Ronan Beckman is historical fiction author with a focus on the “long Regency” and Late Georgian era. He was born in Michigan and for more than three decades has lived in the United Kingdom, with his family. He describes himself as a keen genealogist, inspired by his wife’s ancestors and his own family stories. He’s also an adoptee, who learned growing up he had ancestry in Sweden, which ultimately led him to discovering his family history. Many of his relatives trace their roots to farming country in central Sweden, a place he visited in the early 2000s to meet his distant kin. That trip has special significance for Beckman and helped solidify part of his family identity. His first novel was published in 2020, An Actress of Repute, and is available on Amazon. His latest project is to edit an updated version of rare, out-of-print book by a coal miner who became a Member of Parliament. Visions of the Mine by Samuel Woods is available through Amazon. Learn more about his work on his website: ronanbeckman.com/.
In this episode Owens shares his story about his visit to his family villages in South Ostrobothnia, Finland, in 2023 and Beckman shares his story visiting his family's ancestral village about two decades earlier in central Sweden. Both Owens and Beckman found their biological kin in their adulthood. Owens and Beckman are both adoptees born in Detroit and the Metro Detroit areas in the 1960s.
CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO
0:00 - Intro
0:18 - Ronan Beckman introduced
1:18 - Baltic Brotherhood between Rudy and Ronan
1:34 - Ronan, I always kind of felt Swedish and knew I was Swedish
2:02 - Rudy and Ronan share adoptee birth stories from Detroit
3:15 - Rudy and Ronan met discussing Michigan and adoptee rights on Twitter
4:41- Ronan describes foster family upbringing and adoption
5:56 - Ronan discovers as child he has Swedish ancestry
6:46 - We go to our core beings I think there's a strong sense of place and belonging to a place
8:09 - Rudy describes learning of his Finnish ancestry when he found his birth mother when he was 24 years old
9:36 - Rudy, environments that shaped who we are as people you know had a big deal shaping our identities and our parents’ lives
10:13 - Rudy describes Finnish ancestry and family tree
11:15 - Ronan’s genealogy search takes him to Swedish region where he contacted a cousin
12:13 - Ronan visits Sweden in 2004 to meet his kin
13:06 - Five of six kids in Ronan’s Swedish family went to the USA and Canada
15:14 - Ronan visits his grandfather’s small village in central Sweden
19:17 - Rudy describes his Finnish distant kin and Swedish-Finnish family marriages
20:36 - Ronan has written a short story on a great great grandfather in Sweden
21:44 - Ronan, I'm sure you have the same feeling too it's trying to be in a place where you see people that look like you
22:30 - Rudy describes his plans to visit family villages in South Ostrobothnia and find family in 2023
25:58 - Rudy contacts his relatives in August 2023
26:57 - Rudy describes looking like a third cousin and how his relatives accepted him
28:20 - Ronan discusses Nordic countries and immigration to the USA and importance of families
30:11 - Ronan describes finding kin was like winning the jackpot
31:46 - Rudy describes family photographs sent from USA to Finland given to him as gift during his visit with Finnish family
33:24 - The laws denying adoptees’ kinship information are unjust
34:20 - Rudy, the laws deny adoptees opportunity to learn from the home countries to enrich our own lives here in the USA
34:38 - Ronan, our heritage is taken from us (adoptees)
36:04 - Alex Haley, importance to family history, genealogy in the USA, the role of slavery in erasing African Americans’ heritage and families
39:41 - Ronan, I remembered I was just really determined to break down those barriers those walls yeah when I was in high school
40:19 - Ronan says starting a family got him more interested in his past
41:24 - Ronan on the frustrations of dealing with vital records keepers with state of Michigan
42:00 - Ronan learns of his half brother
43:22 - Rudy describes meeting the social worker who hid his family information in a file during their meeting in 1989
43:46 - The system of hiding vital records defies logic and reason
48:47 - Ronan will never know about his biological father
49:44 - Time is running out for people our age to find our relatives
50:52 - Rudy on MI Governor Whitmer doing nothing to support two adoptee rights bills in 2024
53:27 - Ronan talks about DNA tests and finding distant relatives that way
53:57 - Family secrets, adoptees, and hiding information from adoptees
54:46 - Ronan’s colorful great grandfather
58:20 - Rudy, I want to tell people is you have family out there and they probably want to know who you are and they probably care about you
1:02:36 - It’s difficult (to take a journey to find kin), but it’s worth it, just do it
1:05:00 - Rudy discusses possible trip to Wales
1:05:20 - Farewells, outro