SALT LAKE CITY — Leslie Albrecht Huber's ancestors were not special. Nor were they extraordinary.
In fact, they were 100 percent, completely ordinary and just like everyone else around them. And if you ask her, she'll probably tell you that yours were, too — no matter what stories you've been told about descending from Indian princesses.
But that is why their story is so important for her to share.
"By telling their story, I could tell the story of millions of Americans who share this story. I could tell the story of so many other immigrants who had experiences just like them," Huber said.
In a book lecture Thursday evening, Huber explained that for the last 12 years, she has been to Germany, Switzerland and back — seeking out her family names, records and locations of her ancestors. The stories that she discovered on her journeys became the inspiration for her book, "The Journey Takers."
As a 21-year-old, Huber traveled to Germany for three months searching for anything she could that would give her a clue as to who her ancestors were. Through her search, she was able to locate the church where some of her ancestors were married and their children christened.
Entering the church, Huber realized that no one in her family had seen that church since the Albrecht's left Germany hundreds of years ago. Their information and stories "had fallen into the vastness of forgotten history."
Before leaving, the churchwarden who had let her in said, "(Your ancestors) were forgotten, but now, you must not forget. Go home to your family and tell them about your German ancestors. Teach your children where they came from. You must tell them all so that they will never be forgotten again."
Huber left that day with a strong sense of responsibility and obligation to learn and share the stories of her family.
Huber's ancestors later met Mormon missionaries and were converted. Their conversion led them to leave their homes in Germany and Switzerland and come to America.
Through learning about their journey to America and then across the U.S. to Utah, Huber began to re-evaluate her statements of her family not being special or extraordinary. She'd sat in their churches, seen the land they had farmed, followed in their footsteps and came to know them in personal ways.
"I had been wrong in my judgment of my family. … My family were not important people. … They were just like everyone else around them. What I had been wrong about was that this group of people as a whole was extraordinary people who made choices that shaped our lives," Huber amended.
Huber selected stories about her family and her personal experiences to find them and put them together into her book, "The Journey Takers," for everyone to read and relate to.
The tagline for Huber's book is, "Sometimes you have to risk everything to find what you are looking for," referring to her immigrant ancestors who left everything they had to come to Utah.
The second part says, "But sometimes it's a lot closer than you think," referring to her own journey. "Sometimes we have to take big risks, but sometimes we don't. Sometimes it's what we already have, what's in front of us — and that is our family. That is what it's all about," Huber explained.
Visit thejourneytakers.com to learn more.
e-mail: hloftus@desnews.com