My name is Kevin Skoglund. In the early 1990s, I began researching my family tree. I have collected a lot of information and photographs over the last ten years and will now try to pull everything together into one place.

My great grandparents family names were:
Skoglund, Ogren, Scogin, Shepherd, Moore, Blaine, Pennington and Dykes

These make up the eight branches of my family tree. I used my great grandparents as a starting point because in my family that is the point where the history begins to receed over the horizon. Photographs become scarce. The memories of the living become less clear and helpful. Historical research, sorting through census records, planning cemetery visits and making archeological expeditions through family attics becomes necessary to document the past. Even though I've been working backwards through time, following a trail of breadcrumbs back to the beginning, I will begin at the earliest crumb and work back towards the present.

When presented in a story form like this, the typical family history tends to read something like: Person A married Person B and had Child C, then Child C married Person D and had Child E, and the lineage moves forward through time. But if we know a lot of information about the ancestry of Person D, then we also want to include that which would require going backward in time. We could say: Person D's parents were, and Person D's father's parents were and Person D's mother's parents were; but that gets awkward when you are going back several generations. There is no way to smoothly keep switching from telling the story forward and backward in time. Instead, I "pause" the story, usually putting a line and a section title to indicate the change, and then back up in time to the earliest ancestor. Of course, sometimes I break my own rules because I think the information is clearer presented another way.

This family history stops with my great grandparents. This is because a lot of their descendants are living. Though at times I have provided a few notes, I want to respect the privacy of anyone still living.

I tried to include detail about the immediate families of my ancestors. Often, their movement and marriages provide helpful clues to the locations and relationships of my ancestors and their descendants. It also gives some insight into what life in their community was like. Because family trees can extend without limit in any number of directions, I have chosen to stop listing information beyond the offspring of these immediate relatives, even if I find more information. So many names and dates already make the history complicated enough without extending the family further than necessary.

One major resource for tracking the movement of families in America is the United States Federal Census, taken every ten years. While the census is an excellent tool for finding out information about families, it is not perfect. For example, if the census taker spoke with a child in the household, the names might be generally correct but misspelled, the ages might be wrong, etc. Even if they spoke with an adult, that adult might not know everyone's birthday, parents' state of birth, year of immigration, length of marriage, etc. It is not uncommon for census information to disagree with other census information. However, if too much information disagrees with the facts we have confirmed then we have to wonder if we are looking at the correct family.

Much of the information that I have pulled together here is derived from other sources. Family notes, photographs with notes scribbled on the back, written histories, research from online websites like the The Jesus Christ Church of Later-day Saints and Ancestry.com, specialty websites for counties and cemeteries, and the family trees and research of dozens of other people. Sometimes, it is simply the best guess given the facts that we do have. Within the text I am posting most of the primary source materials that I can (photos, deeds, census records, birth/death certificates). Anything with a secondary source should be taken with a grain of salt until a primary source confirms it.

This is a constantly evolving history. Don't be too surprised if major changes happen. If a critical piece of information turns up that disputes the theories or secondary sources, whole "branches" of the family tree could change.

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