Stories from Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Over the years, I’ve come to describe my family background as Midwestern mutt. We don’t exactly know where our people came from. Jernagan isn’t a name that screams a particular nationality like, say, O’Malley or Van Dyke. A relative told me when I was young she thought it was German. But what did our people know? Mom’s maiden name was Van Hook and some of our ancestors lived in Pennsylvania. So naturally we were thought we were Pennsylvania Dutch...