1) How old is your father now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."
2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ahnentafel. Who is that person?
3) Tell us three facts about that person with the "roulette number."
4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook note or comment, or as a comment on this blog post.
5) If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then spin the wheel again - pick your mother, or yourself, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!
1) My dad is 62. OK, this part is easy enough... Divided by 4, that's 15.5. Round up to 16.
2) That's my great-great-grandfather, Peter Christensen Scriver.
3) Here goes...#1. According to a relative of Peter's daughter-in-law, who has done more research on him than I have yet,
#2. He came to the US in 1871, with his fiancee, Anne Johansen Visby. They were married on 4 September 1871, in Red Jacket (now Calumet), Houghton County, Michigan. They stayed in the area for about five years. Three of Anne's brothers also came from Denmark to Houghton County, and the men worked in the copper mines in that area. During this time, Peter and Anne's first two children, James and John (my great-grandfather), were born. Later they all homesteaded in Lynn Township, Moody County, South Dakota.
#3. Peter used the name Christensen for some time and is enumerated in the 1880 census as Peter "Christianson." Family lore says that he eventually began to go by "Scriver" because there were already so many families in the area called Christensen, and he didn't want to be confused with them. I'm quite sure that Peter didn't pick "Scriver" out of thin air, as he registered as Peter Christensen Skriver when he emigrated from Denmark, but I don't know at one point he began to use the name, or why. "Skriver" is a Danish word that means "notary" or "secretary," and it's also a family name. There's no indication that Peter's father used the name. Did it come from someplace farther back in the family tree? I hope to find out.
I could write much more about Peter and his family--and I hope to do so soon. The Scriver family is my current research focus, and I hope to put together some sort of family history book in the next couple of years.
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