My Family History


All of us owe a debt for the favorable circumstances of our lives to our ancestors for the lives they led and the choices they made. The site banner for this page is a photo of my great-great-grandfather Christian Fredrick Julius Torstensen from Trondheim, Norway with some of his buddies (he is the one on the far right). He changed his name to Christian Thompson when he emigrated from Norway to work for the Union Pacific Railroad in Utah. (If you can't see the full picture try to resize your browser window).

I enjoy learning about the lives of my ancestors and others who pioneered the way for us. I recently gave a church talk where I spoke in depth about the life and pre-mature death of Joshua Sawyer Holman, my 3rd great-grandfather. I have a scanned copy of the book Holmans in America published in 1909. On page 51 and 52 of the PDF it tells the story of my 9th great grandmother Winifred Holman from Cambridge, Massachusetts and how she survived the accusation of witchcraft in 1659. Incidentally, the home site where she lived is now part of the Harvard University campus. The fan chart below represents five generations of my family. You can see Chris in the lower left quadrant and Winifred is too far back in my line to show in the chart. I use the outstanding genealogy program MacFamilyTree and the expansive online resources at FamilySearch and Ancestry. If you click on the fan chart it will take you to a tree of my ancestors. This tree of 478 people does not include the relatives of my ancestors which would balloon the tree to nearly 10,000 people.

Updated: May 16, 2015
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Copyright © 1999-2016 Brian K. Holman. Any opinions expressed on this site are solely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer, my church, or any other referenced organization.