The family’s history has already been written. Getting it onto the web is the work that remains.
In 2007 David S. Christensen, Geneil Mower Taylor and Amy Oaks Long published Niels & Christiane Christensen: Danish Pioneers of 1857 — 344 pages, with a biography of every one of the twelve children. This site does not yet draw on it. That is the gap between what these pages say and what the family actually knows.
It drew on research by Amy Oaks Long, on Geneil Mower Taylor’s earlier work on Niels and Christiane, and on material submitted by family members about the lines they descend from. Contributing here is not a new request — the family did this once already.
What would help most
- The book in digital formA manuscript file, a word-processor original, or a scan. If a digital text exists anywhere, it is the single thing that would change this site most — twelve thin pages become twelve real ones.
- The authors’ agreementThe book is the work of three people and the copyright is theirs jointly. Nothing from it should go online without all three saying yes.
- Photographs of the twelveWe have one portrait of Niels and Christiane and no known photograph of nine of their children. The book may reproduce some; originals would be better.
- Photographs of 1997 and 1998The 2007 meeting is now well documented here. The first two gatherings are represented by four snapshots between them.
- What the book does not coverIt was finished in 2007. Nearly twenty years of the family have happened since.
Send it in
Scans, files, corrections, a single date — all of it is welcome, and everything contributed is credited to the person who sent it.
More about what to send and what happens to it is on the Contact page.