I am a Gen X professional field archaeologist, amateur writer/blogger/genealogist/historian, and major history nerd, based in the Pacific NW. Two MAs in Mediaeval European history from British universities, and a compulsion to research and document everything.

My maternal grandmother, Dorothy Jean (McKeehan) Swenson, was a hobby genealogist in the late 70s and early 80s. She gathered a lot of information for her branch of the family (see: McKeehan-Armstrong virtual cemetery), before she passed away in 1983 when I was not quite 5. As the oldest grandchild, I inherited her research files. I did not appreciate them at the time, but when I was 14, I caught the bug. I've been doing genealogy off and on ever since.

At one time, I had amassed a tree with thousands of ancestors, stretching back centuries, but most of it was unverified, so I ended up deleting almost all of it. I'd rather focus on my more recent, verifiable ancestors. Anything further back than 1800 or so has already probably been well covered by someone else. I'm currently (2025) in the process of organizing my family files, which include many photos dating back into the 1800s. I'm working on methodically collecting as much original documentation as I can for each of my ancestors, their siblings, children, and additional spouses, with a plan to organize everything into narrative histories to share with family.

My primary interests are in collecting family stories and photos, and sharing them as widely as possible. After all, these folks belong to all of us! Knowing what they looked like and some of the things they did can help them seem more real and closer to us. I'm proud to say that I have managed to collect at least digital copies of photos of most of my ancestors as far back as my g-g-g-grandparents, as well as several of their family members.