Gunder Vold's Family Tree

This family tree traces Gunder's ancestors back in time, all the way to before 1617! 1617 is the earliest-known birth year in this family tree, but the document lists the generation before that - birth and death years unknown. It's a given, however, that that generation was born in the 1500s!

For comparison's sake, consider what was happening in 1617:

•  Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in what would become the United States, had been around for just a decade. Pocahontas, the Native American who had been part of that settlement's story, died in 1617, so her part of history was already over. (She died in England, where she had moved 1616. That's the same year that William Shakespeare died.)
• James I was king in England. Yes, James of the King James Bible fame.

So, at the time we pick up our family tree here in the late 1500s and early 1600s, nobody in Norway was thinking about emigrating to a new country across the Atlantic Ocean because the English colonies were just getting started. It would be seven generations later until anybody in this family line would step into the New World.

When Gunder and Gunhild were married in 1877 in Lac qui Parle County:

• Rutherford B. Hayes was president.
• Thomas Edison announced his invention of the phonograph.
• Minnesota had been a state for only 19 years.
• There were only 38 states.

Click here for the family tree