About the Keeper

The goal of my work is to preserve and present the history and stories of my family, for the benefit of present and future generations. It is a large family; many of my ancestors of a century ago have descendants numbering in the thousands. It is to these relatives, both near and distant, that I hope the site will be most useful.

My name is George Larson. I began studying my family’s history around 2008, after archiving my late mother’s collection of old photographs and home movies. The bug bit me pretty hard, and I worked quite hard at it for about a decade. I have done most of my research online, with extensive travels to visit distant relatives, ancestral home sites and gravesites.

My father’s ancestors all came from Gudbrandsdalen, a valley in central Norway, in the late 1800s, while my mother’s, for the most part, came to North America prior to the Revolutionary War, from England and present-day Germany. Dad’s immigrant grandparents settled in western Wisconsin. A generation later, his parents homesteaded in western North Dakota; another generation, and my parents moved to Washington state.

Mother’s ancestors also expanded west, with various branches progressing from Maryland and New England, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, to the Dakotas, where my mother was born and met Dad.

Surnames of my nearest ancestors include (besides Larson) Myers, Moen, Drayer, Samuelson, Volden, and Sprung. More distant and marriage-related surnames are Pederson, Sletten, Nesseth, Erickson, and Johnson. I am also researching the ancestry of my wife, née Thiel Beechel, with surnames Beechel, Litch, Mohler, Thiel, Green, and Jordan.

 I am not an accomplished genealogist, and sometimes settle for less than a professional standard of proof for facts I assemble. I find that seeking the stories behind the facts is far more rewarding than facts alone. You must not consider my work authoritative, but I dearly hope you find it engaging, and worthy of the sharing.