I was born in Missoula, Montana in 1943. After growing up in small Montana towns, I lived in Portland, Oregon and Boston, Massachusetts while attending Reed College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I lived in Ghana for two years conducting research on history and politics in the Ashanti Region. Since then I have lived primarily in St. John’s, Newfoundland. After retiring from a career teaching political science at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2000, my wife Alice and I lived seasonally for 20 years in Nelson, New Zealand in addition to St. John’s.

Beginning in the 1990’s, I began seriously exploring my family history, following the lead of my parents, and allying with interested cousins. This began with an effort to trace the German roots of my 2nd great grandparents, Jacob Graesser and Elizabeth Hellman. Having largely completed that task by 2010, I continued to work on all of my other family lines.