Ever wonder what happened to your family members?
I don’t mean immediate family members, nor do I mean aunts and uncles. I’m referring to your aunt’s and uncle’s children and their children? If you moved away from your ancestral home, chances are you hesitated a bit on the last two questions. And what about your grandparents brothers and sisters? Okay, so maybe you know who the brothers and sisters are, but what about their sons and daughters? What about their grandchildren and great grandchildren?
I can tell you my closest grandmother’s sisters and brothers without too much hesitation, and I’m somewhat confident I can name all of their children, but that’s about where my family knowledge stops, hmm…
So, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother on my father’s mother’s side are Harry and Anna Coleman and this website is for all of their decedents to answer just those questions.
Harry and Anna Coleman lived on a farm in Brill, WI in the 1920s – 1930s. Latter they moved just north of Menominee, MI. Their decedents, all 5 generations of them, have spread out across the country, and with that spread fell out of touch. Until, that is, we all migrated back to Menominee, MI, which many of us consider our ancestral home, for a Harry and Anna Coleman family reunion in the summer of 2022. (The previous Harry and Anna Coleman family reunion was some 35 years earlier!)
I, like many who attended, knew peoples names from stories told by our parents and grandparents, but I didn’t know what they looked like, what their hobbies where, or what they had been doing for the last 30 years. I had no idea I had cousins that attended the same annual car show in Florida that I’ve been to many times, or cousins that lived in mid-west cities that I’ve traveled through on several occasions, but didn’t know I had any relatives there. And all of us have pictures and stories of the same people, our grandparents and great aunts and uncles, that we haven’t heard or seen before.
Which brings us back to what this website is about – keeping in touch with the family we already know, making new connections with members of our family we don’t know, sharing pictures and stories of those who have passed on, and making new memories with each other.
This website seeks to accomplish those goals with two main features, one is a place to post photos and video where other family members can view or download them and the other is a place where family members can post upcoming events, road trips, vacations, parties, etc.
Because you never know, I may post we are taking a trip to say, Mt. Rushmore, and two or three cousins may see it and say, we’re not too far from your route, stop by and visit, or we’d like to go to Mt. Rushmore too, lets plan to meet there. And just like that, old memories shared and new memories made!
Thanks,
Kipp Krause
(Harry and Anna -> Wanda -> Quay -> Kipp)