the X-ray machine and became really rich and bought a big estate. He also was a drunk and a womanizer and wound up getting divorced several times (a huge scandal in the devout Catholic community), had mistresses until he was very old, and wound up blowing all his fortune so his kids had nothing.