The Ekengren family tree: from Salma to a Welsh king in 1025 AD

June 12, 2026

My family has maintained a RootsMagic genealogy database for years, covering over 43,000 people. The core of it is the Ekengren line — traced from a single Swedish family in 1698 all the way forward to today, and backward through several other lineages that turned out to be much older.

Starting point: Salma Esperanza

The tree opens at Salma Esperanza Ekengren Stepa, born in 2025 in Florida — the newest addition to the family. From her, you can expand leftward to see her parents, and then their parents, generation by generation.

Her father is Asa Ekengren, born 1987 in Independence, Missouri. His parents are:

• Neal Alvin Ekengren (b. 1957) — Systems Analyst at AT&T, M.S. Chemical Engineering
• Matilde San Andrés (b. 1954) — from the San Andrés line of Castile, Spain

The Swedish side

The Ekengren name traces back through Värmland and Dalarna. By the early 1700s the family was farming in central Sweden, and the name itself appears in records from at least 1698. The line runs from father to son through several generations of Swedish farmers and craftsmen before emigrating to the American Midwest in the 1800s.

The Spanish side

Matilde San Andrés brings a Castilian lineage from Spain. The San Andrés family is documented back several generations, with family photos surviving for Bonifacio, Pedro, and Matilde herself.

The colonial American lines

On Neal's side, several branches trace back to early American colonial families — Palmers, Burnses, Masons, Bakers — from New England and the Mid-Atlantic states in the 1700s. These families were present in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania before moving westward.

The Welsh lineage

The biggest surprise in the database is where one of the colonial lines eventually leads. Following the ancestry back far enough, the genealogy connects through Welsh patronymic names — names structured as Ieuan ap Robert (Ieuan son of Robert) or Maredudd ab Ieuan (Maredudd son of Ieuan).

These names follow the Welsh tradition that was in use before fixed surnames became standard in Wales. Tracing the chain:

Salma → Asa → Neal → ... → colonial America → → Roswell Randall (b. 1777) → Peleg Randall (b. 1748) → ... → Bleddyn ap Cynfyn (b. 1025)

Bleddyn ap Cynfyn was a king of Gwynedd and Powys in 11th-century Wales. If the genealogy is accurate, Salma's ancestry reaches back a full thousand years.

The database behind it

This genealogy database was built with care over many years by Neal Alvin Ekengren — Asa's father and Salma's grandfather. Neal assembled the records, tracked down sources, interviewed relatives, and filled in the details that turn a family tree from a list of names into something with real texture. The personal notes attached to many entries — job histories, obituaries, oral family stories — are his doing.

Neal has his own family history site at betraxa.com — The Ekengren Family Pages, which was the original inspiration for this project. The interactive tree here is built from the same database he compiled.

The database holds over 43,000 people in total. The 405 ancestors shown in this visualization are a focused subset: the direct ancestry of Salma Esperanza, traced as far back as the records allow.

What's shown in the tree

Each card shows: name, birth year and city, death year. Hover any card to see:

• Full birth and death dates with location
• Cause of death where recorded (cancer, tuberculosis, and others appear throughout the database)
• Occupation when known
• Family photo for the 24 people we have images for

The tree currently shows 407 people from Salma back to 1025 AD, across Sweden, Spain, Britain, and the American colonies.