The weekend has rolled around once more and Tucson is in the middle of excellent monsoon rains! The plants and critters are all very happy.

It’s also time for Randy Seaver’s weekly Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge:

1) Our family trees contain historical persons who came from places all over the world.  Each of our ancestral lines came from somewhere.

2)  Can you identify your Farthest-Flung Ancestor (FFA)?  Who in your ancestral tree came from the most geographically distant place from where you live now? What brought them (or their descendants) to where your family ended up?

My farthest flung ancestor isn’t one person, but my paternal grandparents’ families who lived in villages around today’s Presov, Slovakia.

I live in Tucson, Arizona and it’s approximately 5,660 miles from here to Presov.

These are my Rusyn ancestors and they came for one reason only – money. The factories and mines in America offered them the chance to earn a lot of money – compared to little paid job opportunities in their villages – and to decide whether to remain in America or return home.

My paternal great grandfather, Michael Scerbak, chose to return home, but three of his children – my grandmother, Julia, her brother, Peter and her sister, Maria, all came back to America permanently.

My husband’s farthest flung ancestors were from Langenlonsheim, Germany – the Stoppelbeins – and, interestingly, Google maps says it is also about 5,660 miles from Tucson to Langenlonsheim.

Thank you, Randy, for this week’s challenge.