Part One: Family History

Lentz – Stenquist Family History 1850 to 1940

Part One: Coming to Halcyon (an overview)

The first chapter tells the story of our visits back east to our parents’ hometowns in 1986 and 1996. Chapters Two and Three tell about our ancestors from Sweden and Germany and their arrival to the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century. In these chapters, we follow the growth of the Stenquist family in Massachusetts and the Lentz family in New York. Chapter Four is an historical interlude that provides background, or context, for our parents’ childhood, including the Roaring Twenties and the Prohibition Era.

Chapters Five and Six focus on our parents’ lives as children, including anecdotes and stories of their relationship to their siblings. Chapter Seven is another historical interlude: the Great Depression. Our parents were in their teen and young adult years during that tumultuous decade. Chapters Eight and Nine tell of their lives and experiences as teenagers. Finally, Chapter Ten provides an up-close look at what Herb referred to as those “magical three days in September” when Herb and Louise fell in love in Halcyon, California in 1937.

To view the family trees, please click here.

Chapters