Although it has been nearly two and a half years since I wrote my last blog, I have been continuing to work on my upcoming book “The High Family’s Swedish Ancestors and Heritage.” Since my last blog, I have discovered an astonishing amount of new ancestors, which might even take the High family’s tree back to the 8th Century! In fact, I’ve accumulated so much information that I’ve made the decision to split my book into two volumes. Each chapter of my book is well over 100 pages, and can be read as a book of its own.

The first volume of my work will focus on the High family’s Swedish ancestors. The first chapter of this volume revolves around the lives of Sven Hög and Anna Stina Johansdotter, the patriarch and matriarch of the High family. I spent much of 2014 writing this chapter, and it is the most detailed of all of the files I have written on my ancestors. This chapter is 123 pages.

The second chapter in the first volume is about the parents of Sven and Anna Stina and contains a file for Sven’s parents, Anders Andersson and Maria Svensdotter, and a file for Anna Stina’s parents, Johannes Johansson and Maria Håkansdotter. I finished writing this chapter in April of this year.This chapter is 133 pages.

The third chapter in the first volume is about the grandparents of Sven and Anna Stina and contains a file for each set of their grandparents. I finished writing this chapter in September of this year and it contains 157 pages.

The fourth chapter in the first volume is about the great-grandparents of Sven and Anna Stina and contains a file for six of their eight sets of great-grandparents. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information about the maternal great-grandparents of Anna Stina. Currently, this chapter is almost finished and I am waiting for some assistance with deciphering some words from a few records.This chapter should include 131 pages.

I am currently writing the fifth chapter for the first volume, which is about the lives of the great-great-grandparents of Sven and Anna Stina, and contains information about Sven’s maternal great-great-grandparents and Anna Stina’s paternal great-great-grandparents. I hope to have the initial work on this chapter completed by late January or early February of 2016. However, it probably won’t be finished until a few months after that, since it will contain a lengthy 7-page estate inventory that I need transcribed and translated. This estate inventory is incredibly hard to read, and even most expert Swedish genealogists can’t decipher it. Unfortunately, my “expert decipherer” has had several problems with his vision this past year, and I am waiting for his eyesight to be restored after he undergoes eye surgery. This chapter should be around 180-200 pages.

The sixth chapter will probably be the lengthiest chapter in the first volume, and is about Sven and Anna Stina’s distant ancestors. This will be both a daunting and challenging chapter to write, as it is mostly about ancestors who lived in the days before Swedish church records were kept, and it might be difficult to find the source records for them to verify they were indeed Sven and Anna Stina’s ancestors. However, I have looked over several family trees on the internet that contain information about these ancestors, and according to them, they can be traced back to the time of the Vikings. Since this chapter will include information on so many different ancestors, I will have to devise an organized way to present it. I have no idea how long this chapter will be, but it could end up being several hundred pages.

The seventhand final chapter in the first volume will be about the ancient ancestors of Sven (and maybe Anna Stina also) and will analyze DNA from their descendants to provide some light on their genetic ancestors. Since I am a direct-paternal descendant of Sven Hög, I have his Y-chromosome and plan on using my genetic information to find out information on his direct-paternal ancestors. I recently took a DNA test with the National GenographicProject and am still waiting to find out my results. Once I find out my results, I plan on hiring a genetic genealogist to conduct more analysis for me. I would also like to track down a direct-maternal descendant of Anna Stina and have her mitochondrial DNA tested. This would provide me with information on Anna Stina’s direct-maternal ancestors.

The second volume in my work on The High Family’s Swedish Ancestors and Heritage will be about the places associated with the High family’s Swedish ancestors, and include a file on every parish they lived in, every farm they lived at, and every church they attended. I have already written most of the content for this volume, and it may end up being around 500 pages or so.

Although I’m unsure if I’ll actually be able to complete this gargantuan two-volume work in 2016, I am certainly hoping to. I hope that it will be of interest not only to members of the High family, but anyone with an interest in Swedish genealogy. Over the course of the next year, I will continue to upload new chapters to my webpage as they are finished.