Honored to be "Ancestor Approved"

I am surprised/honored/humbled/pleased to be the recipient of the Ancestor Approved Award from Laura Ann of Dreaming About Home, a fellow GeneaBlogger on 7 April (sorry for the delay.)

My thanks goes to her and the group for designing and sharing this award with me.

The Ancestor Approved Award asks that the recipient list ten things you have learned about any of your ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlightened you and pass the award along to ten other bloggers who you feel are doing their ancestors proud.
Here are the 10 things I have learned from my ancestors (and my husband's.)

1. Humbled: by the daring of Henry Hoffman to leave everything familiar in Switzerland and travel alone to America on a sailing ship in 1854.
2. Surprised: by the way Henry enabled/encouraged all the rest of the family to follow him to Illinois over the years.
3. Enlightened: by contact with a granddaughter of Henry's youngest brother John. Ruth Whalen was a treasure both for the knowledge and documents she shared and for the pure joy of knowing her.
4. Surprised: to learn that cousin Jacob Homberger, who died in the Union Army in Texas after the Civil War, would have a pension file created when his mother in Switzerland successfully applied for a pension based on his service.
5. Surprised: to find her home village in Switzerland engraved on the gravestone of Henry's mother Elisabeth Homberger Hoffman.
6. Humbled: to learn of the many hardships so many of our ancestors faced and often overcame.
7. Surprised: to find divorce and suicide among our ancestors was not as uncommon as expected.
8. Surprised: to find a record of the death of Christian Hoffman in Toledo, Ohio, on his journey from Switzerland to Illinois.
9. Enlightened: to learn how much employment by the railroads sustained families and led to migrations.
10. Enlightened: by realizing how much of our ancestors is still present in us, especially apparent in some of the words and sayings we retain.

I salute my fellow genealogy bloggers by passing along the "Ancestor Approved" award to them for what they have taught me and how they encourage me.

1. Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog
2. The Slovak Yankee
3. What's Past is Prologue
4. Kinexxions
5. Nick Gombash's Genealogy Blog
6. Shades of the Departed
7. Random Relatives
8. ThinkGenealogy
9. The Chart Chick
10. Bluebonnet Country Genealogy

Of course there are many more wonderful blogs, but some of my other favorites have already been given this award!