Fourteen generations of my family, traced through hand-drawn family charts, parish registers, census sheets and state records. The Norwegian line begins with Ole Knutsen Dyrkorn, born in 1580 in Stordal on the west coast of Norway. The Moebis name reaches back to Christoph Moebius, born in Görlitz in 1650.
In the 1880s and 1900s both branches crossed the Atlantic to Brooklyn. I was born in New Jersey in 1974, and today I live in Slovakia with my wife Blažena and our children, back in Central Europe more than a century after Carl Ernst Moebis left Saxony.
The Long Way Home · 2 min · narrated, with English captions
direct ancestors
86
generations
14
countries of origin
5
recorded trades
27
Born in
Norway 19
Germany 29
France 2
Sweden 1
United States 5
Concept 01 · Ancestral fan
Every known ancestor, one ring per generation
Colour by
Each ring steps back a generation, and branches widen where the research runs deeper. Select anyone to see where they were born and the work they did. Open a branch to follow it all the way back.
Norway
Germany
France
Sweden
United States
Not recorded
Browse every ancestor by generation
Generation 1
Generation 2
Generation 3
Generation 4
Generation 5
Generation 6
Generation 7
Generation 8
Generation 9
Generation 10
Generation 11
Generation 12
Generation 13
Concept 02 · Trades
Innkeepers, tailors, millers and a sea captain
The occupations written beside names in parish books and censuses: a working history of farms, workshops, inns, harbours and laboratories.
Farms and fields
Fjord farms in Stordal and fields around Leipzig.
5
Workshops
Tailors, carpenters, a goldsmith, a furrier and a garden architect.
8
Inns, mills and kitchens
Innkeepers, millers, butchers and a master cook.
5
Sea and shore
A Bergen sea captain and a fisherman.
2
Village and public life
A forester, a village judge, a church warden, a road-mender and a soldier.
4
Industry and engineering
Chemistry, freight and electronics in New York and New Jersey.
3
Concept 03 · Timeline
Four and a half centuries, lane by lane
Each line is a life, drawn in the place it began. When someone moved, the line crosses to a new lane at the recorded crossing year, or at the first record found in the new place. Faded ends mark where the records stop.
Carl Ernest Moebis IVb. 1974 · Willingboro, New Jersey, USA
Scroll sideways to follow the timeline.
Concept 04 · Migration map
From Norwegian fjords and Saxon villages to Brooklyn, and back to Europe
Points mark recorded places, not exact homes. Arcs join the places where a person’s records begin and continue: they show that a move happened, not the route taken.
1,000 km
About this research
Sources and care
Built from family group sheets and charts gathered in 1975 and 1984, then compared with census pages, state marriage indexes and Norwegian church and farm records. Many older entries still await comparison with the original registers, and some handwriting remains uncertain.
Ole Knutsen Dyrkorn is included as a direct ancestor on family testimony. Map points are representative: where a town is unknown the region or country is shown instead. To protect privacy, only years are published, and details about living relatives are limited.
