About Your Family Historian

I’m Thomas Ralph Iversen, Jr, and the son of Thomas Ralph Iversen and Kathleen (Sanders).  I became interested in our family history in earnest in the mid-nineties when the company I worked for hired a fellow who had immigrated from Norway as a child.  It turned out, in an amazing example of “it’s a small world”, that he immigrated from the same small Norwegian town (Egersund) as did my Grandparents almost one-hundred years before.  If that fact wasn’t amazing enough, he told his Uncle in Norway, a genealogy buff, about this happenstance event and in a couple of weeks I had in my hands my Norwegian family tree.  I was stunned since I knew so little and a veritable stranger knew so much!

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We grew up in the South, away from all my Father’s family members.   And, with my Father being the youngest in his family, I suppose he did not collect a wealth of knowledge about his extended family.  We did stay in touch, visiting Aunts and Uncles and Cousins when we could, but our family more identified with my Mother’s southern family.  And my father died when I was relatively young, so even if I was interested, there was no one to ask.

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As a seasoned adult, I began the quest to catalog all of the Iversen family in America – the progeny of my Grandparents who immigrated to this country in the early 20th century.  By 2011, I had achieved a goal of sorts – I had catalogued well over 200 family members and collected countless photos, new contacts, and many artifacts along the way.  My hope, beyond the little newsletters I put together and distributed at that time, was to have this website where more information could be shared more broadly, and perhaps family members unbeknownst could find me (and you).  And so, here it is.

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My family, consisting of wife Louise, son Gage, and daughter Tia reside in Franklin County North Carolina where we have lived for almost 35 years.  I work in sales at a local manufacturing company, while Louise homeschools, volunteers, cares for her aged Mother, and keeps our rag-tag family healthy and together.