Welcome

Welcome to the Tifft, Goodrich, Hallberg, and Watson Family website Tengens.net. I am Margaret Tifft Janis, your host. As website title suggests, I have been chasing down the history of my own ancestors, as well as those of my half-siblings—my sisters, Mary and Liz and my brother, Bill—for over a decade. Though I only share my Tifft ancestry with Mary and Liz and my Goodrich ancestry with Bill, we are, without a doubt, one blended and extended family.

When I started to investigate my family history in 2012, I discovered that my generation is the tenth in America, at least in my father’s family, the Tiffts—thus the name Tengens (many thanks to my husband Jim for the name). It turns out that many of the lines of our family date back to the mid-1600s in America, and a few are much more recent immigrants. Despite the temptation to document every generation, and every sibling—what I call the “begats”—we will focus on stories, anchoring individuals and families in the place and time in which they lived. My brother and sisters and I heard fragments of many of these stories as children, but like all oral history, stories change and details are lost or embellished as they are passed from one generation to the next, though there is usually a kernel of truth left in every story. Our job, as I see it, is to research our ancestors and their stories in the historical context in which they lived, while at the same time validating and fleshing out the details of our ancestors’ lives.

When I started researching my family history, I drew from my memories of family stories told by my parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles to get started. The stories—many of them fascinating even if slightly improbable—got the juices flowing. I knew that my dad had never quite gotten a handle on his paternal lineage going back to the very first Tifft in America, so I started there. Early on, I learned that the first few generations of the Tifft family had settled in Portsmouth, Rhode Island in 1643.The lives of those folks drew me deep into the rabbit hole of early Rhode Island history. I researched the first few generations of the Tiffts, and then started writing the first section of my masterpiece. I wrote and I wrote and soon found that I’d written several hundred pages and had barely scratched the surface of the Tiffts, let alone the other three equally fascinating families. I realized that the single book I’d planned to write would have to be thousands of pages—either that or I’d have to write many books to do justice to the four fascinating families that make up our blended family. So, to speed up the process of making the material I’d amassed available to others, in the spring of 2023, I decided to build a blog. Now my sister Mary, who has been researching and writing about her Swedish roots for decades, will post her findings on Tengens.net as well. We both plan to research and write posts for the foreseeable future. And we hope some of our relatives will join us in writing posts about other ancestors as well.

I’ve always loved books, so while my ego would have liked to have seen the cover of a book with my name on it, I’ve learned that blogs have lots of advantages over books. A blog can grow and expand over time, rather than remaining static, becoming outdated, and getting old and dusty on an obscure library shelf somewhere. In blogs, mistakes—and I expect there will be many—can be found and corrected, and material can be enhanced and expanded. And you, the reader, can access it by searching the internet, and come back for more information at any time.

This brings me to you, the user, and how to navigate this site. The material that we will post about individual ancestors and ancestral families—mostly essays of a few pages—can be found by going to one of the family tabs (Tifft–Richardson, Goodrich–Baker, Hallberg–Jonsdotter, or Watson–French) which you will find on the menu near the top of the homepage and on the post pages. Under the family tabs we’ve initially included a family overview of each of the four families and the biography of each of our four parents, Cyril Richardson Tifft, Margaret Jean Goodrich, Beatrice Anna Matilda Jonsdotter, and William Wallace Watson II. There are also a couple of stories already posted in the Tifft—Richardson family section. When you click on a menu tab, you’ll see all of the posts for that tab with a brief description. Click on the title of the post, or on “read more” for the full post. The newest posts will be listed on the Tengens.net homepage as well. Many posts will include a family tree of a few generations, which will help you stay oriented. Occasionally we will post material under the “Interesting Sidebars” tab on the main menu that may help you in your own historical and genealogical research. But a word of caution to keep your expectations in check: the posts will not necessarily appear in historical order nor will we post everything we know about any one family all at once. We’ve got a lot of material, and a lot of people and time to cover, and we want to provide something new for all of our readers, at least once in a while.

We expect that most of our readers will be drawn directly to the posts that relate to their interests. But, we hope that you will explore other posts, and that you will visit Tengens.net frequently to see what’s new. On the homepage and elsewhere throughout the website, you will find a subscriber sign-up which will enable us to send you a periodic newsletter to let you know what’s new on Tengens.net and what’s on the horizon.

Please note that the content of this website is covered by a Creative Commons license. You are welcome to incorporate our work into your own, but we ask that you cite our material as indicated at the end of each post. And we would be grateful for any comments and input you might want to share. If you have information or photos to add to any post, or if you spot a factual error, please let us know by sending a comment.

Over the years, Mary and I have been aided by many people, including our siblings Liz and Bill, and many of our cousins, plus two historical researchers, Jean DeLauche and Meg Sinnott Rubin. Meg is also the project editor. Thanks to them all, and thanks to you for reading!

Now, welcome to our family website, Tengens.net. We hope you enjoy it, and if you do, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter so you can stay up to date on our newest posts. To visit our family tree on Ancestry.com click here. And please feel free to share the website with anyone you think might be interested in it.