Our Growing Family Tree

Leisure Time: Twelve Strikes and a Lifetime of Memories

July 18, 2026

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When I think about leisure time in my family, I think of bowling. This is the story of my dad’s love of the game: Friday night leagues, a junior bowling ball engraved with my nickname, Peanut, and the perfect 300 game he bowled in April 1985. It’s about the trophies…

A Birth Announcement I Once Took at Face Value

July 12, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

A 1929 newspaper birth announcement seemed ordinary: a proud father, a healthy baby boy, nothing more. For most of my life, I read it through the family story I’d been told, that this father had died before his son was born. Genealogy research revealed something else entirely. The record never…

A Hard Choice When Your Heart Wants Everything

July 7, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

This week’s #52Ancestors theme is “A Hard Choice,” and for once, the hard choice isn’t my ancestors’ story, it’s mine. Between a thirty-year paralegal career, genealogy certification coursework, building KMD Genealogy LLC, and a family that needs me present, I’m constantly choosing what gets the next hour. I used to…

Great Aunt Ida – The Ancestor Who Stays With Me

July 5, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

Some ancestors stay with you. Ida Svensson is the ancestor who stays with me. In 1998, a letter arrived from Sweden. An attorney in Kristianstad was settling the estate of a woman I had never heard of: Ida Svensson Bengtsson, my grandfather’s sister. As a newly minted probate paralegal, I…

The Possibilities Clifford Never Had – and the Truth Still Waiting

June 15, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

What does unknown parentage genealogy look like when the DNA points one direction and the records haven’t caught up yet? That’s exactly where the Mystery of Mr. Max stands in its fifth installment. Clifford Frank Max grew up believing his father died before he was born. The DNA evidence now…

A Ticket, a Harbor, and a New Life — The Place That Matters to Me

June 13, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

A harbor on Sweden’s west coast became the place that matters most in my family history, even though I have never set foot there. In November 1926, my eighteen-year-old grandfather David Svensson Sten left a Blekinge farm and boarded the Gripsholm at Gothenburg, bound for New York and a sister…

Paraskevia: The Powerful Meaning Hidden in an Ancestor’s Name

May 31, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

I almost missed her. The first time I worked through the parish records from Leluchów in Austrian Galicia, I noted the mother’s name with a question mark and moved on. When I finally came back to it, I discovered her name was Paraskevia — and that it carried a meaning…

She Lost So Much, But Found Unexpected Strength

May 30, 2026

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Kirsten M. Max-Douglas

Julianna Knysz Dubinsky was not easy to find in the records. Name changes, a second marriage, a death certificate filed under the wrong name: she slipped through every net I cast. But once I found her, I stopped seeing a research puzzle and started seeing a woman. She buried two…

Our Growing Family Tree

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Leisure Time: Twelve Strikes and a Lifetime of Memories

A Birth Announcement I Once Took at Face Value

A Hard Choice When Your Heart Wants Everything

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