A letter from a Granddaughter to her Grandpa...

Dear Grandpa Anderson,

I have thought of you a lot since you have been gone.  I can remember the smell of your pipe and the taste of the gum that you gave us every afternoon. I can hear you telling us where to put our used gum when we were done. "Put it in the waste basket not on the ground or your Mom won't let me give it to you anymore!", you would say. I remember the way you let us crawl all over you while you sat on the front porch.  You alway had room on your lap for us and a hug to share!

I remember that you gave me a dress for my birthday every year.  My favorite was the one you gave me when I was 5 years old.  It was my favorite dress in  Kindergarten. I wish I had that dress today but I think I wore it out because I wanted to wear it everyday! You also gave me a plastic pin in the shape of a pony, a red pony. I wore it alot too.

I must say that I have thought of you so much more in the last few weeks. I can not really know why I picked this very moment to begin looking at our Norwegian Family again. Maybe it was because of our visit last fall to Norway and Denmark and our continued communication with Bjarne. Or maybe it was my frustration with my Smith research road block.  

The letters, post cards and photos that you saved for us all those years are priceless! They spoke loud and clear to me when the time was right! They told me where to begin to look but they could not prepare me for what I would find! Thank you for leaving me these clues. These clues help me to find a new friend and family member in Norway. Her name is Inger Zainer and she is helping me to uncover long hidden information about you, your brothers, Haakon and Hagbart, your father Hans, your mother, Ingeborg and Grandmother, Olava.

It all started with the message posted on rootsweb.com about you,  Tjome, Norway and your old post cards.  One of your post cards was a birthday greeting from your Grandmother, Olava.  It was through Inger and your Father's birth record which helped me to realize that Olava was your Grandmother and my GGGrandmother.   When I saw her name on the birth record, I knew I had seen it before on a postcard.

Through a friend of Ingers, Lars, we now know who the members of Olava’s family were for 7 generation to early 1600. 

They all lived in or near Tjome except the earliest two generation which came from nearby Notteroy. This information represents years of research by Lars. I can not thank him enough for all this information.

Grandpa, I want you to know I miss you but most of all that I love you! I will preserve your memory and tell our Family story so future generations will know that we too come from Tjome!

Love, Jan