Researching Genealogy links...

A couple of weeks ago, I was so blessed by being able to view a copy of a circa. 1893 document that listed the details of my German great, great Grandfather who married my great, great Grandmother who was from Falealupo. They had a daughter called Eleni and I was named after my great grandmother and am known as Helen.

It's like it was meant to be as I had wondered about this German 'fella' coming all the way from a hometown in Germany in the mid 1800s and then travelling all the way to find himself married to a Samoan lady from Falealupo in the 1880s, away from the capital of Apia and then raising children together there before moving with their children to Faleula where my grandfather and mother were born and raised. Such an amazing find!

So funny also in how I wrote a poem about the two of us (not even knowing that this document existed) some 100 years apart in my 'Pacific Hibiscus' poetry collection in that in the 1980s, I was in Samoa researching the stories of ancient Samoa (and still am) and that was where they had lived for a time and I hadn't been aware of those facts when I was researching information for my Masters degree.

It's a story that I'm considering to compile and write a historical novel about as there were some turbulent years ahead and this document reminds me of some of the historical events that were to take place some years after but that is another story...