How We Got Here

This is the family as it stands today: eight Paulson children, all sons and daughters of Donald Howard Paulson (1924–1983) and Mary Catherine Dafoe (b. 4 January 1932), who married on 22 March 1951 in Maryland. They arrived across sixteen years. John Clifford came first, in 1948, followed by Lawrence Raeburn in 1951, Richard Alan in 1953, Victoria Kay in 1954, and Sandra Ann in 1956. Then came Carol Marie in 1961, William Thomas in 1962, and finally Mary Elizabeth, born 4 March 1964.

Their father was a military man — a 1st Lt. in the U.S. Air Force and a veteran of both World War II and Korea, born at Flint, Michigan, in 1924. He died at Mansfield, Ohio, on 22 January 1983, age 58, and lies in Bellville Cemetery in Richland County, where the family's roots settled in north-central Ohio. The records anchor every one of these eight back to him and to Mary Catherine, the mother who carried the household through its long stretch of births.

The genealogy that gathers them, "Paulson's how we got here," was compiled on 13 October 2006 — the document that makes this living generation knowable, line by line, name by name. They are the present edge of the story, the ones still here to look back along the path the earlier chapters trace.

This generation was born across the upper Midwest in the years bracketing 1900. Raeburn Iver Paulson came into the world on November 26, 1893, in Garden Valley Township, Jackson County, Wisconsin, and grew up on the family farm north of City Point. His wife, Esther Eunice Bills, was born in 1895 in Linn County, near Springville, Iowa. They were the line's direct ancestors, and in 1919 they went to Flint, Michigan, the move that gives this chapter its name.

In Flint, Raeburn became a foreman in Buick tool and die before resigning to run a gas station. Esther spent her working life in teaching and school administration. Their first child died the day after birth in 1921; sons Clifford (1922–2014) and Donald carried the line forward. In January 1938 the family moved to a farm north of Neillsville, Wisconsin; that March a fall crushed part of Raeburn's vertebrae, leaving him partially paralyzed from the waist down. He died in 1970 at Takoma Park, Maryland, and was buried back in Flint; Esther, after his death, returned to Flint and then to Maryland, dying at Silver Spring in 1990.

Esther's siblings scattered widely from their Iowa roots: Stephen Chester (b. 1896), Dilman French (b. 1900, who also settled in Genesee County, Michigan), Edwin Glenn (b. 1903), and Ruth Eleanor (b. 1908). Raeburn's siblings included Claude Zene, Mary Estelle, Elma Alice, and Lynn Paulson.

This is the generation that pulled the family west. Born between 1790 and 1844 in Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Canada, and the farms of Gudbrandsdalen, they scattered toward Iowa and Wisconsin. Joseph French (1823–1900) traced the longest American arc: born in Greene County, Pennsylvania, he moved to Licking County, Ohio in 1830, reached Clay Township, Jones County, Iowa in 1846, married Catherine Sinkey in Indiana, lost her in Jackson County, then returned and married Grace Catherine Beever (1836–1911) on his father's old homestead. His parents, John French and Sarah Clark (1801–1891) of Virginia, are buried in the same Jones County ground.

Dan Buell Bills (1830–1914), born near Fort Ticonderoga, was carried to Vermont as an infant and to Chautauqua County, New York at seven; he and Mary Jane Ball (1835–1862) moved to Iowa in 1860. Both rest in Anamosa. The Wright line came down from Canada: Phineas Wright (1812–1874) and Amanda Finch built the mill at Coral City, Wisconsin, and their son Zenas Hovey Wright (1838–1926), born near Fort Defiance, Ohio, farmed Garden Valley for 34 years.

In Norway, the Sør-Fron farms held steady. Iver Olsen bought Haverstad in 1837; Paul Olsen (1822–1885) worked nearby Snidkerplatsen with one horse, six cows, five sheep. His widow Embjor Iversdater (1828–1905) sold both farms in 1887 and died in Minneapolis — the family's bridge to America.

These 191 people are the deepest roots of the family, nearly all of them born and buried in the parishes of England across the long span from 1482 to 1741. The oldest named ancestor is Richard Molyneux (1482–1569) of Hawkley, whose daughter Jane Molyneux married Ralph Woodward of Shevington and carried the line down through Hugh Woodward and Jane Hawett of Standish. To the east, the Lummys family held to Thaxted across generations, from Thomas Lummyus (1512–1551) to John Lummys (1536–1567), who was both born and died in that same town. In the cloth country of Yorkshire, the Barstows ran from William Barstow of Halifax through John Barstow (1540–1565) and Mathew Barstow of Shelf.

The Hicks line threads south, from Thomas Hicks of Gloucester down to James Hicks of Southwark, who married Phebe Allyne, also of Southwark. The Griswolds reached from Roger Griswold (1540–1607), born at Yardley and died at Kenilworth, toward Edward Griswold, who would cross to Windsor, Connecticut.

The standout is James Chilton (1562–1620) of Canterbury, "a tailor and a freeman of Canterbury in 1583," who married in 1587 and moved his family to Sandwich around 1600 before dying at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. With him the Old World gave way to the New, and dozens of others followed the same Atlantic road.