I, like so many other ancestry enthusiasts, started tracing my family history by beginning with my direct paternal line. As a child, I didn’t know too much about the High family. My paternal grandfather, George High, died roughly a year and a half before I was born, so I never had the opportunity to ask him about my paternal ancestors. I only knew that the High family originally hailed from Swedish and immigrated to America sometime in the 1850s. Although my family regularly attended High family reunions every August, I regrettably never took the initiative to ask any of the older relatives from my grandfather’s generation about our lineage.

In November of 1991, I was rummaging through the storage room in the basement of my family’s house, when a small yellow book caught my eye, “The High Family: 1799-1972.” Immediately, my 13 year old mind was brimming with curiosity. Would this book inform me who my Swedish ancestors were? Would it mention how far the High surname goes back? Would it shed some light on exactly how I was related to all of those distant relatives I saw at the family reunions?

As I opened the book, I saw that it was dedicated to the ancestors of Sven John Hög II. Soon, I learned that this “Sven John Hög II” was my great-great-great-grandfather and was thepatriarch of the High family. The book proceeded to list all of the known descendants of Sven and his wife, Anna Stina.

Here is the page from the 1972 High Family book which describes Sven Hög:

Although the information the book provided on Sven was scant (and as I’d later find out, very erroneous), it was enough to make me feel a connection to him and want to know more about him. A week later, my 7th Grade English class was given an assignment where we had to describe a historical figure we would like to meet. Of course, names like “Jesus,” “George Washington,” and “Abraham Lincoln” popped into my head, but I wanted to pick someone unique from the rest of the class. Thus, I chose Sven Hög as the person that I would like to meet.

While the assignment was only a page long, it deepened my curiosity about Sven. What was he like in real life? How much of the informationabout him from the High family book was accurate?What was his wife, Anna, like? Who were his ancestors? The last question burned in my mind the brightest. After all, the book was dedicated to his ancestors, who the author of the book was obviously yearning to learn about. I remember hoping that one day someone in the High family would conduct some extensive research on the High family’s Swedish ancestors. Little did I know, that fifteen years later I would become the one to unravel such mysteries…