Connecting Canadian Sommer Families to Freistett

Having just returned from Moncton, New Brunswick where they celebrated the 251st anniversary of the German settlers from Philadelphia landing there in 1766, the genealogy cat is officially out of the bag in announcing my research that confirms Mathias Sommer of Moncton was originally from Freistett. You can read about the highlights on Facebook, or you can access my research article here. I'm happy to say that a shortened version of this article has been published by Generations, a journal of the New Brunswick Genealogical Society (Summer 2017, Volume 39, No 2, p. 3). The shortened version contains an update to my simple Sommer diagram, which you can access here.

To be honest, my head is still spinning from this adventure. Less than a decade ago, I would never have seen myself spending large amounts of time in places like Salt Lake City and Philadelphia, nor traveling to destinations like Freistett or now Moncton. To be sure my eyesight has suffered from so many hours squinting at screen after screen of nearly indecipherable genealogical documents, but the list of correspondents and genealogy friends just keeps growing. I particularly enjoy this networking aspect of the work, and I rather doubt I'd still be doing this without all the myriad conversations leading to insights which have broadened my own horizons and those of all our family tree.

So while I have tried to thank everybody who I met so quickly in Moncton last week, I also send out thanks to all my research kin. It's one kind of gift to just love doing this work, but the gift of making so many diverse connections in this present-day crazy world has been an unexpected gift that touches me deeply.