A Free Conference, a Book Review, and Some Easter Pictures

Spring break is over and it’s back to regular life for me. What that means this week is three lectures: tomorrow to the Central Massachusetts Genealogy Society (CMGS) in Gardner. They meet at 7 p.m. at the American Legion building (22 Elm Street). On Friday, I am speaking at a conference that should be of interest to those interested in genealogy within reasonable driving distances of Worcester, MA. The library (with the help of Kay Sheldon and others) is hosting a two day genealogical conference that is completely free. Pretty exciting, don’t you think? You can read more about it HERE. I’m speaking on Friday afternoon at 3:45 on Beyond Names And Dates: Uncovering Your Ancestors’ Stories. You’ll see a long list of lectures on a variety of topics – some by well known lecturers, and some by lectures who are not so well-known (but I know many of them and they’ll be great!). Then on Saturday, I’m driving to Albany, New York to speak to the Capital District Genealogical Society (LINK) on “Writing a Page-Turning (But True) Family History.” It will be a busy week! (I will also be driving children to a total of two softball practices, two soccer practices, two soccer games, two piano lessons, and two dance classes, among other things. Spring is the busiest season in the genealogy world – but it’s also the busiest season in the parents-of-school-aged-children world since so many sports take place now.)

On another note, I received in the mail a recent issue of the VASA Star, which is the publication for the international organization of VASA – an group that celebrates Swedish heritage. If you have Swedish roots, you might want to check out their website. They have branches located all over the country, including many in Massachusetts. They hold monthly meetings as well as periodic larger gatherings. Anyway, a recent issue of their publication reviewed my book, The Journey Takers. The review is rather lengthy, but I wanted to share the first few paragraphs:

“Leslie Albrecht Huber’s book The Journey Takers is a highly interesting account of how emigration from three European countries through seven generations crystallize into the family in which the author and her children so far are the latest members. In addition she has gone back three generations in the three countries (Germany, Sweden, and England) and arrived in the middle of the 1700s.

The book is extraordinarily comprehensive, based on nearly ten years of very thorough genealogical research in each of the countries concerned. The footnotes and bibliography take up 55 pages.

The author has previously published hundreds of articles in the fields of genealogy and history, but this is her first book. She was honored for one of her articles in 2004 with the “Franklin D. Scott Award” by the Swedish American Historical Society in Chicago.

A book with so many factual details risks being boring, but such is not the case here. The authoress lends to the presentation her imagination, which gives life, above all to the older generations in the countries of origin and the USA. Furthermore, she portrays her own life and her family at the same time in relation to the research work carried out in each of the places visited and the people she has met there in the present. These aspects of fiction and autobiography make the book easily accessible and at times as thrilling as a novel.”

The review concludes with the following sentence: “Everyone interested in delving deeper in these matters (referring to immigration) ought to read the book, which so far has only been published in English.”

What a nice review!

Finally, I can’t resist closing with a few photos from our Easter celebrations.



We started the week by visiting my brother and his family in New York City. We visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was fabulous – and more kid-friendly than I expected. Here are my children and their cousins in one of the Egyptian rooms in the museum. That night, I gave a lecture at the Connetquot Library in Bohemia, NY (on Long Island).



Rachel and her friend helped make fruit pizza in preparation for our annual Easter egg hunt. This year, we had 77 people at our house!


Sarah Ann and her friends looking for eggs in the front yard.



Christian quickly figured out that there was chocolate in these eggs. After that, he became a very motivated egg hunter. In the end though, he still preferred finding balls instead of eggs in the yard.



The Easter bunny brought coordinated clothes (which about did the Easter bunny in since she had to shop with an assistant who spent his time hiding under the clothes racks at Macy’s.)



My brother and his family joined us for our Easter dinner.