A forthcoming book by Gary L. Froseth
The Lives
Before Us
What did our ancestors carry into times of upheaval—and what did they leave for us?
The Lives Before Us: Faith, Migration, Memory follows twelve connected families through five centuries of religious change, migration, war, and settlement. Their choices shaped an inheritance none of them could see in full.
Concept cover
From My Research
Small discoveries that bring the lives before us into view.
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Within Walking Distance
Thirty years after serving a congregation in Egypt, Pennsylvania, I found familiar family names in my research—and discovered that Nan’s ancestry was part of the community where we once lived.
The book
Great events entered ordinary households.
In Waiblingen, the Wolfhardts lived through the Reformation. English families crossed the Atlantic seeking room for conscience and community. Norwegian emigrants carried the memory of their valleys to Wisconsin. Others faced the American Revolution and the Civil War.
The records reveal marriages, work, church life, journeys, and loss. Together, these lives ask where people found assurance, trustworthy authority, belonging, and hope when familiar answers were tested.
Every generation received an inheritance. Every generation had to decide how to live with it.
Inside the book
Three paths through five centuries
Three ways into a larger family story.
01 / Reformation
A world reordered
The Wolfhart family lived through the breach between an inherited Catholic world and a new Lutheran settlement in Württemberg.
02 / Migration
Crossing toward home
Hugh and Ann Calkins faced the cost of leaving England and crossed the Atlantic with a community shaped by Puritan convictions.
03 / War
The cost of upheaval
Military records and family lives meet in the American Revolution, the Thirty Years’ War, and the Civil War.
Invite Gary to speak
History that opens a conversation.
Gary presents illustrated talks for congregations, libraries, historical and genealogical societies, and adult education groups. His newest program considers spiritual distress through the lives of ancestors who faced war, religious conflict, and migration.
About Gary
A family historian with a pastor’s ear for human questions.
Gary L. Froseth spent four decades in pastoral ministry and has researched his and his wife Nanette’s families for approximately sixty years. In his writing and talks, he draws on historical records to place individual lives within the worlds they knew.
He lives in Wisconsin.
